My mom has always been out there. Anyone who has known me for a long time knows that she isn't quite like everyone else. I knew she had mental illness from a young age, but she had always been able to function and didn't seem a danger to anyone. Sure, she was combative and always found something to be angry or worried about, but dangerous? Never!
But last June that changed. I'll back up a bit so you understand what I mean.
Years ago when the story of Andrea Yates came out I started to see my mom differently. If you don't remember Andrea Yates was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She had 5 kids and was homeschooling them despite the fact she had been hospitalized and had recently started medication that would hopefully control her condition. One day she drowned her five kids in the bathtub so she could "save them." After hearing this I started to worry. Like her my mom had five kids and at one point three of us were homeschooled. I started to wonder how we got out of childhood alive. So I decided my children were never going to be left alone in a room with her. Not that she had ever done anything to make me worry, but her disease could not be easily predicted. I encouraged my siblings to have the same policy.
August of 2009 she got into a fight with my younger sister, Christina, and ended up calling the police. Not because anything had really happened. Only because Christina disagreed with her. Christina had been bringing her twin girls over to see her fairly often and leaving them in the house with our mother while she did yard work. But that day our mother got upset about the yard and they argued. While my sister was getting her girls ready to leave the police showed up. They quickly realized there was no real reason they were called, but then my sister begged them to have her hospitalized because of her recent erratic behavior. They referred her to Senior Services, but since Christina had already been trying and failing to get them to help they took her in to be evaluated. My neices witness their grandmother being held down and cuffed so they could place her in the police car. They continued to have nightmares for months after.
My mother began to ask the doctors to kill her and put her out of her misery, so an iffy case for hospitalization became a definite case. She was held TDO for a few days, then involuntary for a few more days. She was released with medication she never took and appointments with the Community Service Board she never kept. I recently found paperwork that said her release was conditional that her family would check on her, but she refused to let us around her. She spoke with us very rarely. Because of state laws we could do nothing to force her into treatment. We talked about guardianship, but worried we wouldn't have a strong case to file and would just make her trust us less and make our job more difficult. I left my phone number with her neighbors in case something happened and did my best to see her when she allowed.
June 2010 I was thinking I had never heard from the neighbors. I figured she might be better, but made a mental note to stop by on my next visit to my mom's house. Then, while waiting in Sam's Club to checkout I got a phone call. I let it go to voicemail since I didn't want to be rude to the cashier. I got an urgent text to call the number back immediately. On my way out of the store I called what turned out to be another one of my mom's neighbors. He had been trying to reach me for a week, but had written my number down wrong and had finally gotten the right number from a neighbor. He informed me that my mother had just tried to kidnap two of his children from his front yard, while saying she was trying to "save them." My heart stopped. He gave me all the horrible details of how she came into the yard and grabbed a two year old. The neighbor's teenage son got her to let go of the little boy and ran with him to the house. As he did that my mother grabbed a six year old and tried to leave with her. The teenager there were able to get the kids free fairly easily and my mother returned to her house.
And this wasn't the first time. She grabbed two kids from the bus stop in front of their house a week prior, but let go of them as soon as the dad asked her what she was doing. I told him to call the police and I was on my way. When Christina and I got there my mother said she was trying to save them because they were being euthanized. She believed there wasn't enough food in the community to feed everyone and an old missionary friend of hers was in charge of a government program to euthanize kids and those who didn't process their food properly (she explained she was required to run her food through a food processor prior to eating). We had her taken by police car to Chesapeake General. No handcuffs this time, thankfully.
There we sat for 13 hours waiting for evaluations, medical screenings, CSB emergency evaluators. My mom seemed okay, but when she dozed off for a few hours she woke up disoriented and couldn't remember why she was there. She started telling me the doctors in the hall were her boyfriend Javan Parsons who is also known as Jon Benet (she says Halle Berry's ex, but that is Eric Benet), also known as Warren Beatty and the famous plastic surgeon Dr Rothchild (nope, don't know who he is either). Dr Rothchild apparently stitches fat women up to make them appear skinny and has sex with them so all their stitches pop out and they are fat again.
Since these men are all of different races I asked her how he could be all those people. She replied that he uses skin bleach and dye to change races in an instant. She tried to escape a few times and lack of sleep and food was wearing on me. Finally about noon (got the call around 8pm) two sheriff's deputy's showed up and created an image in my head that I wish I could scrape out. That was of my mother being patted down and her ankles and wrists shackled to a chain that reached around her waist. She was wearing six-inch high wedge sandals and the female deputy told her to be careful not to fall and to shuffle her feet on the way out. My mom giggled and did a 1990's walking dance to her own tune out of the building.
So this is the worst of it. I could fill up books I'm sure with all the stange things she has done. I have considered going on a comedy tour, but somehow that just makes it sadder. What I hate the most is that the neighbors were so traumatized by her behavior. But if it weren't for that we could never help her.
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