Dear Mother

As some of you may know, our Mother, Ola, suffered from Paranoid Schizophrenia.  It was diagnosed and for real.  (I'm going to spend a little more time on this post since it is maybe very interesting, at least to me.)  When my Dad left Mother, she had a very tough time.  She continued to teach school, but decided that this would be a good time to follow her dream.  So, she enrolled in one of the Claremont Colleges.  How she got in, I don't know.  Maybe because her major was piano, there were auditions to get into that program.  Anyway, she thrived in that program and was pegged by her teacher as a top concert pianist prospect.  In fact, her teacher, an established concert pianist, had lined up a series of concerts for the two of them . . . dual pianos.  That told us how good Mother was.  She had always been the organist/pianist for church, but always her talent was sort of hidden behind the out-going figure of my Father who was very talented in his own right.  Well, and I'm not sure of the exact sequence of events, the first thing that happened was that her teacher was apparently a lesbian and made a pass at Mother.  You can imagine.  In those days, with this woman, you could scarcely think of a worse thing to happen.  However, I think Mother got over it and came to terms with it and was still prepared to go on.  Then, as she was leaving her job one day after school, her shoe/heel got stuck in a crack in the asphalt of the parking lot and she went down.  As is the case in many of these incidents the very body part which would bring the most disaster was injured.  A large gash was opened in the palm of her hand.  Now, with a business as intricate as concert piano playing, that kind of a wound spells the end of a career.   And it did that for Mother.  Well, that was the last straw.  She went over the edge.  She was seeing a psychologist who finally recommended hospitalization.  At that particular moment . . . you know what . . . I have always thought I was there to make the decision by myself, but I think Larry was with me.  We checked around, talked to the psychologist and decided that the Rosemead Psychiatric Hospital would be best for her.  The head of the psychiatric department at the University of Southern California was the hospital director.  It was very expensive, but I was willing to go into debt to have her there.  I think she was there for about a month.  While she was there she was administered shock treatments.  I think twenty-five in all.  It was a bleak time for the family.  I think when she got out she went to live with her Mother, Nana.  But, then she went off and ran . . . ran from the demons and people that in her paranoid state were after her.  And, one of us, in the beginning, I think mostly me, later I think Larry was very involved and actually had Mother staying with him in Chico became her "try-to-be caretaker.  Most of the time we did not know where she was.  Once in a while we would get a call from a motel manager telling us we had better pick her up because she was going to get hurt.  The places I know she roamed were in the San Diego Airport, staying warm in the inside restrooms, skid row of Los Angeles, helping to bring about racial justice and harmony by making love to skid row black men and many, many other places.  Once she told me about finding an RV in a car lot with the door open.  She went inside and spent the night.  However, the bathroom was not working, so she squatted and urinated on a throw rug that was there.  She said in the morning, she took it to a service station bathroom and rinsed it out and took it back to the RV.  Once in a while she would call me.  What you see above are the notes I took during one of those calls, this one on January 29, 1986.  (Incidentally, January 29 is Joshua's birthday.)  I'm not sure you can read the writing.  It is mine.  But, I am going to copy it down here.  I want to you get a feel for what it was all about.  

I wrote the word "Mother" at the top and the date indicating that the notes were about a call I got from her.  The words "Easy Motel" are also at the top.  I don't know if that is where I found out she was staying or that was later.   Anyway, here is what I wrote:

"I'm safe and sound.  I have people looking out for me all over Fresno.  It's still a dangerous place for me to be.  This boy had a red head band  . . . he was sent.  It meant don't go to Reedley, Orange Cove, get out of here!

I think he told lies . . . he didn't have the head band on so  . . . 

I know my room is bugged.

I know I these black guys are looking after me.  Had I pushed it that night the guys that sent him might have been after me with knives.  

I better not go to Orange Cove or Reedley or Dinuba because of the illegal Aliens.  They are after me.  But, San Diego has already been through that.

I'd like to stay in Fresno, but I get the message to go.  They walk by me sometimes to remind me.  Everywhere I go they're watching me.  

I can't ride the bus.  That's where they are.  The Mexicans are there.  You can't tell which ones are and which ones aren't.

They want to kill me or give me a bad time.

When I was in Reedley, that's the most danger I've been in.  They followed me all over.  Carloads of them.

My rent is paid up until Friday, but I won't use it.

Sirhan and Rosy Greer are problems too, but that has quieted down.  

I have a problem in Riverside.  The Sheriff's Department turned poison on me.

I don't think Dad and I want to get married.  I will always have affection for him.

I felt that I told . . . 

Even when I go to a psychiatric Office it's bugged . . . Like Dr. Winters.

My predicament is . . . 

I was thinking of getting a van.

Credit has to be all right.

I need to move now.  They're after me.  I could just fly straight to Riverside, then see Jeff and pay my bill at the mini-storage place and then go to San Diego.

I don't think I made actual contact with her after this particular phone call.  Sometimes I would make contact with her.  I would take her to the psych ward of a local hospital.  They would keep her for 72 hours, stabilize her on medication and then let her go.  She'd be off running again because as soon as she got out she would stop taking her medication.  She could function pretty well when she stayed on her medication.  

You may wonder how this all turned out.  Well, finally she ended up in Tulare, California, and somehow she got a social worker who took her case.  This worker thought she should be on a conservatorship.  We all agreed.  Well, if that is going to happen to you in California, and you don't want it to happen, you have the right for a jury trial.  That's right a jury trial to see if you need to be on the conservatorship.  Mother asked for . . . demanded the jury trial.  Three psychiatrists, the social worker and I testified.  During my testimony which favored the conservatorship, Mother glared at me with disbelief.  How could I abandon her like this.  It was a very hard time for me.  The jury deliberated for ten minutes and came back saying, yes, she did need to be on the conservatorship.  

The rest of her years were relatively peaceful . . . never, happy, but rather content.  I know she taught piano at a local music store in Tulare and looked after the elderly matriarch of that family.  Not sure of the rest of the story.  

I do know that the end for Mother came in a rather nice "institution" in the foothills above Fresno.  I went to visit here there one day with Jeanne, Larry and his boys.  She was mostly out of it and died a short time later.  She did not talk to us, nor indicate that she knew we were there.  However, at one point I started to sing hymns to her, "What a Friend we Have in Jesus," "Shall we Gather at River," and others.  Her little mouth withered with age and without teeth now, puckered in so that the lips disappeared into the mouth cavern, she mouthed the words of those hymns to me as I sang them softly to her.  Several different ones for quite a while.  It was/is one of the lovely moments of my life.

I have to be honest, much of this time has gone away from my memory.  What I do remember may be faulty. . . not far off .. . but faulty.  I hope Larry will come along and correct and/or add to this narrative.