My Lost Mother

by Marguerite Schneider

Image credit: Aditya Vyas on Unsplash

One winter day, when I was six years old, I realized that I hadn’t seen my mother for several hours. I searched our small home several times, asking my father, sister, and brother multiple times if they had seen her leave the house, and did everything I could, with increasing franticness, to find her. I was worried, for despite being a small child, my mother’s frequent, bitter battles with my dad and older brother, bouts of crying for no apparent reason, tendency to stay in bed on particularly bad days, and inability to get herself together to attend my school events indicated to me that something was seriously wrong.

I next thought that Mom must be in the basement, so I went there. As the door was locked from inside the basement, I couldn’t enter it, but I could hear her moaning and moaning. I called to Mom through the door, but she didn’t answer. All she did was moan. I was terrified, but was more determined than terrified to get her out of the basement.

I then turned to my dad and told him that something was very wrong; Mom had locked herself in the basement and was moaning. His reaction was disbelief that I was either exaggerating or was being too imaginative. As I continued to plead with him, his next reaction was anger, his “go-to” emotion. My unabated frenzy was an annoyance to him. I was getting nowhere and knew on a visceral level that I had to do something big to change the dynamic. So, without consciously intending it, I found myself stepping back and lunging at the basement door, trying to break it down, slamming my little body as hard as I could, multiple times. Ah, I now had his attention.

Dad went to the basement door and heard the moaning. He tried to take the locked door down but couldn’t, so he phoned my maternal grandparents (who lived in the multi-family house) to help. As my grandfather was a genius and his daughter’s life was in jeopardy, he persevered and removed that door, even though it was locked from the other side. I was physically blocked by the adults from seeing my mother. An ambulance was called. I heard something about a bottle of sleeping pills. The ambulance soon appeared with at least two police cars in tow, with their sirens blasting. I shouted out, “Mommy, I love you!” before she was whisked away.

My sister and I spent the night in my aunt’s apartment in that multi-family house, sleeping with our cousin in her bed. It was a small bed full of little girls. We stayed close to each other, like peas in a pod. My aunt was wonderful, speaking to me with kindness, saying that my mother was “sick” but would be better soon, so I shouldn’t worry. She hugged me and checked on us throughout that night. In the morning, I was told that I wouldn’t go to school that day, given that I had barely slept.

Mom returned home the next morning. There was no real psychological evaluation, no period of observation, no reference to see a psychologist, psychiatrist, or therapist of any sort for Mom, or for me. No social worker was assigned to help the family. My mother explained to me that morning with great nervousness on her face and in her voice that she was sorry that she had “scared” me and that everything was fine. I nodded in agreement, while I was crying inside. Nothing was fine.

My uncle (my mother’s younger brother) and his wife were the only people who talked with me about the suicide attempt now and then. I am forever grateful to them for doing what so obviously needed to be done, to talk a bit about a traumatic event with the child who experienced it. They assured me that what happened wasn’t my fault. I largely realized this on my own, but I did feel guilty that I hadn’t noticed her missing sooner and wasn’t able to do much to lighten her burden, other than help with household chores and make her proud of my schoolwork.

The event was otherwise never mentioned to me, reflecting the stigma, the “scarlet letter” of suicide that was imposed on those who either took their life or tried to do so during the mid-20^th century. A suicide attempt then indicated that the person was fundamentally flawed, weak. Further, should the attempt result in death, per my family’s Catholic religion, the person couldn’t be buried in a Catholic cemetery, as their soul was damned to hell for eternity. Mob bosses and murderous, fascist dictators could enter the “pearly gates” to heaven if they received the Last Rites sacrament before dying, while the worst of the fire-and-brimstone damnations was reserved for those whose transgression was difficulty coping with life to the point of taking their own life.

Through therapy as an adult, I gained a sense of the impact of this early traumatic event on me, on my life. I believe that the event’s impact could have been far worse and might have severely negatively impacted my life, and count my blessings about this. My diagnosis is dysthymia, which is chronic, mild depression that can lapse into bouts of major depression. I frankly can’t imagine what it’s like to not have mild depression, as it’s my “normal” internal state. I’m acutely aware when my symptoms worsen. The first sign is that I start to see color less vividly, as if a fog is present. I am grateful that I have a perceptual cue to be on alert, and work the heightening depression out of me, before it encases me. I’ve taken medication twice in my life, for about a year each time, to help shake off a thick, persistent fog, and it helped, though I switched off the first medication, which made me so perky and cheerful that I couldn’t stand myself. It was strange being on that medication, hearing the gleeful, giddy person who inhabited my body.

I never denied to myself that the event occurred, and remember thinking about the unholy ignorance of a societal system that largely abandoned me when I was so vulnerable. I thought this, without the fancy language, even as a small child. It can be healthy to rage against the machine. My mother and I never spoke about the event, even after decades had passed, when I was an adult with my own children. I felt that she was ashamed of what happened that day, and that mentioning it would worsen her depression. Mom did seek counseling when she was a young senior and gained insight into herself. We spoke about the counseling and about her diagnosis. Her depression lessened in her senior years, and she experienced great joy with my daughters. We were close before she passed.

Through continued reflection, I’ve gained a greater perspective on what I experienced and why I experienced it during my childhood. My mother was clinically depressed at a time when “mental illness” was a term applied to those who were either institutionalized or were truly dysfunctional human beings. Accordingly, Mom wasn’t “mentally ill” as she managed to function, but lived her life in a hollow way. I rarely brought friends home because of the thick fog of depression that encased the house, reflecting my mother’s distant, forlorn presence. I made excuses to others for why she rarely attended events at my school, as she made excuses to me (“You’re doing so well, there’s no reason for me to get involved”). If she did attend a school event, my beautiful mom would wear a “babushka” headscarf, partially shielding her face, and speak very little. I’ve realized that my mom was “lost” well before, as well as after, the day that she physically locked herself in the basement and ingested many sleeping pills.

I still have some of that little girl in me, and I like her. She is smart and vulnerable but puts up a concrete wall to protect herself when needed. She rarely hesitates to acknowledge when she perceives that trouble is brewing on the horizon, and she is often right about it. I have developed a more finessed approach to convincing others, drawing them in, rather than turning them off (or hurling my body at a locked door) when I sense that trouble is brewing. She favors the truth and has near-zero tolerance for houses of cards built on falsehoods, lies, and deceptions. This last point has been problematic for me in work situations. I have done well but am intentionally unwilling to tell lies (other than little white lies), to sell my soul more than a bit, and those qualities are necessary to advance career-wise past a point. I say this with a Ph.D. in management, so my statement is more than simply an opinion.

The strangest aspect of the event, one that still stuns me at times, is the fact that by the time I was a young child, I had saved a life, my mother’s life. People who have saved a life – be it a family member, friend, or stranger, in the line of duty or not – are generally adults who find it to be a critical event in their lives; something that changes their lives. The experience of saving my mother from her suicide attempt is not the same for me. As I had only a few short years of life before the event, with expectedly vague recollections of those early years, almost all my memories are post-event. So, saving my mother from her suicide attempt became one of several foundational events in my life, rather than a moment that changed an already-formed me. I simply cannot imagine who I would be without having experienced that incident.

Image credit: Illiya Vjestica on Unsplash

I am grateful that I had sufficient awareness to notice that my mother was missing that day, and that I had an unabated need to find her. I am grateful that I was tenacious enough (a life-long quality) to carry on until someone got that door down. That little girl intuitively knew what needed to be done and did it. Saving her mother was a directive, and the toll on her was a small price to pay for following through on the directive. But the price might have been less if appropriate, timely counseling had occurred.

Substantial progress has been made in attitudes regarding depression and suicide, which no longer bear the strong societal stigmas that once compelled people to feel abject shame regarding them. Suicide hotlines and the touching, personal reflections of public figures such as Anderson Cooper have served well in lessening the stigmas. Teachers (among others) in some states are “designated reporters,” meaning that they have a professional and legal obligation to report any concerns about a child’s possible abuse or neglect. Accordingly, it might seem that my essay is anachronistic, that my six-year-old self’s experience wouldn’t happen today and therefore is irrelevant. Unfortunately, this conclusion is wrong. Trauma related to depression and suicide continues to occur, harming those who experience it. I implore that no trauma, especially that affecting children, should ever become an unexamined secret, a secret that will inevitably fail in its attempt to convince those affected that things are “fine” when they intuitively know otherwise.

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Marguerite Schneider

After earning many degrees, working in many capacities, and attaining a notable academic publication record (see here), Marguerite Schneider decided to satisfy her six-year-old self by writing creatively. Her short stories appear in magazines including Crescendo and Persimmon Tree, and anthologies including by Chicago Story Press and Pure Slush. Marguerite is currently querying her first novel, Murder at St. Mark’s, a historical murder mystery. She enjoys gardening, yoga, reading, writing, volunteering, and walking her rescue dog Murray. Marguerite, husband Rich, and Murray live in the Bronx and Hudson Valley, New York.