AGAIN

All was going well with my call to mom that night until she put dad on the line.  Then the worst scenario began to play all over again. Mom was manic.

It all started years AND years ago.  I was thirteen when I was run over by a car. About a month later mom was diagnosed as being bipolar. This explained her late nights in the basement making voo doo dolls for her friends or collaging empty cigar boxes as presents, shopping non-stop, and talking for hours on the phone. It also explained those days when she refused to get out of bed to drive me to school or cook me breakfast and dinner. Things only got worse.  So much so that I did a bit of research on the disease and her medication.  That’s when I found out that this could be genetic.

The early manic episodes were nothing compared to those as I grew older.  She would go away for days at a time.  Nothing good could have happened.  Eventually she drank herself into AA. But she didn’t accept the program’s edicts and quit after the third time she relapsed – well actually her sponsor gave up on her.

She was put in rehab at least three times but always told me that she was going to a wellness clinic.

But she really cleaned up her act after my first child was born. 

Then something happened.

Three years later she lost it.  The plan had been for dad and her to come to London for Christmas.  We were talking about our plans on the phone when dad broke in with the news of a new episode.

She was 70 years old and still sick? I knew there wasn’t a cure but she had been so normal for three years.  I decided not to cancel our Christmas plans for the moment.  Five days later it all fell apart.

I was trying to feed my daughters supper when dad rang.

“Your mother has disappeared – she left sometime in the middle of the night.  She didn’t take her car and I have no idea where she is.  Have you heard from her?”  I was dead silent. I had to fly home to be with dad.

We called all her friends and no one knew where she was.  One friend said it was because dad had threatened

divorce.  Another said she had been talking a lot about going to our second home in New Hampshire.  Another said she had just made a commitment to volunteer a few days later at our local museum. Her psychiatrist said she had an appointment that very day. Then I went through everything in her studio including diaries about her time during the pandemic. Dad knew all her passwords so I could look through all her emails and texts. Yes, she had been crazy shopping again – all our Christmas presents were wrapped and packed in an open suitcase. It was clear that she had left without any clothes or worse, any medications. I went through her diary and called everyone she was meant to see. No one knew where she was.  There was only one clue: The House of Mirth.

The House of Mirth was a novel by Edith Wharton and a movie based on the book that she and dad had recently watched. The heroine died by an overdose of laudanum.

Suicide.  But mom had been manic.  And then I remembered there was such a thing as rapid cycling: mania then depression then mania back and forth.

The police said she couldn’t have gone very far. So many people helped us look for her everywhere in town.  Nothing. Then one day the police called asking if we could come an identify a body of a 70 year old woman they had found frozen in the town reservoir.

I still don’t know why.