[stylist] Writing what you don't know

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

Judith,

I am not trying to be hard on her, but understand her.  That is why I
wrote this essay.  As a kid, I did not understand why she was the way
she was so often, but as an adult, I not only know a little more info,
but I can try to understand what and how she felt.

Here is the full essay.  I have revised it a few times and am still not
done, but it gives a fuller picture.

Bridgit

Baby

The incessant drip of the IV filled the silence as she lay pale and
dying in the hospital bed.  Her mother sat semi-conscious in the blue
vinyl recliner the nurse had brought in.  Two months and no change had
occurred.  Her family watched day after day as she slipped further away
from their reality.  The unknown virus had taken her strength, and all
it left was a tiny shell that seemed ready to collapse at the slightest
touch.
The girl on the bed moved and murmured slightly.  Her mother placed her
fingertips on the girl’s hand.
“Honey, are you okay?  It’s Mommy.  I’m here, sweetie.”
“It hurts,” she whispered.
“I know, baby.  I’ll call the nurse.”
Her mom pressed the call light and prepared for the inevitable wait.
She stared at the wires and tubes that stuck all over her daughter.  The
main line sticking from her daughter’s protruding collar bone had taken
an hour to put in.  Her mom recalled the frustration of the nurse who
attempted to glide the line through her daughter’s collapsed veins.
Sweat had formed on the nurse’s brow and she had seemed ready to give
up.  The blood that spurted from her daughter’s vein had made her
nauseous, but she had gripped the bed until she had almost passed out.
Her daughter had laid there unable to cry from the dehydration that left
her face hollow.
A nurse entered with squeaking footsteps and a cheery expression that
belied the distance she kept from her patients.
“What can I do for you?” the nurse asked.
“She is having the pain again.  Can we give her more morphine?”
The nurse raised an eyebrow as she reached for the chart clipped to the
foot of the bed.  “It’s too soon.  Maybe if you can get her out of bed
and walk around it would do some good.”
“Excuse me?  Are you insane?  My daughter has been here for almost two
months and dying and you want her out of bed?”
The nurse remained grinning as she crossed her wide arms.
“I am just making a suggestion.”
The conversation was interrupted by a scream as the girl on the bed
twisted.
“Can’t you see she is in pain?” the mom asked.
She touched her daughter’s warm skin that a moment before had been ice
cold and whispered soft, soothing sounds.  The mom glared at the nurse,
who still retained her composure.
“Let me call the doctor.”  The nurse waddled out of the room with her
permanent smile.
“Mommy, please make it stop.”
“I know, baby.”  The mom sighed deep and heavy.  
She always felt the pain of her children, but revealing her emotions
would not make it stop.  Her first born, the one most similar to her,
was slipping away and she couldn’t cry.  Not in front of her, but she
wanted to take it all away.  She would trade places if it were possible.
All she could do now was squeeze the boney hand that felt child-like
once again.


My twenties were supposed to be the time of my life.  I was supposed to
be going to parties and living life along with my friends, but instead I
was battling some unknown viral infection along with pneumonia.  I
suddenly had the constitution of an eighty-year-old woman and it was
enough for me to just wake up each day.
I spent my life in and out of the hospital for one reason or another and
yet I did not expect my life to come to a crashing halt at the age of
twenty-two.  Between my brother’s premature birth and subsequent
hospitalizations trying to correct his renal failure, or my own constant
barrage of doctor appointments due to my Juvenile Diabetes, and even my
mother’s frequent bouts of unidentified illnesses, I was no stranger to
hospitals.
So much about this time is vague, like a dream.  The one thing that will
always stick out though is my mom’s inability to leave my side.  It was
as though she was determined to give me life, something the doctors
seemed incapable of.  I was not used to such attention from my mother,
and some of my warmest memories of her are from my extended illness.
What can be said about two women who are so similar that they constantly
butt heads?  Ever since childhood it feels as though my mother has
picked out my flaws one by one and hung them on the wall as constant
reminders of what is wrong with me.  The, “I love you,” and, “Honey, I’m
proud of you,” are scattered among the never-ending, “You’ll never get a
guy looking like that,” or, “I don’t know if you’re smart enough for
college.”  Yet there was my mom refusing to give up on me.  She kept me
alive.
Depression is hereditary in my family even if we don’t acknowledge this
simple fact.  I spent my adolescence moving from one extreme mood to the
other.  The pressure of life weighed heavy on me and by the age of
eighteen I just wound down like a clock.  I had witnessed this behavior
in my mother again and again.  In the fourth-grade I came home to a
house dark and silent.  Mother lay on the rose-print couch with an arm
draped across her eyes.  She made no sound as I sat by her side
searching in my nine-year-old vocabulary for words to comfort.  Dad came
home and walked right by us.  I choked on emotions not fully realized at
my young age.  Days went by before I saw the mother who did not resemble
a sick and dying person.  Eager to start the day, she did her usual
morning work-out then chirped around the kitchen making breakfast for me
and my siblings.  I knew her behavior was not normal, but I didn’t know
what to do.  I grew up terrified I would turn out the same way, crazy.
I recalled the day my parents forced me into a psychiatric facility
after reading my journal in which entry after entry expressed my desire
to “go far away.”  They claimed I was suicidal.  Later I learned that
they used this as an excuse for their insurance to cover my hospital
stay.  Mother said I was just trying to get attention when I could not
get out of bed for a month.  I was eighteen and full of potential, but I
just couldn’t force myself to engage in anything.
“Bridgit, get out of bed.  You’re just lazy,” my mother shouted.
I laid with my back towards her, facing the wall as tears sailed down my
cheeks.
“You won’t get any sympathy from me.  You always have to be the center
of attention,” she huffed while shaking my shoulder.
I remained silent, too weary to speak.  My mind wanted to move, but my
body would not follow the command.
“I’m done with her,” my mother said, flinging her hands up.
My father gripped me around the waist and pulled as I wrapped my hands
around the bedpost and was amazed at my strength that seemed a match to
his.
Eventually my hospital stay turned out to be a positive event, but not
until I sorted out the fact and fiction with my therapist.  My parents
told her I was violent and was causing a rift at home.  It was
impossible to live with me, they said.  I began to realize, though, that
I was not crazy, and all the blame was not to be put on me.  My mother
refused to attend joint therapy sessions and soon pulled me out when I
remained tight-lipped about what I discussed with Dr. Lovett.

Yet I found a compassionate woman in my mom as she fought for my life.
Being deathly ill changed everything for me and my mother and I realized
just how tenuous our relationship was.  I would lay awake at night
unable to sleep from the pain or the steady flow of nurses checking
hourly stats, and there was Mom watching television with me.  We bonded
through the Ellen DeGenorous show as laughter proved to be a balm to
soothe our wounds.
She held my hand as I slipped in and out of consciousness.  She was the
one who helped me roll the IV monitor to the bathroom, and when I was
too weak to stand, she gently washed my hair in a bed pan.  I could
barely hold my head up at times as my blood pressure crashed and
physical movement was impossible.  Mom was always there though to pick
up the slack of the nurses.
She may not have always been the most compassionate or tender mother,
but at twenty-two when I sunk further away it was her who reeled me
back.  My mom called me baby then and I can not recall that word
anywhere in my mind.  She would lie in bed with me, rubbing my back and
whisper “Baby” and it eased my pain.  I never thought she could be so
affectionate towards me and despite my pain I was happy for once.

The day the doctors declared me okay and gave me the approval to return
home allowed Mom to finally breathe.  As I waited for all the tedious
paperwork she finally left my side to prepare the house.  She wanted to
clean and make dinner since she had not been home in weeks except to
shower and change clothes.
I walked at last into our house in a dazed stupor from the percacet that
eased the pain that ran through my nerves still.  I remember the smell
of corn chowder wafting from the kitchen.  A light fall breeze blew the
curtains since Mom opened them because the house always was too warm
when someone was cooking.  There was a shiny tinge to everything and I
knew she had disinfected the entire house.  The dining room table was
set in proper fashion, of course, and a centerpiece of leaves and pines
and berries decorated the table.  A “Welcome Home” banner hung from the
ceiling and my two sisters and brother hugged me as Dad cried and
thanked God for my recovery.  Silently, Mom stood by smiling.
When I could not sleep or cried out from the burning, insensible pain
that shot through me, she would still lie next to me and rub my back as
though I were a child.  Always she whispered “baby.”
While my mother and I still do not communicate what we truly feel, I can
never forget the strength and courage she revealed as I struggled with
life.  The nurse who refused to see me as anything other than a hopeless
case found a formidable foe in my mom.  Mom demanded the doctors take
action and when they did not she transferred me to another facility.
When I was well enough to eat it was Mom who brought me food that did
not come from a cafeteria.  Her actions proved the love for me that I
thought had been lacking.  When four years later she was diagnosed with
breast cancer I sat on the phone with my husband and cried to the point
of convulsions.  I wanted to take on her pain.  I wanted to be by her
side, but I was now living in another city.  The religion of my
childhood was all I had to rely on as I prayed to Jesus to heal my mom.

Tragedy touches us and we move quickly away, but not before feeling its
sting.  I can say that we are alive and well, but the bond that began to
form did not hold tight enough.  I wish I could say that we are close,
but I do not believe that has been written for my mother and me.  Once
again we have lapsed into our relationship of polite noncommittal
conversations.  I see other mothers and daughters who seem to be best
friends and I wonder what that must be like.  My mother passed along her
strength though.  She is a woman who has dealt with her own struggles
and she loves the best way she knows how.  I understand for her that
self preservation means distancing herself even from loved ones, but for
one moment, though, I was held by my mom and called baby.

Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
Checked by AVG. 
Version: 7.5.560 / Virus Database: 0.0.0/0 - Release Date: <unknown>
12:00 AM