Shortly before Christmas 1996, I got a call from my mother, who I'd not heard from for several years. She was in Billings, Montana and seemed to be at a loss for words when I asked her how she wound up there- she really wasn't making much sense at all, she was drunk, rambling, crying.And coughing.
Mom had been sick for a long time. First she thought it was the flu, then pneumonia or even TB- she had started noticing blood in her phlegm and went to a clinic; it turned out to be lung cancer, which had already started to metastasize. Mom had no insurance , in any case it was much too late for anything but palliative care. She only had a few months to live.
So I flew to Chicago and from there the Twin and I drove to Billings to see what could be done. When we arrived, we found Mom living as a boarder in a dysfunctional house of alcoholics and addicts. It was a terrible place to live and a worse place to die.
At this time, I had just ended a bad relationship with a heavy drinker, and I had decided to "take some time off" from booze- I hadn't admitted yet that I was an alcoholic , but I could certainly recognize it in others and Mom's room-mates were drunks of the worst kind- violent, thieving dangerous people that physically scared me. None of them had Mom's best interest at heart.
We convinced Mom to return home and stay with her brother in Richmond.
She arrived here early in 1997. She survived an entire year longer than the doctors said she would, and she and I used that extra time to try to mend what at one time was an irreconcilably estranged relationship.
She had abandoned us as kids...but we worked that out. Finally.
That's what I told myself.
After Mom died, I boxed up her meager possessions and put them into my closet and pretended they weren't there. I ignored them for years.
Sometimes, when the subject of cancer or illness would come up in a conversation, I would talk about how doctors are sometimes wrong, about how my own mother was granted an extra year of life etc etc...
My friends and family would sometimes look at me strangely when I made those sort of comments...but I never really thought about why. I just figured the whole subject is an uncomfortable one- it is- what I didn't know is that they were watching me for signs of a mental breakdown.
They needn't have worried. I had my breakdown a long time ago and it's over now. It was so traumatic that it took me almost ten years to even know that it had happened, and now it doesn't really matter- I had to face facts is all.
Last winter I started going through my mom's belongings, seeing what I could put together of her life, much of which is mysterious to me. In her things, I found a journal which I cannot help but call her "Death Book", because that is what it is.
It's her journal of dying.
It ends, suddenly, in 1997. Her last entry mentions going shopping for wigs with me.
I remember that trip- we had a blast, Mom had the saleslady cracked up laughing, trying to find the worst possible wig- "I want to look my best for my cremation!"... I remember that.
But I also recalled that extra year of life that Mom never really had.
I remembered an entire year that never was.
I first noticed this last winter when I couldn't find any photos of X-Mas 1997 that included Mom. I thought that was odd. She was here... where are the pics?
Then I read her Death Book.
There was no X-mas 1997 for Mom. She was ashes.
The truth is, Mom came home in 1997 and passed away shortly thereafter. There was no extra time.
After she died, I resumed drinking with a vengeance. Literally.
Not only was I punishing myself for a past I couldn't change, I was also trying to comfort myself with memories of things that never were.
I didn't just realize this this morning. I've known it since last Christmas, but it's not an easy thing to accept or discuss. I'm quite used to the idea of missing memories- some are repressed by trauma, most are blotted out by liquor- but I'm uncomfortable with imaginary memories. It makes me question reality, and that is a slippery slope...but now, when I try to recall that never-year, I find nothing. I'm glad it's not there.
I remember remembering it, but there are no details left at all. I find that to be reassuring, since that year didn't really happen the way I remembered it.
What really happened is that after Mom died, I tried really, really hard to drink myself to death and I failed to do so.
I failed because I wanted to live.
When I questioned my own will to live, I used my mother's memory as a source of strength- Mom was sick and she didn't give up...I would tell myself.
This was about as useful as a delusion could ever be- it kept me away from the booze for over a year; by the time I started to notice that 1997 didn't exactly happen the way I thought it did, I had already started to find other reasons to stay sober- one reason, really.
Not dying is my one-step recovery program.
So I guess I should be terrified that my mind is capable of fooling me in such a significant way, but I'm not. I think I created that extra year because I really needed something to hang onto, a source of courage-anything to get through my post-drinking adjustment to life- and when my subconscious decided that it had served it's purpose, I was compelled to finally read her journal, and learn the truth without falling to pieces.
And it worked. Despite my endless litany of complaints and troubles, I haven't felt the urge to drink. That imaginary year might have saved my life at one point, but I don't need it any more and it seems to have erased itself.
Better it than me, I say.
