Mental Illness: Dying from Natural Causes

She was never going to die of  typical "natural causes"...
That's the bottom line.
Save it be a car accident,
death by natural causes just wasn't in her genes.
Not cancer, not Alzheimer's or another disease.
What was in her genes?
Mental illness.

I was getting out of the shower last Sunday,
thinking of the church meetings I'd be attending later--
when my phone dinged
dinged again
dinged once more.

I'd missed three calls already,
two messages from my brothers,
"Call me. I have some bad news."
"Hey Dawn, Call me, ASAP."

I knew.
It was about Mom.
Just the night before, I'd had a feeling that I wanted to talk her,
but that feeling was chased away quickly by the thought,
"She doesn't want to hear from me."
So I didn't call.

It's been a week since I got the news
that my mother took her own life via an overdose of pills.

I have never grieved like this before...
waves of sadness, then hours of quiet, and overall fatigue...
I'm still processing it all.

I like being logical over emotional.
Emotions make things messy and lengthy
especially when it comes to my mother.

I hadn't spoken to her since last December
before Christmas.
I had decided to call her after many months of silence and years of estrangement.
It was a conscious, methodical choice.
Before I even made the call,
I'd written down on paper what I would and would not talk about,
what my expectations were of her,
and were not.

• I would not expect her to ask about my self or my family.
• I would not expect her to be kind or personable.
• I would ask only how she is doing. Is she happy?  Does she have plans for Christmas? Is she feeling okay these days?

And that was about it.

I made the call, she answered and was a little surprised to hear my voice on the other end.
The call lasted almost an hour and a half and went like I planned.
She didn't ask about me or my family and I didn't offer up anything.
I asked about her and she spoke about how unhappy she was, how aimless she felt, had no plans for Christmas, etc.--
which, in reality, I thought was both sad and good for her as Christmas was always traumatic
growing up with her.
She got a little testy with me and I let her know that I wasn't calling her to fuss,
but to check on her.
I wished her happy holidays and hung up the phone.


The day my mom decided to take her life--
wasn't last Saturday afternoon,
although she did text a younger brother, living in another state,
that she was going to take her life, often throughout the day
while she spent most of the day with the oldest brother and his wife and company,
drinking and chatting.
She didn't let the people that were sitting with her know that she was suicidal.

No, she didn't decide to take her life on an especially hard day
because every day was a hard day, for as long as I can remember.
The first time,
I was almost 10 years old.
In the middle of the night, I woke up and saw a light coming down the hall.
I was always a sound sleeper, but I was wide awake and aware.
Walked into the kitchen through the saloon doors
to find my mother standing at the kitchen sink,
pills all over the counter top,
she reached out to me and said, "Dawn, help me." as she collapsed to the floor.

We had no phone,
so I ran across the street in the dark night in my nightgown,
to a neighbors house and ran the door bell until Mrs. Dornan answered.
Our street lit up with the ambulance lights bouncing off everyone's house.
Another neighbor came and stayed the night at our house,
until my father returned from a business trip the next day or so.
Mom was in a psyche unit of the hospital for several weeks.
She came home fragile and never spoke of that night again.

That's when her alcoholism began.
I used to go to AA meetings with my mother...
"Hi my name is Dawn. I'm Janie's daughter."--I've said those words in a smoke-filled room
of adults trying to claim their sobriety--since I was 14 years old.
I was painfully shy and only went to hold onto my mom so she would hold onto us.
I hated it when she drank--she was unpredictable and scary.
And so sad.  Always so sad.

Alcohol wasn't her problem. 
It was only the symptom of her problems.
I see that as an adult.  But everyone kept pointing to alcohol as the source--
"if only she could stop drinking" became the focus.
My mom had pain so deep, that only the constant flow of alcohol could numb that pain.
When she wasn't drinking and wasn't sad,
she was vibrant and exciting, creative and musical, encouraging and sentimental.
She was generous with everything she had--
she'd give the shirt off her back to anyone.
Her sense of humor and laughter was loud and vivacious!
I thought she was the most beautiful mother in the world.
I look more like my father, but I wished I looked more like her.
She danced in the kitchen, sang while she cleaned the house,
played games hanging the laundry,
pranked my dad by throwing cold water over the shower door while he was in there--
she loved a good prank!
When her demons weren't running the show,
she was in-charge and methodical--the house was immaculate, dinner was delicious, and life was sweet.

But when her pain dominated, the drinking followed
and living with her was nearly unbearable.
My father wasn't capable of helping her and didn't force her to get help.
Instead, he checked out and stayed away from the home as much as his job allowed.
Men are like that--when dealing with a mentally ill wife,  they stay away as much as possible.
I don't know why that is, but in my experience, it's true.
We needed dad at home so much.
I needed him because he was stable, predictable.

The cycle went like this:
Jane's fine until she's not,
Jane lashes out at others,
Guilt sets in,
Drinking follows,
Anger runs the show,
Depression sets in--
at this point she's in either in Fight or Flight mode---
While Fight mode meant a vitriol rant that went for days towards everyone in the family
until she ran out of angry steam or until we were all crying;
Flight mode took her on spontaneous trips for weeks at a time,
leaving without telling us where she going,
returning as though nothing happened,
OR flight mode meant Suicide was an option.
Pills were her go-to...she topped off her alcohol with pills
and I knew that so I'd hide whatever pills I could find in the house. 
Honestly, we all wearied of her "attempts" to the point where we too,
wanted out of the house.
It's hard to love someone who hurts you.
It's hard to love someone who tells you she wishes
you'd never been born.
It's hard to love someone so much that
you worry if they're going to take their own life
every time the wind changes.
The older she got,
the more the wind blew.

She definitely had mental illness.
Progressive, untreated mental illness prevents healthy relationships.
All of us kids left the house by the time we were sixteen. 
Sixteen years old, unprepared for anything, we left to save our selves.

One would think that after a brush with death,
it'd be enough to awaken the senses and realize the intrinsic values of life--
my mom tried taking her life so many times,
we became numb to her illness.
She wouldn't seek treatment and healing,
which affected my relationship with her to the point
there was nothing to hold onto.
I married, began having children and my life moved in as different a direction
as I could make it from the scenes of my childhood.
Evolving and changing so much,
leaving my mother behind--stuck where I last left her--
in the world between her ears.
She didn't know me anymore and hadn't seen my children
but once in 16 years.

To protect my family,
I kept her on the outside.
That's a hard place to be--
I loved her, needed her, hated her disease--
but essential for my own children.
She'd written dozens and dozens of letters and emails,
left dozens of voice mails
cussing me out,
telling my children they were going to hell,
using the most vicious language to express her rage at my absence.
And then within minutes,
leave messages and emails recounting all of it with sorrowful apologies.

Mental illness is a natural cause of death.
It took a long, dreadful, miserable route,
until there was no reasonable thought left in my mother's brain
except to look again at suicide for relief.
This time, she cried "wolf" and no one heard her.
My youngest brother, whom she'd texted about her plans,
didn't answer or act on her texts.
He has dozens and dozens of emails and texts stating the same things from her
from years of depression.
He's 9 years younger than me.
She's been suicidal his whole entire life.
He didn't think to act.
She'd taught him not to and while one could say he should've anyway--
I'm not judging him.
He had the same mother I had, but not the same at all.
Even when she was in a "good" place,
suicide was always just under the surface, always an option.

So, no she was never going to die of the typical "Natural Causes"--
not from a disease, or sudden acute illness.
She was going to die of an illness that took 73 years
to take her sanity,
her sense of humor,
her talents and abilities,
her hope and reason,
her marriages,
her daughter and sons,
grandchildren and great-grandchildren,
parents and siblings,
careers and hobbies--
her mental illness increased until there was no room
for anything or anyone else
in her life,
taking every purpose for living away
and leaving a handful of pills as the only option to end the pain.

Natural causes.
Mental illness naturally causes
pain,
depression,
hopelessness,
darkness,
and if left untreated,
death.

How could it be otherwise?

My grief is assuaged by my deepest heartfelt hope that my mom didn't die alone.
That in her final moments, Jesus was there with her.
Loving her pain away.
That her folks and sisters and brothers who've all left this life--they were there too.
And my greatest hope is that one day,
ours will be a sweet reunion.

If you or someone you know struggles with mental illness,

please get help.

The National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) is a great place to start:

800-950-6264