My mother has never really recovered from my dad's death. He had a major heart attack on 1st Dec 1985 whilst my sister and I were doing grocery shopping with him. He died instantly. My sister was 11, it was 2 days after my 12th birthday. I don't remember much about our life before that and afterwards my mother cycled between bouts of mania and depression. It was only much later that she was diagnosed as bipolar, and after she had had brain surgery for a malformation of blood vessels in her brain.
I have strong thoughts about life, about the responsibility we take for ourselves and about the personal growth that each one of us has the option to achieve, or deny. I believe my mother never really took advantage of the opportunities presented to her and to this day has always blamed her life on "circumstance" (her own word) rather than take responsibility for herself. Because of this she has not worked for many years, relies on my sister and I for emotional and financial support and does nothing more than spend her days in her apartment reading, listening to the radio and talking to her pet cockatiel. She says she would love to work again but I really don't believe that.
My mother also self-medicates and hops from doctor to doctor having prescriptions filled and listening only to those doctors that agree with her. Last year she took too many pills one day and we had to deal with major aggressive behavior and abusive words for almost two months. Then she landed in the depths of a depression. For months she was ok and then this week she lapsed again. When I arrived at her apartment yesterday she was almost incoherent, delusional, hallucinating, burning herself with cigarettes yet telling me she had not smoked for 14 years. She had emptied out all the cupboards and drawers and put all the food from the fridge under her mattress. It took three people and 3 amps of valium to mildy sedate her (she is incredibly drug tolerant after years and years of self-medication).
She has been hospitilised and is sedated, still confused and we wait to see if she will return to normal. She should, this is most likely due to the fact that she convinced a doctor to change her anti-depressants to one that you should never give a bipolar sufferer.
Each time this happens I get angry, and I detach. And then I get upset and I worry. And I wonder if she will be like this permanently, and then I swear that the next time it happens that I wont be there to rescue her.
But I always do.
