Like Her
My mother went to the hospital tonight, November 4, 2024.
I pull into my driveway at 9:26. The sky above me is a hazy, deep blue. The moon is dark; she doesn't grace me with her illumination tonight. I put my car in park, turn off the engine, and open the door. I receive a call from my dad at 9:27. I answer.
“Hey Gen.”
He pauses.
“Mom and I aren't home right now. We're at the hospital. Everything's alright, don't worry.”
That is my cue to worry. Both of their cars are in the driveway. That is my usual signal that I will be greeted by my parents finishing up dinner. Normally, I arrive home from the Dojo around now, my gi soaked in sweat from the workout, as I make a beeline to the shower. But because of the election tomorrow, the polling booths are taking up our workout space. I could have gotten home earlier today, but I didn't. I stayed late after school to smoke with my friends.
Why was I being so selfish? I should've been home for this
“What do you mean you're in the hospital?” I question.
My mind immediately goes to my grandfather. This past year, my father and his sister decided that their father needed a greater level of care than they could provide. He has been spending his days in a nursing home; living in a private room surrounded by his houseplants and original acrylic paintings. He has it nice, but it only means his time on this earth is coming to a close.
If we need to share family information that is not dire in nature, we text. When the phone rings, it's usually a bad sign. After my brother died, our family has received that kind of call almost yearly, like clockwork. Every time the landline rings, I see my parents' gleeful expressions evaporate from their faces. They don't want to receive that call as much as I don't. That thought lingers in the back of my mind as I brace myself for my father’s answer.
“Your mother passed out. She was sitting by the fireplace, petting the cats, and then she just kinda slumped backwards. Her skin got clammy, and I started to freak out, so I called 911. The police came, and they sent an ambulance.”
My Mother?
My first question to him is an obvious one for the both of us.
“Was she drinking?”
My father sighs.
“Yes, Gen, you know she was. She also took a couple hits from the preroll we bought over the weekend. I think that might’ve fucked her up a little.”
“Oh, okay. Call me when you know more.”
“Okay, love you, honey.”
Click
—
My mother has had a difficult life. There is absolutely no denying that fact.
She is the youngest of four siblings. She never really got the chance to grow up with them. By the time her oldest sister graduated highschool, my mom was eight. She recalls purposefully spilling her milk all over the dinner table so she would have an opportunity to grab the food she wanted to eat. She is close with her siblings now, but she was closest with her mother, Irene. Her father on the other hand, was a respected police chief in our town for close to twenty five years. He spent most of his days working late nights, while his wife, my grandmother, kept order in her home.
A few days after my mother's eighteenth birthday, she found Irene sitting at the kitchen table, clutching a handwritten letter, sobbing. The letter was from her husband, informing the family that he was planning on filing for a divorce. My mother was never really close with her father, but this put a great strain on their already fragile relationship. A couple years later, he remarried
to a woman our family nicknamed “Bitch Joan.” A year after that, in 1994, he was shot dead during a robbery at a cemetery in Newark.
She has been a victim of her own mother's financial abuse. After her ex-husband's death, Irene was left with nothing. She turned to her daughter for support. She took business loans and credit cards out under her daughter's name without her knowledge. It ruined my mother's financial situation.
She is a woman who had to bury her child. She gave birth to two seemingly healthy children, one girl and one boy. She had the perfect nuclear family. That image disappeared when her son became sick.
The first time she noticed something was wrong was after he got his first flu shot. She recalls watching him from her rearview mirror of the car on the way home. She noticed his eyes starting to go crossed. She doesn't believe the immunization caused anything, but she believes it triggered something already existing inside of him.
My brother was born with an extremely rare neurological disease called metachromatic leukodystrophy. An ugly string of words, I know. This disease causes individuals to lack the enzyme that builds your myelin sheath, the fatty tissue coating the neurons in your brain. Think of the way that wires will short circuit when they don't have a rubber barrier protecting them. That's what happens to your neurons when you have this disease. Over time, you lose the ability to walk, speak, control your bowels, eat, and breathe. Most children diagnosed with this disease die by the age of five. My brother died when he was three.
To cope with my brother's prognosis, the hospital stays, and the medical bills, my mom turned to alcohol. Her favorite drink is Franzia chardonnay. She buys the boxes with the plastic tap attached that serves up to thirty-two glasses. I joke with her that she has the drinking preferences of a sorority girl. When she goes to the supermarket, she always buys two boxes; one to open now, and one to have on standby when the first one runs out. It takes her approximately a week to finish a box. She arrives home from work at 4:30 every day and drinks around four and a half glasses of wine from the time she gets home, to the time we finish dinner. Sometimes, she will end her night with a small glass of scotch or some weed before she falls asleep around eight o'clock.
I know I look like my mother. Our hair, our eyes, our face, our body; all shared between us. You wouldn't be able to tell our childhood photos apart if it wasn't for the camera the picture was taken with. I love my mother. I am a part of her as much as she is a part of me.
I hate the woman she becomes when she drinks.
Don't get me wrong, I don't preach sobriety to anyone. I know it is a journey for someone to recognize they have a problem. There is no point in helping someone who doesn't want it. It's not like I haven't turned to weed or alcohol for comfort before. I think I get that from her.
I don't know how much I want to be like her.
—
I call my father back at 10:32.
“Hey, how is everything? Did the doctor say anything?”
“Yea so the doctor hooked your mom up with some IV fluids. They ordered some bloodwork for her, but she is feeling better.”
“That's good, I am happy to hear.”
I hear my mom in the background plead with my father to talk to me.
“Hold on, your mom wants to talk.”
I hear his phone rustle as he hands it to her.
“Hi Genny.”
Only my immediate family calls me Genny. I only ever hear it spoken in times of endearment or despair. I'm not sure what the context is today.
“Hi Mom, how are you feeling?”
“I feel better, a little embarrassed.”
She pauses and sniffles.
“Genny, I am so sorry.”
“Sorry for what, Mom?”
“For everything.”
“What do you mean by everything?”
“I'm sorry I haven't been there for you.”
“How so?”
I feel like I'm coaxing her to the answer I want to hear.
“For the past twelve–no, fifteen years, I haven't been there for you the way I should have been. You know I drink to cope with everything. I don't want to anymore.”
Never in my adult life would I imagine those words to exit my mother's mouth. I have never known how to feel about my mom's substance use. I resent the nights I used to spend shaking her awake so she wouldn't wake up in the morning on the couch. I remember the fear I felt when she would offer to drive home after downing a bottle of wine at Christmas dinner. But I empathize with her.
How do you cope with the fact that your only son died and there is nothing you could do to ease his suffering?
How do you go on waking up every day with a void where your heart is?
I take a moment to respond.
“And how do you plan on doing that?”
“I am determined to stop.”
“By yourself?”
I probably shouldn't have said this. I kind of regretted it after. I just wanted to know if she truly meant what she was saying.
“Well, I haven't really figured that part out yet.”
“I understand. The first step in all of this is admitting it.”
I feel like I redeemed myself with this last statement.
“Thank you, Genny. I don't know what I would do without you.”
I can't choke back my tears any longer. I take a moment to center myself, and respond to her. “I am going to go; have Dad text me when you guys need me to pick you up.” “I love you, Genny.”
I hang up the call. A primal scream emerges from the depths of my diaphragm. I don't know what the fuck I feel right now. I want to hit something. I contemplate beating my fist into the wall until my knuckles bleed. For someone who studies karate, I'm surprised I don't own a punching bag.
I had just come to terms with my mother's issues.
Now she wants to apologize?
How could she?
How could she do this to me?
Maybe I have always felt that my mother's grief is more justified than mine. I never lost my son. I was just a child who lost their brother. But I miss him too. I love him just as much as she does. There isn't a day that passes that I don't think about him. I know she does too.
Why do I have to be my mother's therapist?
I lost him too.
We were both there.
I was cradled in her arms at the foot of his hospital bed when they unhooked his ventilator. She was crying.
I didn't.
I wish I could have.
I just want my mother to be my mother.
Functioning alcoholic or not.
But now I am here picking up her broken pieces again.
Because how could I not?
She is my mother.
And I am just like her.
Cover Photo by Suzy Hazelwood. Edited by Yasmin Pesherov.