The Other Cancer

There is not much I can say about this piece other than I am so grateful for Nicolas ….for his submission, his honesty, his courage.    Like so many of my other submissions, this one moves me to tears, but also moves me to hope.  It has the same bittersweet poignance of my first submission Bee’s Nest where my friend Bethany also comes to terms with a mother’s illness that can’t be explained like cancer but indeed takes a brutal family toll.

The Other Cancer

My grandmother had cancer. The narrative was straightforward. Cigarettes led to lung cancer. The chemotherapy didn’t work. Then she died. She nor I were ashamed of that simple story.

My mother’s story is more complicated but I try to pretend her afflictions are as simple. When someone asks about her, I tell the truth. She’s not okay. She’s depressed. I may add that she has dementia induced by alcohol abuse and she lives in a locked nursing facility. Probably for the rest of her life. I am honest for at least two reasons.

Scrambled

I met June in the sixth or seventh week of a 10 week seminar.  I had never seen or noticed her before amidst the 300+ participants.  Seated next to one another, there were several exercises where we had to share.  I remember thinking what are we going to talk about and lamenting it was going to be a long three hours. In our second exercise, June told me about the recent loss of her mother and her struggle with accepting and coping  with her mother’s paranoid schizophrenia.  At that moment, I was immediately reminded for the millionth time how closely connected we are.    

June’s submission is an excerpt from an one-act play, Scrambled.  Scrambled takes place in one of your ordinary, neighborhood greasy spoons in New York City. A young woman is sitting at a table with her Mother. The restaurant is empty except for the handsome waiter/ actor who is taking their breakfast order.  Everything appears to be normal, until the Mother begins to have hallucinations very similar to the delusions she’d had in her disturbed past.

Scrambled

DAUGHTER

Give her same as me. And two coffees too.

WAITER

Back in a jiffy.

(Waiter exits.)

MOTHER

I told you. I don’t want anything.

DAUGHTER

Why not, Ma?

MOTHER

Didn’t you see him?

DAUGHTER

See him what?

MOTHER

His head.

DAUGHTER

His head? It looked normal to me.

MOTHER

It was green.

Finding My Way Home

Breaking the cycle of silence and denial in families and communities is a topic that Frances so beautifully speaks to as she shares both her and mother’s battles with mental illness. Frances’ courage to confront herself head on will surely inspire you.

Finding My Way Home

We would be awakened in the middle of the night by my parent’s fighting.  Then there were unexpected bursts of rage from my mother at us and strangers on the street.  My mother, a young Jamaican immigrant, must have found it challenging to traverse the cultural divide of island life to big city life.  And yet, over the years her untreated mental illness led to job losses, isolation from family and friends, homelessness and at its height several hospitalizations in mental wards throughout the city.  Sadly, I followed suit to a much smaller degree but somewhere deep inside of me because I resembled my mother so closely I thought that she and I were destined to have the same life.

The Hospital

The Hospital recounts the story of how a new mother’s joy was robbed by her once debilitating illness.   

The Hospital

The pediatric resident
held my newborn
by the heels,
smacked her on the back,
and said, “She won’t break”
as she vomited
across the room
before we took her home
to a mountain of sheets
piled on the unmade bed,
dishes high in the sink,
an uninvited mother
on her way,
and by morning I didn’t know
my name,
pupils fixed and dilated,
my husband
calling the doctor
who sent me back
to the hospital
and checked me onto
a locked ward, where
I was kept for three months,
the first three months
of my baby’s life.

About the Author: Eleanor Brawley

Eleanor’s passions include writing and photography.  She is a poet, and writer/video producer. She is working on a poetry manuscript, which will feature a number of poems about her experience with being bi-polar after the birth of both daughters. Her daughters are now grown and mothers themselves.  She is the curator of a photographic exhibit, Families of Abraham.

It’s your turn

Many thanks to Allyson Cole, Psy.D.  who wrote this week’s submission sharing her dear friend’s experiences with a mother and brother who both suffer from mental illness.  She captures her friend’s experience in the first person as if it were her own. Allyson, born and raised near San Diego, currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.  She is founder of Family Guiding, an organization dedicated to supporting families to grow in a healthy direction while simultaneously helping less fortunate families grow stronger.

It’s your turn

“It’s your turn to bring her Diet Dr. Pepper,” I say with a serious smirk on my face looking him in the eye, knowing the only person who can’t stand hearing my mother scream our names from her bed more than me is my brother. “Awww fine, but when is she going to get out of that dam bad, I can’t take this anymore, she acts as if she gave birth to us to be her slaves,” my brother says as he is putting ice into her glass. We can make light of my mother’s helplessness in this moment, but the truth is that both of us die a little each time we see her too weak to get out of bed. It would be easier to take it less personal if she were suffering from Cancer, but there is something about an emotional illness that makes it hard not to feel like this is somehow my fault. Maybe if I were a better daughter she wouldn’t be so sad. “Get your butt back in here,” she screams louder than she has all week. “There is not enough ice in here.”  Nope, I know it’s not me, she really is just crazy!

Bee’s Nest

Starting today, Familiar Minds will feature weekly a submission from the Call for Abstracts.  Some writers have chosen to remain anonymous or by first name while others have chosen to share their identity.  In her planned essay, Bethany plans to explore the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship in the face of mental illness, and the healing she continues to find in the resilience, humor and love of her extended southern family.  Here’s a preview.

Bee’s Nest

Someone asked me recently what year my mother died and I said I didn’t remember.  I felt embarrassed.  Most people, especially in the South,  remember important anniversary dates like birth and death.  “I know exactly when Aunt Mabel died,” they say.  “It was January two, nineteen fifty,  at four-thirty in the afternoon, right after Oklahoma beat the crap out of LSU  in the Sugar Bowl.  Yes ma’am, I remember it clear as moonshine.  Damn near the saddest day of my life.” They suck their teeth and gaze at the horizon as if watching a train disappear to the north, and you might not be sure whether losing Aunt Mabel or losing the game was the heartbreaking thing.