How it All Started

There is a memory that haunts me until this day, and it has nothing to do with her.  It has to do with a spoiled, rotten brat of a son.   I had invited a friend from school to spend the night with us.  I guess they’ve had sleepovers as long as there have been students.  For some reason, I wanted to impress my friend with my ability to manipulate my mother.  I treated her rudely.  I treated her disrespectfully.  She took it passively, and my friend was astounded.  The events that I’m about to describe took place sometime after that, and I wondered if my own thoughtless behavior was the cause.  I don’t think my rude behavior was the cause, but it came close enough to the time she slipped into a state of cognitive loss that I couldn’t help feeling guilty.  I lived with that guilt for many years.  I wish she had taken a belt to me.  It probably would have hurt less than the mental anguish did in the years that were to follow.

I can’t put the timeline together, but I think I was probably in the sixth grade.  I got up to get ready for school.  My mother always prepared breakfast for me before school.  She didn’t get out of bed that morning.  I approached her and asked, “Mama, aren’t you going to fix my breakfast?”  She just stared at me.  She didn’t say a word, nor did she make an effort to get out of bed.   I finally went to school without breakfast.

When I got home she still wasn’t speaking, and she didn’t speak for a week. Daddy didn’t know what to do.   He took over meal preparation and his cooking left much to be desired, but we survived.   On a Sunday afternoon, we all got in the truck.  Daddy decided to drive to our family doctor’s home.  We knew where he lived.  When we got near the house, Mama began talking normally.  She apparently had little memory of the previous week.  Life seemingly returned to normal.

That lasted for about six months.  Suddenly, she reverted to a different kind of behavior pattern.  She began incessant talking.  She slept little; she just sat in a chair and stared at the wall.  This time she wasn’t silent.  She talked constantly. Her conversation was rhythmic, and disconnected. There was no discernible train of thought.  Many years later I would learn that people in the mental health field call this word salad, which means there is a cognitive interruption that prevents coherent speech. 

Her speech was laced with profanity and obscenities – language she would never have used when she was rational.  In fact her younger sister, Loretta, remembered an event from childhood when Mama caught her using profanity.  Mama, who was ten or fifteen years older than Loretta, washed her mouth out with soap.  Loretta said that she learned one primary lesson from that experiences – Soap tastes bad!

That was the beginning of a pattern of behavior that lasted thirty-five years.  There were long periods of rationality, but then she would lose her grasp with reality.  Eventually her moods during her rational periods where altered.  Because of her condition she became socially isolated from most people, and her mood was a somber one most of the time.