I am still the child from whom my mother's mental health was kept a secret.
Did other members of the wider family ever know? Was it ever called a 'mental health' problem? Not that I'm aware. But things were 'different then'.
My father was too afraid of losing her to the mental health system. Like her sister had been before her : in and out of hospital, pills, drama, containment, control, divorce, lost children. I felt sorry for my aunt - why couldn't she spend her money as she wanted, see who she wanted; what else did she have? But 'the family' did not approve. Self-righteous prigs. Were they all hoping for a bit of her money when she died??? (The diagnoses changed over time. She was probably bipolar - or perhaps NPD.) So my father wasn't about to have my mother 'in hospital' or 'treated' for 'mental illness'. Mental hospitals weren't very nice in those days.
When I was in my teens my mother looked at me and said I was depressed and that I was making it all up to copy her. I guess that absolved her from guilt, or having to 'deal' with it.
What she did was define me twice (four times?) over - as depressed and as making it up and as copying her and as not depressed. It's that convoluted kind of statement that I still get lost in. It just won't be pulled apart for me to make sense of and work out what applies and what doesn't. What she implied was that she was depressed. (Should I have understood what that meant, at 16? In the 60s? Probably not)
But I didn't realise that this was a mental health issue. I tried to get help for her (against my father's wishes) - but they just said 'well, your daughter's here now'; I wrote and they didn't reply and my mother's reactions just got more out of touch with reality. And then my father started to become
irrational (new word!) as well. Then I was really lost and alone.
I still didn't realise that it was a 'mental health' issue. Or that it can be 'contagious' if you live with it.
It stopped me from doing many things I wanted to do and from getting close to others. I was always afraid of being 'found out' - as being the wicked daughter or of being the one with the mental health issues!!
And then 'I wouldn't have told you if you hadn't phoned' said my father. My mother was in hospital having electric shock treatment. I sent a greetings card every day but when we spoke on the phone, she complained that I hadn't written 'love from me', just 'love, me'. I rolled my eyes - 'that's typical of my mother'.
But I still didn't realise that it was a 'mental health' issue. 
Nobody sat down with me to explain, to discuss the implications, to apply a label. Well, it's not nice to apply labels to people is it?! She didn't complete the course of treatment. She was still 'depressed' because of 'me'. I should have been shocked myself but I didn't accept her 'diagnosis' of the reasons seriously, so I didn't take the rest of it too seriously either. No-one actively 'involved' me in anything other than as a scapegoat.
And now I assume that I am the
adult from whom my mother's mental health is kept a secret.
But it's not a secret, is it? It's not a secret any more. It says so on the Attendance Allowance application. Mental Health Problems. And I'm going to have to get my head round that, find a new persective on it without the guilt of not having understood through all the years.
But no-one else understood, did they? Or at least, nobody sat down with me to explain or explore. My father seemed to think I was the enemy, going along with my mother's definition of 'it would be all right if only my daughter would be different'. This was all my fault in one way or another. He was angry with me because my mother's refusal to let go meant that I'd come between them.
It wasn't my choice, Pa!
I guess he finally mellowed.
I said my final goodbyes to my parents about five years ago on the occasion of a special wedding anniversary. Or at least, I thought I had. I didn't realise it's what I'd intended. I made one last final try to reach my father. It wasn't to be and so I 'said goodbye'. I was so startled last year to realise I was going to have to open up old wounds to say goodbye again!!! Family expectations. Family phone calls.
Well, yes. I'm glad I did, of course.
What my father had really wanted to do in his last years was revisit the places he served in the war (in France).
I wanted to take him but couldn't face handling my mother. What my mother really wanted was a party - to be the star of the show. She got her wish - a funeral wake.
What lives people create for themselves. I shiver.
And the daughter?
Well, that's not my life. I gave up their life a long time ago. I refused the invitation to carry the 'mental health' burden on through the generations. I refused it a long time ago. This last year I thought for a while it was my only option again - to 'carry' her mental illness for her so she could be well - but I've had to refuse it again. Sorry, Ma! The buck stops with you.
Whatever my life is, it's not dark and enclosed and sheltered and alone and contained and small and lonely. It's VAST. People I've known, places I've seen, lives I've lived! I have space and views and summer and companionship and love. And laughter. Lots of laughter. And a whole load of pain, I admit. And talent to use. And more people to meet. And money and hope and...mess. A whole load of mess, too. There's too much of 'me' and too much of my things and clothes and paper and books and just 'things'.
But it's a start.
Thanks, Ma, for what you gave me that was good.
R
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It's never too late to be what you might have been.
~George Eliot
