Forever the Fat Kid: How I Survived Dysfunction, Depression and Life in the Theater (25 page)

FEELING WEIRD

Although I wasn’t suicidal, I do remember experiencing an overwhelming sense of hopelessness during this time. The mental and emotional stress was causing a physical deterioration as well. I would look at myself in the mirror and think that I would never be physically attractive again; that I was never going to be healthy again and that my life was essentially over. I saw the irony in the fact that the man in the mirror, who had overcome such obstacles in his physical appearance over the years, now looked like shit! I had gone from eating organic and healthy to living on a diet of donuts and coffee, and not exercising at all. How could this have happened? I also started to dwell on the one thing that had truly eluded me for all of my life: a healthy loving relationship. The thought that I was never going to experience that made me even more depressed during this dark period. It wasn’t long before I became a recluse with no desire to get up, to shower, to eat, to go anywhere, to even have sex. I felt and looked horrible. I didn’t want to see anyone, and I certainly didn’t want anybody to see me looking like this. I began sleeping all the time; lost thirty or forty pounds; and looked like a concentration camp survivor. Then, to top it all off, the day that I hoped would never come…did.

OCTOBER 25, 1999

Too young for school, Valincia would visit her father and his family often. She had just returned from a weeklong visit on Monday, October 25. By this point, I had no real sleep schedule. Incredibly, I still managed to take care of business. I paid the bills, went to see my father, and handled everything that I needed to, but barely. With my sister, Liz, being a single mom, Ruthie often took care of Valincia while Liz worked. I woke up that morning to find Valincia cuddled in my mother’s lap in the big black recliner in the den. They were watching the Rugrats, one of Valincia’s favorite television shows. I joined them still half asleep. I was glad to see Valincia after her week away, but she wasn’t very interested in me–at least not while Rugrats was on. Ruthie commented on how much she had grown in the week that she had been away. It did, in fact, seem that she’d had a noticeable growth spurt. After a few minutes, I told Ruthie that I was going back to bed. I was feeling nauseas, one of the many physical symptoms that accompanied the depression that had set in months earlier. I went back to bed leaving the two of them as I found them, cuddled together in the chair.

It was less than an hour later that I awoke again. Dragging myself out of bed, I headed back into the den where I had left Valincia and Ruthie watching television. Valincia was no longer in the chair; she was now sitting on the floor at Ruthie’s feet, still watching the Nickelodeon channel. I glanced up at my mother and saw her slumped sideways in the recliner with her mouth open. It wasn’t unusual for Ruthie to fall asleep in that chair; she did it all the time. However, this time there was something about the way she was positioned that broke through my sleepy haze, sending a jolt of adrenaline through me.

I rushed over to the chair, grabbed her shoulder, and started to shake her and call her name. She didn’t respond. I dropped to my knees and began using both hands to shake her now, calling her name even louder, but still nothing. That’s when Valincia started to cry. I don’t know if it was Ruthie’s non-responsiveness, or my state of frenzy, but something made this little four-year-old child aware that something was terribly wrong. Finally, I stopped shaking Ruthie. I stood up and backed away from the chair. The moment of realization hit. And I knew. The brief conversation we’d had less than an hour earlier was the last that we would ever have. In the short span of my nap, she had died.

I picked up Valincia. Hugging her tightly, I told her not to cry, that everything was okay. Apparently, the innocent soul believed me because she did stop crying and just held on to me tightly. I used my free arm to grab the phone and dial 911. When the operator answered, I blurted out, “You have to send somebody right away! I think my mother is dead!” The operator verified the address and said that someone would be there shortly. With Valincia still in my arms, I walked out onto the front porch. A couple that lived across the street, and a friend who lived around the corner, were standing outside conversing with one another. I called to them, “I think my mother’s dead. I can’t wake her up!” They didn’t answer me; they didn’t respond at all. Or maybe I simply wasn’t hearing them? I put Valincia down and started back in the house, but immediately turned around and came back out. I didn’t know why I was going back in, and I don’t know why I stopped, I didn’t know anything at that moment. I picked Valincia up again and, hugging her close to me, began rocking back and forth. The friend from around the corner came over and offered to take Valincia to her home. I reluctantly allowed Valincia to leave with her. As I stood watching the two of them head up the block, the paramedics and police began arriving. I took them to the room where Ruthie was. They asked her name and rushed me out of the room. I could hear them talking to her, trying to get a response. While paramedics and policemen swarmed the house, I sat quietly in a chair and waited as they tried in vain to revive the only person who had truly been there for me each and every day of my life.

WHAT NOW?

After about twenty minutes of chaos–though it felt like a lifetime–the paramedics took me aside and told me that there was nothing more that they could do. They said that I would need to contact a funeral home to come for the body, as they weren’t allowed to transport an already deceased person. They offered their condolences, gathered up their equipment, and left. I followed them to the door and watched as they, along with the policemen, drove away. With the house now empty, the silence was overwhelming. I went back inside, closed the door and locked it. What was I trying to keep out? Or in? It was the beginning of a twelve-hour-or-so loss of sanity for me. I wasn’t crazy in a manic, over-the-top way; it was more of “serial killer” calmness. Controlled on the outside, but totally frantic, irrational and bizarre on the inside. I was out of body.

I found the phone number for the funeral home, picked up the white cordless telephone that Ruthie had spent countless hours chatting on, and went into the bathroom. I shut the door and sat on the closed lid of the toilet staring at the tiled wall in front of me. Not six feet away on the other side of the bathroom wall was my mother’s lifeless body. I called the funeral home, the same one where I had already made Jamesie’s final arrangements a few months earlier when he entered the nursing home. In a calm, peaceful, and eerily detached way, I explained what had happened and why I was calling. It would be almost an hour before they arrived for the body.

Who should I call next? Who should I tell now? I was starting to sense cracks in my too calm demeanor. I felt like I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t; I felt like I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. Most of all, I didn’t want my mother to be dead, but she was. I called my friend, Vera, one of the few people with whom I had shared the rough times that I’d been going through lately. When she heard my voice she perked up. A good friend, Vera always seemed to be glad to hear from me. “Hi Michael!”

“I don’t know what else can possibly happen to me, Vera.” I began.

“What’s the matter?”

“My mother just died.”

“Oh, Michael…” was all that I remember hearing her saying. The rest of the conversation, like the rest of that day, is pretty much a blur except for the occasional sound byte of comments made by one person or another upon hearing the news. I think that I cried a little while talking to Vera, but not for long. I called on my lifelong skill of suppressing my emotions and began sorting out what had to be done next. If I didn’t take charge now, who would?

I came out of the bathroom, careful not to look to the left and at my mother’s body lying in plain view on the floor where the paramedics had placed her as they attempted to resuscitate her. I went into the dining room and sat down at the table and was instantly flooded with memories of the great meals and good times I’d had there. I thought of my cousin, Wilma, who had been sitting at this very table just the day before, sharing a cup of tea with Ruthie. I dialed Wilma’s number and told her what happened; she said that she would be right over. What should I do now? Watch TV? I looked at the clock. Why bother–it was that time of the day; I’d already missed Jerry Springer and Montel Williams, and it was too early for the various judge shows. It was soap opera and afternoon news time, neither of which I had any interest in at the moment. So, I sat there in silence staring at the assortment of items in the china cabinet, and recalling the history behind each one.

Out of nowhere, a thought entered my head. Suppose none of this was really happening? Could I be dreaming this? Was this whole surreal scene a hallucination? There was only one way to find out. I got up and walked back to the doorway of the room where Ruthie lay on the floor and forced myself to look in. I prayed that if all of this were actually happening, that I wouldn’t be too freaked out by what I would see.

Yep, it was true. There on the floor, lying on her back, uncovered and with the plastic tube they attempted to resuscitate her with still protruding from her mouth, was my Ruthie. I didn’t freak out, and I didn’t look away. I just stared. I was filled with an overwhelming desire to talk to her, to have just one more conversation. Since that wasn’t possible, I started speaking to her telepathically. I told her that I loved her, that even though she had been dead for only an hour, I missed her already. I asked her what was going to happen to me now. Obviously, she didn’t answer. I continued staring at her. No longer trying to communicate, I was now trying to burn her features into my brain because I knew that they would start to fade from my memory only too soon. I looked at her hair, her face, her feet, her legs, her arms, her hands…and that’s when I saw them. She was still wearing her diamond rings! The people from the funeral home were on their way to pick up her body, and she was still wearing her diamond rings! I couldn’t let them take her out of here still wearing those rings; I might never see them again! Practicality kicked in and, before I knew it, I was down on my hands and knees tugging at the rings trying to get them off of her finger. Having lost a lot of weight lately, she had been afraid of the rings falling off and getting lost, so she had borrowed another ring from a neighbor that was a tight fit to hold her own rings in place. That damn borrowed ring was doing its job. No matter how hard I tugged I couldn’t get it, or the others, past the knuckle. Finally I gave up. I went to the phone and called the funeral home again. I told them about the rings, and said that I would be there first thing in the morning to pick them up. Ruthie would come back from the dead and beat my behind if I let a stranger get hold of her rings.

BREAKING THE NEWS

Whether they own up to it or not, I believe that most people have wondered what the circumstances of their parent’s death will be. I know I did. But in my wildest imaginings, I never thought that it would be like this. It was just so unexpected. I also never imagined that, barring the unfortunate and unlikely event that they would die together; one wouldn’t attend the funeral of the other. But that’s exactly what happened. Jamesie was in no condition, mentally or physically, to attend Ruthie’s funeral. It would have been more than he could bear.

Again, everyone had an opinion on what I should and shouldn’t do, whether or not to even tell Jamesie of Ruthie’s death. Ultimately, the decision was mine. First of all, I’ve always believed that the truth is always the best course of action. But my decision was based largely on the fact that I couldn’t bear the thought of him constantly asking me why Ruthie didn’t come to visit him anymore. I decided that the pain of feeling she had turned her back on him would be far worse than the pain of knowing that she had died. Like every other unpleasant chore of these past months, the task of telling Jamesie about Ruthie’s death fell to me. My niece, Tina, accompanied me to the nursing home that day for emotional support. After having breakfast at a nearby diner, where we talked about everything except the situation at hand, we headed over to the nursing home five minutes away. I thought back to Jamesie’s last day at home before being admitted to the first facility. Ruthie made him a meal fit for a king, preparing all of the things that she knew he liked. Why it is that we always precede the known traumatic events of our lives with a fabulous meal?

The hardest part of my visits with Jamesie always came as I prepared to leave. With his dementia worsening each day, he didn’t understand that this place he was in was an extended care facility, didn’t understand what he was doing there, and most of all, he didn’t understand why he couldn’t go home with me; why I would leave him there. Whenever I would mention that I was about to go home, he’d say, “Okay, let me get my stuff. I’ll be ready in a minute.” When I’d try to explain to him that he was already at home, he’d give me a strange look and ask, “What do you mean? I don’t live here, I live with you, remember?” If I said that I wasn’t going home, that I had somewhere else to go first, he’d say, “Well, can’t you just drop me off on your way?” If I said that I wasn’t going in that direction, he’d say “Well just take me to the train station and I’ll catch a train.” It was hell! I eventually gave up trying to explain to him that he couldn’t go with me. I’d pretend that I was going to the bathroom, or to get a drink of water, then I’d slip out of the ward when he wasn’t looking. I hated having to play this cruel trick on him each and every time that I went to visit, but it was the only solution that I could come up with. It reached the point where I’d begin to feel the anxiety of leaving as soon as I pulled into the parking lot when I’d arrive for my visits. And I’d spend the entire time that I was there dreading when the time to leave would come. However, this day I had far greater concerns, like my fear of how he was going to be affected by the bad news that I was about to deliver.