Tribute: Remembering my Mother

And How Suicide May be Passive

“To me, there is a world of difference between “not being dead” and “being alive”.”

~Esther Perel

Two years ago today my mother passed away. Her death was not all too surprising with the CHF (Congestive Heart Failure) and COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). Her death was a result of a combination of a bad genetic hand of cardiac disease and the strain put on her heart after many years of smoking and obesity due to over-consumption of Pepsi (she drank it the way we are advised to consume water).

My mother also endured many, many years of major, chronic depression and bouts of extreme anxiety through generalized anxiety disorder. She also had a lot of untreated trauma, probably PTSD, after being abandoned as a child, her sister’s suicide, her husband’s alcoholism and verbal abuse and his suicide. And, especially later in life, extreme and chronic insomnia.

Aside, but an important one:

(I strongly believe that we need another word or phrase to define and explain such insomnia. It is ridiculous that we use the same word for when one doesn’t sleep well on one night, or has a hard time falling asleep by just a few extra minutes, or wakes up a bit early and cannot go back to sleep on a rare event…as we do with those who barely sleep 2 or 3 hours every night and exist in a catatonic, zombie-like state for years. Most of us are cranky with a night or two of a poor night’s sleep. With people who endure this living hell for years, we need a separate classification or description for this. All insomnia is not created equal.)

In the last few years of mother’s life, she showed an inability to enact, to create new habits and healthier living and it was devastating. It was indeed hard on those of us who loved her, who desperately wanted her to want to live, to make better choices to prolong her life. But it was most heart-wrenching simply because she deserved it. After living for her husband, for her children, for all the kids she loved and taught, she deserved the right to choose life and practices of self-love, self-preservation and self care, for herself.

But she didn’t do that. It appeared she couldn’t.

I watched this for many years. Trying to help her. The most maddening part was that she would have believed that any other woman that she loved and cared about was worth it, and would have advocated that she ought to care for and to prioritize herself. She would have told me that. Hell, she did tell me that, in hundreds upon hundreds of different ways throughout the years, growing up. That I was worth it.

Yet, she couldn’t seem to do this for herself. My best friend told me once recently, “Your mom gave the best advice, if only she could have followed it for herself.” It is true.

I state this as fact. But please do not misunderstand: I don’t blame my mother.

I have no idea what her depression, her own living hell, was like. I don’t understand the layers upon complex layers of her life, all the trauma. I am not sure she could help herself. Her life was rough.

As a mother, she would have moved mountains for me. I think she did, often. She would stretch herself deeply, to unfamiliar territories, to places that scared her, in ways that she would not have done for herself. That she did not do for herself.

As a child of an alcoholic father, growing up in a working poor and deeply dysfunctional family, I benefited immensely from that kind of selfless maternal love and devotion. I do know that I owe her…everything. In many ways all that my life is now, my standard of living, my socioeconomic status, and my title of doctor, is because I had her as my mother, my support and confidant, as my best friend and number one fan.

If my mother were reading these words, I can hear now: She would say that I am giving her far too much credit and that it was all me. But I really don’t think so. As a Cancer, an intuitive water-sign, I thrive on emotional support. I need it to survive and to get through the challenging times. My mother also was the zodiac of a crab, but she did not have that emotional support for much of her life. She made sure that I did for as long as she was alive.

I admire that, and her strong, formidable character. Despite the hellish experiences in her life—my mother never turned permanently bitter, hard or hateful toward life and humankind. I find this to be one of the most amazing things about her—that even though she had all of his crap happen, she was still so deeply kind, generous, caring, and altruistic. She had a good heart and was such a good person. I know there are many who turn cynical, selfish and embittered from a lot less.

Though I do wish, looking back, that she could have swallowed a healthy dose of selfishness; I wonder if it was exactly what she needed. Self love and self care is something we all need. And I don’t think that women, especially, are always taught, accept and guide themselves by this. Especially of her generation. (Though probably all the more when your mother abandons you and relatives tell you that you’re lucky that the popular, handsome boy in high school is even looking your way. So even after he turns out to be verbally and emotionally abuse, often unwilling to work outside of his favored profession, remaining unemployed, and an alcoholic, you stay with him).

Did she have her moments, too comfortable in a victim role? Yes. But then, who could blame her? She WAS a victim for much of life.

But, here’s the thing that I am not sure she ever fully embraced—she was also a survivor. I wish she could have seen herself as that and taken on that mindset in moving forward, guiding her path onward.

Perhaps one of her greatest gifts was in teaching me to do something that she herself was unable to do for herself.

I’ve thought a lot about what it means to be passively suicidal. After my childhood best friend, a friend for 32 years, said to me that all my family members had committed suicide.

I said, “except for my mother.” She replied, “I think of hers as suicide too.

I can see that. I too often consider my mother’s final years to be suicidal as well. My mother would probably roll her eyes at this, well aware of the difference when someone actively and abruptly ends their own life…having deeply felt the consequences of the latter.

I understand the distinction, but still, there is a point here, worth noting.

The truth is, we all play a part in shaping our narrative and creating our own ending. Maybe we don’t choose pills or gun shot wounds to immediately pen our final chapters, but we do make countless decisions every day, maintaining bad habits and lifestyle choices, related to diet, exercise, drug use, overeating, etc, that we know will intentionally shorten our life spans.

Does this mean we all want to die, that we have death wishes? Of course not. But sometimes we don’t want to live and this is a part of depression, a part of what I consider to be passive suicide.

Sometimes being passively suicidal means smoking a pack a day for two and a half decades after your first heart attack.

Sometimes it means not choosing yourself, seeing your own worth as far beyond what you are now and what you have been given, and so instead, moving forward to demand that. Choosing yourself. Prioritizing your own health and your own needs when your husband is unable and unwilling to make less harmful and more altruistic choices. And sometimes it looks like still not doing that later, after his passing, when you have the time and the resources.

Again, do not misunderstand: The point here is not judgment. As I write this, it is ridiculous but I keep hearing a line from Dr. Webber in Grey’s Anatomy: “We all do things every day that could kill us.” Indeed. And they doesn’t make us all suicidal.

But I do think we don’t pay enough attention to the women who never are truly able to live truly for themselves, not embracing their own self worth. Those who ignored an individual purpose, their own health, and whatever self care that they need—treatment, therapy, medication, rehab, interventions, etc, etc, for years and years, so it adds up to a lifetime, that can be passively suicidal.

This was my mother.

To consistently choose others always over yourself, to not know how to live for yourself, to lose your purpose when your kids were gone, and when your husband was—it is some of the unhealth things that my mother modeled for me, and it should indeed can be considered a form passive suicide. (Wanting to die for years and being unable to make life changes to improve your quality of life.) Such an approach to life is not sustainable.

This was mother.

Though..I don’t think this means we ought to go around issuing judgments of whether or not someone is passively suicidal. That’s a slippery slope. We probably could all be accused of that, then, at some point or another. I know I could be.

Likewise, as with active suicides, we are also all oh, so, so much more than how we died. Passive suicides included.

But maybe the important thing is not proclaiming diagnoses, but rather, self-reflection, considering it for yourself. Am I choosing myself? Am I developing and practicing habits to sustain life, to create a life that I want and deserve?

As women, we are often taught to be caretakers, wives and mothers, existing to benefit men in our patriarchal society, in whatever sexual or familial way, I think this is a message that many, many women need to hear and heed. (Including, often, myself). And while having children and being married can be wonderful things in life, and make life meaningful, it isn’t all there is to women. It can’t be all there is to each of us.

Such messages need to reach our daughters. We need to teach this to the next generations of women.

Today, on the second anniversary of my mother’s death, I honor her. I remember her.

She died at the age of 67, on January 4th, her sister’s birthday.

Her sister, Julie had completed suicide in the early 70’s; she also battled multiple forms of depression, including post-partum, chemical imbalances and ill-prescribed drugs (back in a time when they administered tranquilizers (strong sedatives) to those with depression, in the days before anti-depressants, SSRI’s, further exacerbating the problem at hand.)

There is so much more than just this to say about her, to remember about her. I could fill up volumes.

But today, what I reflect on, and realize about her is this:

I can, and I do, choose to benefit from my mother’s life, the experiences she had, the mistakes that she made, and take these lessons so I can live a better life. I know how she shortchanged herself, and I can live my life by choosing myself where and when she did not. I can always practice the belief and constantly remind myself that I, alone, am worth it, not merely because of who I am in relation to others.

Finally, it brings to mind a memory:

I recall a moment in my early twenties, when I was about to marry. My mother was giving me the silent treatment on this, outwardly angry, though deep down, I now know she simply terrified. She worried I was endangering my bright future, doing perhaps the only one thing she advised me never to do—to marry young.

In a rare and funny moment, my father tried to mediate our disagreement. He did get her talking to me and in that moment, when she was explaining to me her position, her voice cracked and she sputtered out through tears: “All I have ever wanted for you was to have…”

“More than you had,” my father finished.

To which, now I would say to her:

Don’t worry, Mommy. I do have more. I have a good life. I am happy and I have had so much more than you did. And it is all because of you.

I love you and I miss you.

Enjoy your rest and your peace. You certainly earned it.