I often look back on my life and realize that I missed so many cues that would have alerted me to my mother’s mental illness before it became so extreme. Sadly I was still quite childlike when she experienced her first breakdown. I had no experience or knowledge about symptoms of a troubled mind. I was a twenty year old living in a safe bubble of joy that my mother had created for me and my brothers. It is only now that I am able to look back and see the signs that all was not well with my mom. 

When my father died I mostly felt sorrow for myself and my brothers. I was eight years old and hardly experienced with trauma. My parents had created an idyllic life for me and my siblings. I was too focused on myself to even notice that there was an air of tension in our family. All I knew is that after a gypsy-like journey to California and back again we seemed to finally have a plan for the future. My father had a job that he liked and we were on the verge of settling down in a new home. It never occurred to me that my parents were still incredibly young at the ages of thirty and thirty-three. These many years later I can recall how my own life was still unveiling when I entered my thirties. 

There were many hints that my father’s death occurred when my mother had meager funds to carry on with her life. My parents had believed that they had many years to build up their savings and with my father’s job it would have been a rather easy task to complete. The timing of his death was unfortunate on many levels given that he had not been with his company long enough to even qualify for life insurance. So here was my incredibly young mother facing life without him at the age of thirty, a horror that had never crossed her mind. With three young children and no permanent home or job for herself she must have been filled with anxiety which she hid from me and my brothers so that we would not worry. 

Things seemed to work out thanks to the efforts of my Uncle Jack, a wheeler dealer who found her a car for the price that the insurance company had paid out for the wrecked one. Then he discovered an affordable house in a neighborhood that would prove to be idyllic for all of us. When the seller of the home learned of my mother’s situation he even lowered the price. With the help of family members and additional income from Social Security Insurance we seemed to sail through the tragedy mostly unscathed. It was not until later that I began to understand how frightened my mother must still have been. There was so much day to day uncertainty that she endured in a time when women were not particularly treated fairly in the economic market. 

Things rolled along after a time. Our home was perfect for us because it was within walking distance of our school and our church where all of us found comfort and happiness. Soon my mother was tagged to be a teacher at the school and she was also a regular attendee at church events, even holding office in the Women’s Club. The ugly car that replaced the fancy one that my father drove lasted until I was in college. With my mother’s talents for stretching a budget me and my brothers were fooled into believing that life was a lark. We hardly noticed how pressures began to pile up on our mother. 

She decided to earn a college degree by attending classes after work and in the summers. She would study deep into the early hours of the morning, existing on very few hours of sleep. She began going out with friends and even dating men. In the meantime I was moving forward with my own life, going to college and falling in love with the man who would become my husband. I hardly gave much thought to my mother even when she began to ply me with conversations that seemed uncharacteristic of her. She sounded afraid much of the time and often came to what seemed to me to be silly conclusions about her relationships with others. Her fastidious care for our home became lackluster and sometimes when she spoke her eyes would be darting as though she was unable to keep up with a normal conversation. She began to sleep most of the day and her appearance was unkempt. She lived in darkened rooms and showed little interest in the world around her. 

I was a newly wed focused on my little world. I brushed off any concerns that I had about my mother until the evidence piled so high that I was no longer able to find logical excuses for the dramatic changes in her behavior. I had to take a crash course in how to help an individual experiencing a mental crisis. I learned on the fly and thankfully I was able to get my mother the help that she needed before too much damage was done to her brain. 

I write about these things because over and over again I learn about families who are faced with a beloved member who becomes so mentally ill that they embark on dangerous activities that sometimes lead to desperate and horrific consequences. I fully understand how easy is to be oblivious to the signs that someone is suffering and crying for help. It is especially difficult to accept such signs when the person has led an amazing life as my mother did before she became ill. Denial leaves families wondering how things became so wrong. 

Each time I hear of a young person striking out in violence I find myself wondering if members of the family missed all of the cues that much was amiss. As a teacher I often encountered students on the verge of ruining their lives because of mental problems that had never been addressed. I know all too well that even when we get our loved ones the help that they need there will be relapses and maybe even a lifetime of struggle. Mental illness is not something that can be avoided by a vaccine or cured by a single treatment. It requires vigilance on the part of every person who loves those who are afflicted. 

Mental illness can be controlled but it more often than not becomes a lifetime challenge for the afflicted and those around him/her. Just as a diabetic cannot pretend that it is okay to stop the medications or rules of diet, so does mental illness require a long term commitment  for everyone involved. We can’t just leave it to the persons who are ill to do take care of themselves. 

My mother lived on to enjoy a mostly normal life. Her sweetness and optimism were signs of good health. When those things were not present we always knew that it was time to intercede. Our efforts were always rewarded. The fight for her sanity that we forged year after year was worth all of our efforts. Most of our memories are now of a loving and courageous woman.