As you’ve likely observed, Time and Age are not Equal Opportunity Destroyers. So often Inequity seems to be the name of the game.
A vivid example presently in my world…
The mother of dear friends has lost her mind.
Bitsy’s been losing it for the many decades I’ve known her.
In the beginning, when I first met her (a very pretty redhead), Bitsy was scatterbrained, self-preoccupied, temperamental, but she was also gifted, generous, and energetic when energy was wanted. Thus her inconvenient traits were little more than annoying (likely the same as mine). Bitsy and I were never close—it was her daughter Meghan who was my daughter’s best friend. I don’t think Bitsy and her husband Marvin ever came to us for dinner, as a matter of fact, but Meghan probably had supper at our table more than her mother’s. The same was true of Meghan’s twin brother Henry, as Henry was a close pal of our sons. The kids were family.
In those days, Bitsy designed and had manufactured her own line of hand-embroidered tote bags that were sold in fashionable L.A. boutiques. Beautiful pieces. Marvin was a builder in Malibu and the family lived comfortably on the beach. They were very very well fixed.
Then one autumn day about the time the kids were preparing to enter high school, Meghan told me her mom was hearing voices in the walls. Bitsy was convinced her mother-in-law (who lived in St. Augustine, Florida) was spying on her through cracks in the paneling. Meghan said that her mom took a sledgehammer to the living room wall to find the spying wires so she could pull them out. Marvin had the living room repaired three times, but Bitsy moved to the dining room then the guest bath and kept opening walls to find the offensive wires.
Next Meghan confided her mom was drinking a lot. Then I heard through the grapevine the poor woman was taking pills. From then on Bitsy was never without her Adderall. She closed her line of totebags, spent her days wandering on the beach–sometimes as far as Point Dume–when she wasn’t trying to find wires in the house. When I saw the ugly hole in the guest bathroom, my insides turned upside down. I was shaken, truly shaken. This was madness.
One late September weekend, Meghan and Henry each received a phone call from Dad. He was on a business trip in New York. He told them he wouldn’t be coming home. He was sorry, very sorry, very very sad, told them he loved them very much but he was sure they understood. Actually, Marve never gave his children a concrete reason they could think about. The twins now came to our house for supper every night then rode their bikes the mile home. We wished we had room for them to live with us…
Occasionally Bitsy would call and ask if the twins were at our house…
Mom was less and less around. Although of course they knew something was drastically wrong, out of loyalty the two young people never spoke of it, and if something about Mom was alluded to, they changed the subject. Their coping mechanisms were in fine form. They were heroic. Gradually the twins took over the machinery of their near-empty household. And worked around any problems they encountered. Mom didn’t get in their way…she was either sleeping in the basement (“It’s so cool down here, kids!”) or napping on the beach (“It’s tranquil, but so much sand gets in my crotch!”)
Our kids were the rare friends they allowed into the shambles of their lives. I was proud of my children never being judgmental. And it was interesting to me that if The Life of Bitsy came up when the twins weren’t with us, my kids would change the subject.
It went on like this through the rest of high school. Although everyone in Malibu knew about Poor Bitsy, she managed to steer clear of anything stopping her. So very sad.
Then when the twins went away to college—their dad, living with his new wife in Maine–arranged for them to go to colleges back east–Bitsy moved to Palm Springs.
My kids were in college in California and I was grateful the twins kept up their friendships with our family with frequent phone calls.
Bitsy? I’ve no idea how she survived. Subject never came up and, I’m sorry, but self-preservation kept me from inquiring…
All that was over twenty years ago. Now Meghan and Henry are in the thick of creating meaningful productive lives. They are budding artists. Neither has married yet…I have the feeling the taste in their mouths left from their parents’ marriage is too bitter. Meghan lives in West Los Angeles working in UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture. Henry is in San Francisco working in the Exhibits Department of the DeYoung Museum. Both are happy, fulfilled, but living as artists do, on the margin. I’ve kept in touch with them both. Just learned about their present terrible plight.
A month ago, Bitsy finagled a plane ticket to San Francisco.
Henry told me how things went.
Henry met her late-evening flight at the airport — she picked her way sideways down the terminal staircase, utterly out of it. He brought her home to his apartment, she took a shower, sat down for supper. It had been some time since they’d seen one another.
Henry asked his mother her plans. A shrug. What was she interested in doing during her visit? Another shrug. Okay, how about tomorrow they go to the museum for lunch and see their new collection of Paul Revere silver—“I know you love his stuff, Mom.”
“No, Henry. I just want to walk around Union Square.”
“Sure. I’ll make a picnic.”
The next morning at breakfast, Mama said, “Henry, you must pull out the cord on the refrigerator—there are demons inside and they need to come out!!!” If he didn’t pull out the fridge cord, Bitsy would because the voices were driving her nuts.
I forget how he managed the fridge…
After breakfast while Henry was on the phone with a call from work, Bitsy slipped out to the pharmacy around the corner. At eleven, the agreed-upon time to go out, when Henry knocked on her door, she didn’t answer. He waited, then went into the room. She was sprawled on the bed, her coat on. The bottle of Adderall was in one hand, water from a glass in her other hand spilled on the bed.
When she woke up two o’clockish and came unsteadily into his study, she said in a loud voice, “I’m here, my son, because I can’t live alone anymore. I need to stay with you.”
Stunned, before he could respond, Mama continued: “And Henry, what are we going to do about your sister Meghan? You know she wants to kill me. I’m terrified of her. Please please don’t tell her I’m here. Did she tell you that a few weeks ago she came down to Palm Springs and tried to take me to the hospital—I was being kidnapped—I wasn’t sick but she kept saying, ‘Mama, you need help…’ The only help I needed was to get that girl out of my hair! Finally she did leave and I hope never to see her again.”
Henry was able to take Bitsy to a psychiatrist friend. After a few minutes, she got up and threw his desk lamp at the doctor, screaming at her son, “I am not crazy! How can you do this to your mother?”
That night Henry called me in despair. I was so sad. I could feel Henry’s heart breaking.
He said, “Sylvia, I don’t know what to do. I make barely enough to support myself. I haven’t any savings. San Francisco is so expensive. I couldn’t possibly house and feed my mother. I know that sounds—”
I told him he should try to get Mama to a hospital or clinic for help soon as he could–San Francisco is rich with fine medical aid. I thought likely Medicare would cover most of the cost.
I talked to him every night. For three days, Bitsy slept till noon, spent her day sitting by an open window alternately sipping bourbon (which she’d brought in a pint bottle), singing love songs to herself, drifting off to sleep.
Then one morning she told Henry, “I have to leave your apartment. There are bad guys hiding in the closets and they’re trying to kill me.”
Poor Henry talked her out of it. For the time being.
Then Meghan came up to San Francisco, managed to calm her fearful mother down, tried to get Mama to go to a short-term facility for patients troubled with anxiety.
Bitsy screamed at her daughter, “You think I’m crazy, I know you do! Well I’m not crazy and I want you to go back to L.A. and leave Henry and me alone! You are a witch! Help! Help! Henry! Help!”
Meghan and I had a long talk.
Of course she wants her mother safely housed in a medical facility. But “Sylvia, there is no money. Ninguno. Aucun. Niente. Besides, Mama’s terrified of hospitals.”
I knew that Marvin died three years ago and left a pittance to his children—all to his new wife. Not a penny to spare between the three of them.
What to do?
It’s happening now. We all are at our wits’ end. Bitsy is still in the Bay Area, but penniless, drifting on her own steam from night to night, to a friend of a friend’s house to a friend of a friend’s house. She will not go to anything with a whiff of a medical facility about it.
But the horrible thing is, any medical facility who would take a patient with mental problems will not take said patient if they’re on drugs.
And even if they would take her, she’d refuse to go.
Something permanent has got to be done. And soon.
At this point I leave you, dear reader, asking what you would do in the twins’ situation? We’d be grateful for your ingenious suggestion.
And yes. They’ve given me permission to ask.
