In early December we moved our mom (again). She had run through her stay at the residential treatment facility and needed to find another - more permanent - place to live. She hasn’t lived in her home since Feb 15, 2023, exactly a month off of a year. She stayed at the Residential Treatment Facility for 6 months. The average stay is 6 weeks. Her therapist there thought she might be able to continue to improve - her improvements stopped abruptly and then reversed as soon as she began to contemplate the move - in an assisted living facility. They would have group activities, meals provided, and nursing on staff. She needs all that, and much much more.
The move was terrible. She refused to accept the Mental Health team we had built for her and after 1 week had paired it all the way down to working with one psychiatrist, no companion, no case manager, no therapist. She began to worsen. We got her a caregiver against her will.
She is now about 30-35 pounds under weight. Her body is ravaged - skin dry and scabbing, bones basically visible, very feeble and shaking on her feet. She only showers when I’m there. She will go weeks refusing to shower. Is this her power play?
The first weeks following her move were terrifying- would she survive the night? How scared is she? How can we help? It consumed me and my family and some of her friends. Being with her is heart-wrenching and frustrating and being away is just as miserable.
On December 19th, I learned that a dear friend of mine died by suicide. I had no idea he was in this place. We’d been in touch recently - he was supposed to come to my birthday party and had canceled, but for good things - preparing for a museum exhibition. I knew him to be stressed but I didn’t know him to be suicidal. And then he was gone.
I spend all this time in the bardo with my mom - inside her disease, her fears, her lifeless and agonizing world - and my friend just up and did it. He hung himself in his apartment after a 2:30min call with his folks, just shy of the holidays. What!? Its like he cut a hole out of the cloth and just slipped through. His laundry was only half finished. He had food in the fridge and appointments to keep. I don’t understand. And yet, I am reminded by the certainty that it takes a fight to go out as he did. It takes a certain amount of vigor and vitality. I think he made the biggest mistake. I think if he were here to tell the tale he would be shocked and embarrased and in disbelief…and yet, I think he felt it was his only move - a move that took all his strength and courage and fear to muster. It is so heartbreaking to think about the level of pain he must have been suffering. and alone.
I didn’t talk to my mom that week.
Also in that week, I found out I was pregnant.
When I went back to see her, she was unchanged. I felt weak. I felt like a train had hit me. I was very emotional. She was not. She was frozen. She needed a shower. She needed to be forced to leave and forced to eat.
In the next week, I lost my pregnancy, on my 40th birthday.
More bardo. I did not get out of bed that day. I was barely awake.
A couple days later we went to watch the ocean. The waves were bigger than they had been all year. It was cold and the ocean was wild.
We built a little altar with shells on it for those we lost this year: Pigeon, Peter, this little pregnancy, and a rock for my mom, who for some reason is still here, stuck in the in-between,