Taking a life away…

Before I turned 10 years old, my Mom had tried to commit suicide several times.  

It’s not something I really understood at the time - it was just that these weird circumstances would come up where all of a sudden my Mom would be in the hospital, and then one of my aunts would be coming to get me and take care of me until she got out.  My Mom lived her life so recklessly, that to me at the time, it all just seemed like part of growing up.  The first time I visited her in the hospital after a suicide attempt was not the first time that she had tried to take her own life.  This was an ongoing trend, where as things would get bad, the only escape she could think of was to end it all.  

When I visited my Mom in the hospital as a 7 or 8-year-old, everything seemed absolutely foreign.  I didn’t understand why the hell I had to be there - I’d rather be out playing with my friends, but I did miss my Mom, so I agreed to go.  When I walked in, I could see that her wrists were all bandaged up, she was hooked up to an IV and a bunch of machines.  This was the mid 1980s, so it wasn’t all that sophisticated, and I was just standing there, not sure of exactly what was going on.  Mom was pale and jumpy, but she was so happy to see me, so the fright I had about the situation melted away quickly.  I remember running over to her and her telling me to be very careful because she was still in a lot of pain.  Nobody explained to me what had happened, but I later figured out that she had tried to slit her wrists after a break up with Dale (one of many…not the first, and damn sure not the last).  I just knew that I loved my Mom and I didn’t understand what was going on.  I knew she was in pain, and I wished that I could help her, but I didn’t know how.  That was always our routine - she would do something that was batshit crazy, and then I would try to fix it.  I didn’t know what mental illness was, but I did know that sometimes Mom would go off the deep end, freak the fuck out, and as long as I helped clean up a mess, find whatever she was missing, and just generally stay the fuck out of the way, the episode would pass and things would go back to normal (or what I knew as normal anyway). 

I wasn’t always there when the suicide attempts happened (when she actually “did the deed”), but one time I was, and it was one of the scariest moments of my life.

Me and my cousins were out riding our bikes, looking for bottles and that we could return for the deposit money.  This was long before recycling became a thing, and there were plenty of drunks and other people who would toss their empties into ditches, parks, playgrounds, wherever, and we learned to scavenge whatever we could find to get money for candy or the arcade.  For kids without an allowance or parents who would peel off cash on a whim, this was a treasure hunt like no other.  We’d spend our days seeing what we could find - and then rejoice in whatever bounty came our way.  Sometimes we would run a little scam where we would go to the back of the corner stores or liquor stores where we’d cash things in, and steal the empties that had already been returned.  We’d just lift things from the back (with one of us on lookout duty!) and then bring them in the front door!  Hey, if you want candy at that age, you hustle and find a way to get it!  We’d do this for hours, and come home smelling like beer, wine, booze, and other rotten funk, but it didn’t matter to us.  We had spent the day outside having the time of our lives on whatever little adventures we’d go on, we’d take our cash and buy what felt like 10lbs of candy, and then go home to one of our houses to watch TV and stuff our faces.  Life was good!

It was on one of these days that we were coming back from our treasure hunt, that I walked in on the chaos of a suicide attempt in action.  It was me and my cousins going to my uncle’s house, where our parents had started drinking early in the day.  It was mid-afternoon, and as I walked in through the front door, time started to slow down.  My Mom was in her brother’s arms, jerking around violently in the air, with everyone screaming and white foam coming from her mouth.  It was another break up with Dale that had pulled her into this dark place, and she had taken one of her many pill bottles and thrown it back down her throat in front of everyone and now they were trying to make her throw up.  I was frozen.  I loved my Mom so much, and even as I write this I can feel the knots coming back into my stomach as I remember just how scared I was at the time.  All I saw was this woman, who had so many problems, and who I loved, dying in front of me and everyone screaming.  It’s one of those moments that I have relived over and over across the years, and I have never been able to shake it.  Her body was tossing around like a wild animal that had been hit by a car and was trying to shake the pain off.

“JOEY - GET OUT OF HERE!  GO!!!!”

My aunt was reacting in the moment to what was happening and was trying to save me from seeing my Mom like this…but the image stays fresh in my mind, even today.

I ran out the door, hopped on my bike and just started riding away as fast as I could.  Tears were streaming down my face, and I can still feel that guttural scream pulsing from my body and out into the world as I cried and pedalled as fast as I could.  I wanted to know what was happening and why it had happened.  Nothing can prepare a kid for this kind of experience, so I just kept riding and refused to stop until that house was out of sight and I could feel safe.  

My cousins had built a fort out in the woods near the house, and after riding as far as I could, I jumped off my bike and ran to it.  There wasn’t much there - some branches leaning on each other and then an old tarp covering it all.  I just lay there, wondering what was going to happen.  I don’t think I knew that my Mom might die.  I was so scared though, because I didn’t know what was going to happen.  It’s that terrible chaos of life that continually hit me in the face all of my life.  It was chaos and uncertainty, over and over and over and over again.  

I don’t remember visiting her in the hospital this time, but within a few days she was home again, and things were back to the way they’d always been.  I’d love to tell you that this was the last time my Mom tried to kill herself - but this is no fairy tale.  I hate that she felt so much pain that she always thought that this was the answer, but I also hate that as the years went on I became numb to what I recognized later as her cries for help.  

But this time, the suicide attempt sparked a new series of problems for my sister and me, and it wasn’t death that took us away from our Mom.