Original post -October 29, 2020

Well, it’s been a minute. I got caught up in the quest for perfection which prevented me from moving forward. I’ve been stuck for a couple of weeks. I pride myself on my memory and in telling this story, I so want to get it right. Typically, when I am recalling a memory, it’s like a movie in my mind. I can see it all just as it occurred. I can tell you what everyone was wearing, what the room smelled like, the nuance of an expression. But this time period has been eluding me. Details are missing. Big chunks of time are lost to me because I was trying to build my own life. Because I was withdrawing more from her constant needs, there’s a lot I just don’t know. But, I decided to just summarize that period somewhat and get it done. It’s not going to be perfectly correct or sequential but who cares. It’s time for me to let that go and finish this!

What I remember most about this early sobriety period for her was effort. She was tenacious. She was sporadically, incredibly desperate and miserable – she suffered a lot. Other times, when her bipolar disorder swung the other direction, she’d do hilarious and adventurous things! And maybe this part of her life and the rest of her life aren’t as compelling but this is the good stuff – once she plodded her way through. But let’s back up a wee bit.

She had tried every which way from Sunday to quit drinking previously. She had been in 30 day inpatient treatment centers/rehabs more than once. That was unsuccessful. She had taken Antabuse. She drank on that which particularly scary for me. It was my understanding that if she took that med and drank, her throat would close and she would choke to death. That isn’t how it works but when I was a kid, that’s what I thought. No idea where that idea came from. Watching her swallow whiskey knowing she had that drug on board was terrifying. I think in reality, it just made her not feel great. That didn’t work either. She’d been hospitalized in a mental hospital – committed by her father. It was a private and expensive mental hospital but a looney bin nonetheless. She’d received shock treatments there back in the day when they just strap you down and turn on the juice – no sedation. She lost quite a bit of her vocabulary and some of her memory from that. As a kid, it was scary visiting her there. The people scared me and there were lots of arts and crafts. Strange what we remember. But, she didn’t stop drinking. She went to what was called Raleigh Hills Treatment – a different sort of inpatient program. This method, according to her, was they would wander down to a “bar” within the center, drink and drink and drink until they puked. I think this “treatment” happened at least once a day or more. Aversion therapy at it’s best, I guess. She talked about getting to the point where she’d smell alcohol and gag. She didn’t stop drinking. But what she did do was hyperventilate a lot for a time. So after that, there was always a paper bag in her purse for breathing. She quit cold turkey one time and had convulsions which I now know were DT’s. She looked like she was having a seizure – maybe she was. My dad reached into her mouth and held her tongue while we waited for the ambulance. She was swallowing her tongue and choking. Still didn’t quit drinking. When it finally stuck for her, it boiled down to she made a decision. She told me that she knew that if she drank again, she would die. She was probably right. And although she threatened suicide constantly during that time period, she had a strong will to live. She really didn’t want to die. She just needed to stop the pain that alcohol numbed – sort of, sometimes, until she had to face the wreckage of her latest choices. So she’d drink to forget/deal with THAT. Lather, rinse, repeat. But she did it. She quit. Once she made the decision on her terms for her reasons – not to appease her father, not to try to save her marriage, not for anyone but herself, she never drank again.

But! That wasn’t the end of her chemical alteration. But the scary, catastrophic consequences ended. Quick pit stop – she started growing pot. Now that I think about it, she was growing it before she stopped drinking. These things overlapped a bit. But, as you will see moving forward, my mom was one of a kind and her sober antics were fantastic, often extreme, and hilarious. I came to know the phrase “only my mom would…” very well. I loved it. Well that’s not true. I love it now but then, I wanted her to stop acting like a teenager. Right around this time, her high rise apartment was a friggin jungle of pot trees/plants. She found it so satisfying because it grows so FAST. At one point, she gave me some seeds to start some plants for her. Now, I was living with my long time sober dad at the time. Scandalous. I put the little starts in a tray in the closet of my bedroom. I had the grow light plugged in with the cord snaked up against the molding then covered it with my pom-poms. The pom-poms were used at the basketball games and assemblies but they also served a vital purpose! I could understand how fun she thought these plants were. When I got home for the day, the plants would damn near have doubled in size and were reaching toward the light. I’d turn them around and hours later, they were near the light again. They were really alive! Anyway, one time, mom said window washers were coming to the high rise. They were going to see her “situation.” And I kid you not – it was all over the place. Giant trees, little plants, brown paper bags full of dry leaf, cookie sheets on tables for drying, everywhere. I don’t know why she didn’t just close her blinds. Maybe that wasn’t an option or maybe she was high and paranoid, I don’t know. But her fantastic idea was to jam all this down the garbage disposal. She began with the small stuff and ultimately got to the trees. I can just picture it. Here she is, shoving these woody, leafy things taller than she was down the disposal. I don’t know what the outcome of that was. Did she destroy the disposal and have to call maintenance? Did the window washer turn her in? Did she offer him some not to? Not a clue. It’s just damn funny. The pot period in her life was short lived. I honestly think she was more excited about tending her babies than getting high.

Sometime thereafter, everything changed. She’d been so severely up and down. Her moods were extreme and erratic. She’d tried over the years to get proper treatment for her “manic depression” as it was called then but it was pretty awful and ineffective. In those days, I don’t think they knew what the hell to do with that condition. Mostly, her meds seemed to be sedating – which she didn’t like. The other choice was to level off her mood – she hated that. She said that made her feel nothing. She wasn’t happy nor sad. She was just there. She would choose not to take her meds because she felt like that state of mind wasn’t living. She wasn’t experiencing anything. She felt catatonic. But also, these were mixed with booze so who knows really. Then, I don’t know why or how, but after years of estrangement, my sister got involved again. She used her connections in the medical community to find her a new psychiatrist who specialized in pharmacology. My sister worked some kind of magic on mom and she agreed to give this doc a try. Mom had a fundamental disdain for shrinks. She felt like most of them were crazier than she was and again, she wanted no part of being disconnected and numb. She was terrified they’d lock her up again and shock her some more. But they went together to the doctor that first time and her life changed. They took the grocery bags full of pills into the appointment and started from square one. It took a bit of time to find the right combination and dosage but once they got it right, mom became mom. She became the person she was born to be before she was in the grip of addiction and mental illness. Over time, mom and her doc built a strong partnership. Mom began to trust him and ultimately depend greatly on him. He saved her. He really did. She began to live. The continuous crying phone calls stopped. Drinking was never a consideration again. She began to build a life, repair relationships, and make amends. Her amends looked like being present, willing, and persevering. There was a lot of mistrust with her daughters, a lot of disappointment, and generally a lack of faith that she would truly be different and it would stick. I know I was always expecting I was going to have to hold her up again or take care of her or talk her off the ledge. We excluded her from holidays and other events in favor of spending time with dad. It pains me to think of that now. How sad that must have been for her to have three daughters that didn’t spend birthdays or Christmas or Thanksgiving with her. But she just kept at it with us despite our treatment of her. She was kept at arms length for quite some time but eventually, we all moved on together. Before she got sober and met this doctor, she’d been such a fighter because she had to be. I think that’s why she literally lived through so many dangerous and desperate times. But after she got her meds straight, she was much softer. She wanted to be part of everything. She wanted to DO everything. She was up for anything. Sometimes she was what at the time I thought was reckless but looking back on it, it makes me wish I had a little more reckless in me.

She did crazy shit. She mostly did it alone. It’s almost as though she was making up for lost time. She’d lost so many years in a horrible marriage, drunk, crazy, broke, and overwhelmed. She wanted to LIVE – and live she did. She went night skiing by herself on New Years Eve with glow sticks around her neck and sparklers in her hands. She fell and screwed up her knee so that ended up with me and her in the ER all night but so what. She was doing things. Of course at the time, I was mortified by her because old habits die hard. I should be so lucky to have more of her in me. She took sailing lessons and sank a sailboat under the Sellwood bridge. Not sure how she got out of that pickle but she did. Insurance maybe? I don’t know. She dated a few men here and there. One of them lived at Cove Palisades so she spent a summer or two waterskiing and hanging out on the dock. She could still dive like a champion. It was so beautiful to watch. She went to our sacred family camping spot in the middle of nowhere for a vacation one time and found herself a rancher. Now he was older than Methuselah and really really yucky in my humble opinion but it worked for her for a while. I think she was drawn to father figures. He was a good 20-25 years older than her. Blech. I’ll never forget – another “only my mother” moment. She said to me “you haven’t lived unless you’ve gone to Rite Aid and bought condoms and Depends at the same time. ACK!!! Stop talking!!! But I couldn’t help it. I had to ask. Why are you using condoms?!?!?!?!? He’s a million years old and you haven’t been sleeping around and no one is getting pregnant here, I’d say the risk of STD’s is pretty minimal! I asked, but more importantly, you’re having sex?????? Well, we try. What the hell does that mean? Never mind. I don’t wanna know. They were together for a couple of years. She’d go to the ranch for months at a time then he’d come to Portland for a bit. She loved the wide open spaces at the ranch. It was the “vista” she was always seeking. The clouds of Portland were claustrophobic to her. She even bought a burial plot with a view – intentionally. She was always trying to get me to go to her plot, have a picnic with her, and enjoy the view. She just thought it was so lovely because it overlooked the river and the city and she could SEE. Needless to say, I passed. But I digress. They traveled some but again, he was ancient so it was challenging. The longer they were together, the less of a romance it was and more of a care taking situation it became. He was beginning to lose his faculties, among other things. When I’d see them interact or hear her phone conversations with him, it was at best repetitive and at worst, a bit antagonistic. Eventually, his daughters got involved and despite him calling mom his common law wife and told her everything he had was hers, his daughters had other ideas. I think they thought mom was a gold digger. She wasn’t. They went to the ranch observed the squalor in which he lived and took charge. He’d had a few falls and he was out there alone in the boondocks so they threw him into a care center in eastern Oregon and that was that. They went back to wherever they lived and forgot about him. Mom maintained a phone relationship with him while he was sort of capable but she didn’t see him again. The daughters had interceded and I’m pretty sure instructed the staff to limit access to him by my mom. By the time he passed, she’d already detached from him. I wish she really could have found profound love but that wasn’t her story.

Hmmm, I think I’m done for now. Re-reading it, I use the words scared and scary a lot. Interesting. These were so much milder times especially since I wasn’t a kid but still, there was a lot of fear. I hope some of you are still with me on this journey. I just find her life so rich. Stay tuned…