Missing Mom
I wrote the blog post below about 10 years ago, a year after my mother had passed away. I am re-posting it here because it gives a good picture of my childhood and how I learned that God is faithful, and his grace is complete.
Missing Mom
My mother died last September. I’m missing her a lot today, a deep-down aching, and I'm so glad. I know that sounds weird but at the heart of missing someone is the simple truth that there is someone to be missed. Ten years ago you could have told me that my mother had died and I would have been secretly relieved. Relieved because our relationship was awkward and contentious. My strongest emotions towards her were anger and resentment.
It was my mother’s fault that my childhood was full of tension and fear. It was her fault that I was embarrassed to bring home friends and mortified if we happened to bump into neighbors in the grocery store and she wanted to chat…because there was no telling what she might say. She was paranoid and prejudiced and full of anxiety. She always said really strange things that confused others. She feared and mistrusted black people and believed they would harm her. Once we went to a restaurant and the hostess started seating us next to a black family. She loudly exclaimed 'Oh no, do not seat me next to those blacks." I wanted to crawl under the table and cover my face with a tablecloth. I wanted to grab Matthew, who was three years old at the time and say, “run!" Most of all I wanted to proclaim to the entire restaurant, "Don’t mind her. She's a paranoid schizophrenic.’
And that is what I longed to tell people every day of my childhood, because every day brought a strange encounter of some sort. At that time, mental illness came with a huge stigma and family support groups were few and far between. My family certainly didn't know of any. I had little understanding of the disease and my father was helpless under its onslaught. He was just trying to provide for family, often on the road selling wholesale merchandise to gift shops all over Georgia.
All I knew as a child and young adult was that my mother was not like other mothers, not like my classmates' mothers who brought cookies on Valentines Day and certainly not like my college friend Laura’s mother. Laura would return home from Thanksgiving break and talk about how she and her mom curled up in the bed, ate popcorn together and watched romantic movies.
My story of Thanksgiving break was quite different. My mom called me into the living room most days and inspected every freckle on my right hand to make sure the freckles hadn't changed and that I wasn't an 'imposter' posing as her daughter. She fretted that Russian spies had somehow switched me with a look alike and lurked around every corner, hiding among ordinary people with the intent to harm us.
I collected mother stories like my friends collected Elton John albums. The time I came home from school and found her in the kitchen with her head in the gas oven threatening to kill herself. The time I tried wearing make-up for the first time as a teen and she accused my dad of being my pimp and prostituting me on the streets of downtown Atlanta. The time she woke me up in the middle of the night announcing she had been raped and demanding I call 911 immediately. The multiple times she made me inspect a photograph, an article of clothing or a piece of furniture to make sure 'they' hadn't changed it or to point out a 'mark' 'they' had added. Many of the most precious things we owned were discarded for this reason.
Of course, all these thoughts were schizophrenic delusions. Yet they were part of my daily world. School was a refuge except for the days my mother would pull me out in the middle of the school day and take me home. I'd hear the crackling of the intercom calling me to the office where my mother would be waiting in fear because she saw "someone in the grocery store who looked just like Heidi and I wanted to get her to make sure she hadn't been kidnapped " Every time the intercom crackled, my body would stiffen because I feared it would be yet another call for me. I knew it was only a matter of time before the secret would be revealed to all my classmates. 'Heidi's mother is crazy!" I can't tell you how heavenly it was when I heard the daily lunch menu instead of my name.
I became a Christian my junior year of high school and was certain God would fix everything. But everything remained the same and even got worse. More paranoia. More delusions. More stress. As a child my mother's illness was confusing and desperately lonely but as an adult it became a spiritual question mark. Was it demon possession? God’s judgment? Had I done something wrong that deserved this punishment? Was supernatural healing possible?
In college, I researched and read all the right books to educate myself about the disease. I found out the statistics about schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. I found out that my mom’s refusal to take psychiatric medicine was part of the illness and nothing unusual. I discovered that the Georgia laws designed to protect my mom actually tied our family's hands from getting her real help. I learned the genetic probabilities of me developing the disease.
I also learned the tricks of the trade - how to divert her attention when she was on a destructive train of thought. How to hang up on her (without feeling guilty) when she was screaming at me about what an awful daughter I was for not believing her delusions. How to spot the ignorant and uncompassionate jerk from far off…that person who would mock her, or talk to me about her in front of her as if she wasn't even there. There are far too many people who can't look outside their own world for more than a second to treat others with the dignity every human deserves.
Years passed and dealing with mom's illness became a routine of sorts. Pack her stuff up and move her every six months to a new apartment since her lease wasn't renewed due to "odd behavior." Try to get her to a psychiatrist against her will. Manage her verbal outbursts and trips to various police departments to complain about smells and intruders that didn't exist.
As a mother, I struggled with how to shield my children from the ugliness of mental illness while having compassion on my mom and helping her. Thankfully, she never physically threatened others, but the mental impact took its toll. I had no idea how to walk the tight rope of healthy boundaries and compassion. One time, she grabbed two-year-old Matt by the shoulders and spoke harshly to him repeatedly, demanding he tell her why he wore a certain colored shirt. I instinctively slapped her hard across the face. Chaos erupted and we fled the scene. As we did, I passed my four year old niece on the garden steps and saw her soothing herself by rocking back and forth while clutching her stuffed animal. For years I had told myself that my childhood wasn't that bad, that it hadn't left deep wounds, but in that moment, i saw myself at 4 - rocking back and forth, looking for comfort while the world around me swirled.
Another time, in between being thrown out of an apartment and refusing to find a new one, my mom came to live with us. I was pregnant with Emma. Mother's illness was still untreated and it was a mistake. She frightened Grace with tales of intruders, threatened to call DFACS on me every time one of my kids shed a tear, badgered me daily with accusations about my failures as a daughter and ruined my favorite spaghetti pot by using it as a chamber pot. Seriously, she did.
Then, after years of turmoil and pain, a ray of light broke into the darkness because of a doctor who defied all protocol and convinced her to take the psychiatric drug, Risperdal, a pill which miraculously ordered her world. Every other doctor had insisted on directness and honesty with her about her condition. They insisted she accept her diagnosis of schizophrenia (she wouldn't) and take the prescribed medicine (she wouldn't). However, this doctor, this angel disguised as a doctor, flat out lied to her. He rejected the idea that she had schizophrenia (even though he knew she did) agreeing with the 'ridiculousness' of that diagnosis, and suggested she just take this "little pill" that would help soothe her nerves, because after all, ‘everyone gets tense now and then.”
That big lie and little pill saved our lives.
On a drug regime that worked, my mother's delusions began to subside. She was still easily worried, and sometimes frightened, but she didn't imagine strangers everywhere out to get her. She no longer was dominated by paranoia. After a few years of living successfully in a one bedroom apartment, her health declined due to diabetes and she no longer could live on her own. So she moved in with us.
This decision was not easy. But my sisters did not have the space to take her in, so the task fell to us.
She was medicated, I thought, how bad could it be? But what began with her move was the unraveling of buried resentments, layered sensitivities, and ingrained trigger points that had ruled me most of my life. Every tiny tension rose to the surface because of the things she said and the way she said them. I hated the way she constantly reminded me to lock the front door, the way she commented on every television show we watched...the way she praised Wayne for his kindness, but expected me to get what she needed in milliseconds. I even hated the way she chewed her food. I hated the way she asked endless questions whose answers were none of her business. I hated how she commented on my weight or what I served for supper or how I interacted with my kids. It didn't matter that she was no longer delusional. She was still HER and the tone of her voice, every word she spoke, every gesture she made, touched a raw nerve and reopened a childhood wound.
The unraveling of my layers of unresolved emotions happened inch-by-inch. It was painful, hard, and exhausting. It was as if every cell of my body and spirit had to be recreated. I had to go to the Lord on countless occasions and cry out for help. I had to pull Wayne into a back room and vent. I had to walk out of the front door numerous times and walk around the block. But finally, after a few years, the past was eventually laid bare, my emotions were tamed, and I saw a light at the end of a 45-year long tunnel.
Instead of resenting her asking me questions about my personal life, I realized she was just being...a mom. She wasn't trying to badger me; she just wanted to know about my life. Instead of resenting her for asking me to make her a bite to eat ‘right this minute’ I just decided to serve another human being with love. Instead of getting annoyed when she tried to push all my buttons, I laughed and found humor in her attempts to rile me.
I found out more about her history…how she escaped as the Russians fought their way into Nazi territory during late 1944 and 1945. My mother was 14. Russians threatened German women with rape and violence over the radio. She, her aunt, and her younger brother ran from their home with just the clothes on their backs and rode a boat across the Baltic Sea to the safety of friends. Another ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, was not too far behind hers and the Red Army blew it out of the water, killing 1,000s of German civilians.
We talked about growing up in her family's gasthaus, an eatery and hotel which served as a central meeting spot for neighbors, because it had the village's only phone. We talked about how she originally lived on a farm, but her father lost it to the bank when a friend defaulted on a loan that her father had inadvisably co-signed. We talked about her time spent as a cook at Matfen Hall in England after she left Germany. The huge mansion still exists and is now a popular inn.
Over the eight years she lived with us, I met my mom.
One day I had to help her bathe, my least favorite thing to do, and as I did so, I noticed the frailty of her frame. I thought to myself "she's really getting old." In a brief moment of self-reflection, I also thought, 'I'm not so young anymore either. Boy, we've been through a lot of years together.” I realized something then and there. I realized that we were not that different, my mother and I. We had both been dealt a hand by life, and both been scarred by the weight of it. We had both tried to find peace and meaning despite surrounding darkness. We were both deeply loved by God.
And in that moment, I realized that I loved my mother...not because it was the right thing to do, but because I loved her...for her. I loved her for being brave enough to cook and clean and take care of us while fighting mental demons of monstrous proportions. I loved her for being tenacious enough to face another horrible day with spies and intruders around every corner. However misguided and delusional, she had a bullheaded determination to protect me and my sisters from those imagined dangers. I loved her because over the years at home with us, she had finally ceased her criticisms and instead said "I love you" and "Thank you," multiple times a day. In that moment, I realized all the resentment towards her was gone and I was free, once and for all, from a dysfunctional childhood.
Then I had the strangest, most other-worldly sensation. It was as if the veil between heaven and earth was lifted and my mother and I were no longer in the tiled bathroom of my home. Instead we were in a cathedral, with intricate woodwork, stained-glass windows, and high ceilings. My surroundings were transformed. I could almost hear the brush of angels’ wings and the whisper of holy music. It was a holy in-breaking of the sacred into this very human world.
The sensation left as quickly as it came, but I have not forgotten it. It was a fresh awareness of His kingdom in the here and now. I believe the kingdom of God isn't in some distant time and distant place that people can only see when they die. It is wherever the love of Jesus reigns. Wherever we allow our common humanity to touch in humility and grace. Wherever we let go of the bitterness and injury we grasp so tightly and embrace peace instead. These are the times that the veil between the earth and His kingdom vanishes and His glory is revealed. It is only a paper thin veil, after all.
