The Worst Day of the Year

Yep. It's today.

I almost ran out of gas on the way to work. I love my car, but like everything else in my life, it's got its quirks. Its most major one is that my gas tank can be virtually empty and the needle on the gas gauge points to a quarter of a tank.

Or more, as it was doing this morning. But when it gets low, the car starts sputtering. People on I-40 don't like it when sputtering cars are sharing their road. One trucker particularly didn't like it. He can kiss my ass.

After making a stop I wasn't necessarily planning to make and driving about a mile out of my way to get 3 gallons of gas, the car was happy. But I was late for work. Not good.

We were two people short in our department today. One of them was the supervisor. Guess who's the supervisor when the supervisor's not around?

Everyone in this county who ever thought the newspaper might be interested in their story showed up at my doorstep today. Most days, that's OK. Today it wasn't.

I had two jobs to perform today -- mine and the supervisor's. My end wasn't looking so good. Then the proverbial shit hit the fan. Major story. Must get in the paper ASAP. Must have already-stretched-thin staff on the story. Now.

After a few hours in the scorching heat, the already-stretched-thin staff straggles back in from newsgathering to put their work together. That's when my Very Loud Co-worker decided to pump it into high gear. Only this time she was joined by her dickhead friend.

Blahblahblahblahblahblah ... And so it went. Louder. And Louder. AND LOUDER. The already-stretched-thin staff was having trouble concentrating over their chatter. I was having trouble concentrating. So, I did what any quasi-supervisor would do. I got up, went to their Corner 'o Chat, explained what was going on, and asked them to keep it down.

Very Loud Co-worker was sincerely apologetic. I thought it was classy of her.

Dickhead said, in his most sarcastic voice, "Oh, we're sorry."

He can kiss my ass, too. No, wait. I don't want him anywhere near my ass. He can go fuck himself. With a white-hot fork. The size of a pitchfork. Sideways. Up his ugly anus. (Can you tell I really don't like this guy?)

Today was shitty all on its own, but it was destined to be that way.

Had she lived, today would have been my mother's 64th birthday.

Her birthday is always hard for me. It's when I miss her most.

So many things were left unresolved between us. There's no way, barring recovery from the mental illness that eventually led her to take her life, that things could have been resolved.

In the last few years of her life, our roles had changed. I was the mother, reminding her to take her medicine and keep her psychiatric appointments. She was the meek child with good intentions she rarely carried out.

I have yet to grieve for her properly. I have yet to shed a tear. I planned the funeral. Picked out the coffin and her attire. Chose the spray of flowers adorning her casket. Arranged for the pallbearers because her lazy-assed nephews couldn't be bothered with it. Made sure Daddy had his Xanex so he could get through the service. Held my daughter as she weeped for the grandmother who would never see her graduate from high school or attend her wedding. Drove all over East Tennessee shopping for funeral attire for both of us.

It's seldom slowed down since. I miss my mother on the anniversary of her death and major holidays, and I travel 60 miles from here each Memorial Day to place flowers on her grave. But it's her birthday -- the anniversary of the day she drew her first breath -- that I mourn her.

Happy birthday, Mommy. I love you.

I'm not alone

My mother's death left me with more questions than answers.

Bipolar disorder, the mental illness that prompted my mother to take her life, is genetic. Could it be that I'll be afflicted with it somewhere down the road. What about my beautiful daughter? Could this horrible disease affect her thoughts and addle her peaceful existence?

Could I, by calling my mother earlier that day, have prevented it?

Is there some way I can talk to her? I just want to hear from her one more time.

I found out a week or so ago that someone else is having the same kind of thoughts.

Anyone who watched "The Young and The Restless" in the 1980s is familiar with Thom Bierdz. The name may not be familiar, but his role as Phillip Chancellor III has been pivotal since the early days of the soap.

(This is the part where I admit that I was an unabashed fan. I thought he was just about the most handsome thing I'd ever seen walk across the TV screen.)

That's why I immediately recognized his name when I came across it while doing some online research last Sunday. I always wondered whatever happened to the guy whose smoldering good looks lit up my TV screen daily and whose demise has me carrying a grudge against "The Young and the Restless" almost 20 years later.

What happened was an almost indescribable horror.

After Thom's character was written off in 1989, it looked like he was headed for a career to match Tom Cruise's. His fast track to stardom was stopped weeks later, however, when his baby brother bludgeoned their mother to death with a baseball bat. And some years later, his other brother committed suicide.

Thom reveals all those feelings and his search inside himself in Forgiving Troy: The Art-o-biography of Thom Bierdz. I found excerpts of the book on his Web site, and I was mesmerized.

He had the same feelings I do. In reading those few pages, I found someone who looked into my soul.

That feeling was even more validated when I received the book in the mail today. Now an acclaimed artist, Thom uses some of his paintings to illustrate the feelings he describes in words. It's a heart-wrenching, soul-searching read, and one I highly recommend.

For me, it's therapeutic. By reading about Thom's trials and tribulations, I'm discovering myself -- and my mother.

Thanks, Thom.

Outrage

Meredith Vieira is outraged.

She's not alone. Talking heads are filling the airwaves with their perplexities, wondering why on earth nothing was done to treat a disturbed young man before he went on a rampage that left 33 dead, including himself.

This is no surprise to those of us who have dealt with mental illness personally. Nobody takes it seriously -- except those living with it.

Insurance companies -- including Medicare and TennCare -- will only pay for so many days. I literally counted the days until the end of a six-month period, when Medicare would again pay for my mother's stay at a mental hospital.

Even those trained to deal with mental illness don't recognize it. Time and again, I would beg them to keep Mom for further evaluation and treatment.

"She's OK," they'd tell me, practically pushing the poor soul on me to take home to wallow in her personal hell.

Except she wasn't. My sweet mother, who only completed the seventh grade and spent her life doing menial jobs to support first her aging parents and then my sister and me, could give an Academy Award-worthy performance in front of others. My aunt and I, however, could look into her eyes and see the troubled soul that lurked underneath. And no matter how much we protested, they continued to tell us she was OK.

We begged her to take her medicines. She wouldn't. We'd rat her out to her doctors. They'd rail. She'd promise to do better. She wouldn't.

That's the roller coaster of mental illness, folks.

And HIPAA -- what a joke. There were times I couldn't talk one-on-one with my mother's caregivers because -- SURPRISE! -- I wasn't listed as one of the people they could talk to. THE WOMAN WAS MENTALLY ILL!!! Putting my name on a form wasn't uppermost on her mind in the river of misery that led her to treatment.

I called health officials and said, "Look -- you can't talk to me; but I can talk to you." And talk I did.

"Please don't let her out."

"Please. I found a noose in her apartment. I'm afraid she'll kill herself."

"She's not taking her medicine."

"She's conning you."

They listened, all right -- they signed release forms and sent her back to continue her path of destruction.

I wrote my congressman and begged him to re-examine the HIPAA law in relation to the mentally ill. He didn't even bother to respond with a form letter thanking me for my interest. Bastard.

The demons that haunted my mother were quieted just over two years ago. It was no thanks to the society that was meant to protect her or any physician or health-care worker who finally saw the light.

My mother took matters into her own hands. One sunny Sunday morning, she pointed a handgun between her breasts and squeezed the trigger.

The woman who gave me life silenced her demons by taking her own. A victim of a system that didn't take her illness seriously.

Now 33 are lost for the same reason. Meredith is outraged -- and so are many others.

Maybe a national outrage will force people to listen. Maybe it will lead to better care for the mentally ill.

It's the prayer I lift while asking for strength for the families of the victims -- including the parents of the gunman.