Entry #4: THREATS OF SUICIDE

I was home with the kids one morning when the phone rang. I answered: "Hello?"

An angry male voice said: "This is Dick."

That would be my father. He was as uncomfortable being a father as my mother was resentful of being a mother. On a good day he might say, "Um... This is your father calling." But NEVER anything like, "Hi, it's Dad." In person we have always shaken hands formally, as if meeting for the first time.

He continued: "Your brother has this RIDICULOUS idea that my grandfather drank himself to death. This is NOT TRUE." Pause. "He shot himself."

Well OK then. I'm glad we cleared that up.

Biochemistry is against me. I come from a long line of relatives on both sides who were drunk, depressed, and/or crippled by anxiety. My mother was all three, with some undiagnosed mental issues thrown in to keep things interesting.

I don't remember when her threats of suicide first started. I took them completely seriously. I worried a lot. She would get drunk every night, and if she did not immediately go to bed, she would make her way out to the car, weaving and weeping, and then drive off alone somewhere. Letting her take the keys was like handing a loaded gun to a baby. I was too little to do anything, and each time I was certain I would never see her again. I kept looking at the clock and wondering if she was dead - or had killed somebody else. She couldn't have cared less about that.

My father would just vanish. He never made any attempt to address her issues. He was probably glad to get her out of the house. My brothers had heard it all before and didn't especially care about the woman who didn't especially care about them. But I was the littlest, and therefore was hurt the most. I was sure she would die.

It didn't take much to set her off. Not getting enough attention, not getting her way, not getting what she wanted, being forced to share - you know, toddler issues.

My mother could pitch a fit to wake the dead. Her fits were like nuclear bombs to win any war. People would pussyfoot around her, saying or doing anything she wanted to avoid one of her fits. But, fueled by huge amounts of gin, she would become inconsolable anyway.

Her favorite threat was to jump off the Jamestown Bridge. I remember after one particularly horrendous Thanksgiving, my children, both under the age of 10, piped up from the back seat of the car. "Is Gamma really going to throw herself off the Jamestown Bridge?" they asked.

Oh great, I thought to myself. Another generation terrorized by this woman. I was disgusted with her, and angry with myself for failing to completely protect them from her. I tried to be a firewall between them and their grandmother, but there was only so much I could do.

"Nah, don't worry," I answered truthfully. "You know how the police took away her driver's license? She can't get there."

I did not, of course, mention how sometimes Gamma would take her threats to the next level. Like when I was 13, and found her standing wild-eyed and half-undressed in the bathroom, threatening to swallow a handful of brightly-colored pills and capsules. My father left in disgust and told me to take care of it.

Often she would be rolling around naked in bed, drunk and keening. I now realize she really needed to be hospitalized. My father would leave, saying, "Deal with your mother."

I wanted desperately to go to boarding school, but I was not allowed to leave home. My job was to take care of my mother. It was like having a part-time job at McDonald's, but the pay was worse and the customers were never satisfied. I attended a demanding girls' prep school as a day student, and was expected to maintain straight A's and everything else. No one knew what went on in my house at night.

I remember when I finally made it to college, and my mother and I were were driving along in my Volkswagen. She took exception to something - I don't even remember what - and started pawing hysterically at the inside of her door, trying to find the handle to throw herself out of the moving car. That was awkward.

The threats never lessened. "God?" I would ask as I got older. "If you really are there... Couldn't you have sent me a note when I was little telling me she would still be alive at age 92? That really would have helped a LOT."

I did not realize that the big talkers who yak all the time about offing themselves and constantly pitch dramatic fits are not the ones you really have to worry about. The ones who are in serious danger are those who suffer in silence, becoming more and more convinced that the only way out of their private hell is death. Like my brother.