LJ Idol: Uphill, Both Ways, Barefoot (Topic 2)
"There's nothing wrong with her."
"She's just eccentric!"
"That's just the way she is."
"Kaye has always been a free spirit."
"She doesn't need to take her medication. She doesn't need to be on medication!"
"There's nothing wrong with her!"
"There's nothing wrong with her!"
"There's nothing wrong with her!"
Standing outside the small suburban home of my husband's grandmother as red and blue lights danced chaotic against the front windows, I have quite a different impression. I watch as Kaye throws the screen door open, muttering under her breath. It's getting dark outside, which somehow makes everything seem too sharp and in focus. The trunk of her car is open, already filled to the brim with clothes and various toiletries. The police had come back, again, one standing awkwardly in the background, clearing his throat far too often. The other, a friendly sort of man, stands next to me, asking me about my work.
"I work for a law firm," I say to him. "We'd really like to go back to school. We both want to teach, to be honest. To have summers off! It would be wonderful."
Our casual conversation clashes with the scene playing out behind us. My mother-in-law, clearly frazzled, packing her car and muttering about things owed to her and wrongs done. Her elderly mother stands next to me, elbows propped up on the trunk of my car, looking fragile. She is horrified, as neighbors surely poke their heads through the shades of their windows, wondering at why lights are flashing in Betty's front yard.
The policeman keeps talking to me, laughing about how quickly children grow up. Chatting amicably about the weather, and so on and so forth. Family members arrive shortly thereafter, coddling Kaye as they usher her into her car and drive her away. We'd had to have her forcibly removed from her own mother's house for attacking her, not once, but twice. My husband had tried to talk to her, tried to tell her that she needed to get help. But, she had immediately turned cold, becoming angry and hurtful. She hadn't wanted to hear it. She never had.
"It's not wrong for you to be bipolar. You're not crazy. You just need treatment. Please."
She wasn't listening. It's an hour earlier. The sun is dipping low in the sky, but it's still light enough for me to sit on the curb outside and smoke a cigarette. I can hear raised voices from within the house, but I choose to stay outside, ignoring the older woman across the street who is staring at me. She makes excuses for herself. There's really nothing we can do, and Betty doesn't want her to stay. She's afraid of being hurt, again. The door opens and my husband walks out, wearing a grim face.
"I've called the police," he tells me. "She's refusing to leave."
I know this is difficult for him. In the moment, he's caught up in being frustrated and hurt, but I know that later, he might lay his head on my shoulder and let this all catch up with him. I mentally brace myself for that inevitability, ready with what words of comfort I can offer him. This is his mother. He loves her.
"The fact that she's missing really isn't a big deal."
It's six days later. My mother-in-law is missing. She had gone to stay with the cousins who picked up her, surely telling them that we all conspired against her. She's paranoid, and will soon become cripplingly depressed. But Lynn thinks that she's all right, she's just being Kaye. She's just "lost" right now. Ignore her multiple diagnoses of bipolar disorder. Her friends in South Carolina have told her to stop taking her medication. She says that she still takes it, but we know that she's lying. I had gone with my husband to the probate office, a sterile looking building with white walls and too many doors in the hallways. I offered to fill out the written sheet for him. I have neater handwriting, and I know this is hard. Lynn doesn't know that we're doing this. We have to catch Kaye unaware, and we're worried that Lynn will tell her and she'll run. I watched my husband's strained face, the same face he makes now as we call her friends and extended family trying to find someone, anyone, who will tell us if she's all right or where she might be.
The police went to take her to a facility to help her, but she was gone. Lynn obviously lies, tells them she wrote a note and left. She surely informs her of what's happening, and Kaye disappears. Time passes and we hear nothing but the same. "I don't think this is a big deal," Ronny says in a casual sort of way. He thinks we're lying. He thinks we're all conspiring. She's told him this. That we're after her money. We aren't, but nothing we say will change his opinion. Time passes, and we hear nothing.
"She's fine. Let her be. Nothing is wrong with her.
She'll spend all of her money, soon. She'll become delusional. She'll start to imagine that people are after her. She'll come up with the same stories she always has. The cashiers at the grocery store are demons who want to exterminate her. The town sheriff is stalking her. She won't get out of bed. She won't bathe. Please, we just want to help her.
This doesn't matter to them. She calls Betty, very late, to tell her that she feels fantastic. Better than she's ever felt in her life, but she doesn't want to be a part of our family anymore. Her son. Her daughter. Her grandchildren. She loves them, but she doesn't want to see them. Have a nice life, she tells us, and stop calling my neighbors to find me.
What else is there to do? We give up. We can't help her. She won't let us, and neither will they. My husband is forced to give up on his mother. He bears it well. He's strong, but I know that it hurts him. We have no choice. We cannot continue to fight a losing battle. We cannot forever walk uphill. She is his mother, and he loves her. We all love her. But, we were the enemy. We were the conspirators. We were wrong, because there's nothing wrong with her.
We haven't heard from her in several weeks. It's simply something we've had to adjust to. We don't know where she is, or how she's doing. And, soon, the calls will most likely come. Ronny and Lynn, her neighbors in South Carolina. They'll call us. "We don't know what to do about your mother," they'll say. "She won't get out of bed. She does nothing but take Xanax all day."
And we tried to tell you. The tragedy of it is almost too much. But, it's the anger that I'm left with, and the indignation at the ignorance and audacity of these people. To purposefully stand in the way of a woman's children who are desperately trying to get her help before she ends up homeless on the street or dead. And when she does, they'll cry. They'll wear black clothes and dab their eyes with tissues and handkerchiefs, waxing poetic about how much she meant to them. How vibrant she was. How it's such and shame that it ended this way and how they hadn't seen it coming. They'd done everything they could for her.
They won't have any idea what they did. They won't understand because they don't want to. Because it isn't their mother. It isnt their daughter. It isn't their problem.
After all. There's nothing wrong with her.
This entry was written for therealljidol, Season 6, Topci 2.