Hello there again,

Do you know, several years ago a social worker who was working with my mother wanted my mother's premission to write about her life in a book he was compiling on people with mental illness... (she refused)

Life with her was very difficult, but like you, i am glad she raised me and that i was not transfered to an institution. This was due largely to my grandmother's intervention. To this very day i can still remember when an ambulance came to our house (we lived in a small rural town), and a white-coated man (perhaps a doctor ora para-medic) held my mother down as she screamed while another white-coated woman gave my mother some sort of injection. Then she was taken away... She had on a light blue paisley dress... I was no more than 4 or 5 years old then. (i am now 46) Another ambulance took my brother and me to a foster home... My brother cried, but i didn't the callaus woman who came with us just said to my brother: "why are you crying, there is no reason to cry..."

We spent the summer in foster care. The people were not unkind, but i missed my mother so much... She is a very warm-hearted woman. Generous and kind with real sympathy for those with misfortunes. Despite being so unfortunate herself... No hard luck story ever appealed to my mother in vain.. She was a living example of empathy and social justice... What more can i tell you about my lovely mother? She was simply a divine person...

I belive what brought on her illness was her father's abandonment of her and her three sisters when she was in her early teens. She was the oldest and very close to her father. She dearly loved him and he abandoned her... Even to this day i don't belive she has ever recovered from this shock. She never spoke about him or what had happened. i learned of it from my aunt.

Today she is almost 85 and very fragile (physically). So much so that her mental illness is no longer apparant because she is so weak. She spends most of the day in bed and is fading fast...

Throughout the years i have kept my mother's condition a total secret even from my own family (other than my 3 aunts, my husband, and 2 very elderly cousins of my mother's who knew), from my husband's family, my children and closest friends.

This was not only to protect my mother's dignity, but to protect myself and my children. I am sure you realise that though society has come a long way, mental illness is still considered a very dark stain...

My parents divorced when i was an infant, but i still remember how my father refered to my mother when we saw him... To this day (though he died 12 years ago) i haven't forgiven him for slighting her dignity. She was an infinitly superior person to him.

As i said, after that summer we never returned to our house again. We (along with my mother) went to live at my grandmother's apartment. I later learned that this arrangement was one of the conditions that allowed my mother to keep custody of her children.

Of course there was always much pain and suffering always trailing after my mother. She screamed so much and so often. To this very day i simply cannot bear to hear people screaming.. She was unstable and unbalanced, and unless forced to, always going off her medication. (Whatever was available in those days)

But she also always bought us presents. And always hugged and kissed us and lavished all the love of her big heart on us...

She is great! A true original! My children love her, and like children over-look her eccentric behaviour. My son is espeically close to her. He tells her: "Saf-saf, (his pet name for her) don't worry, soon the messiah will come and he will make you young and healthy again..."

Do your children know your mother? What are their feelings towards her? What brought on your mother's illness? Was there no grandmother, or family to help out?

Thank you for enabling me to write this. As i said, i've always kept my mother's illness as a closely guarded secret. Behind the anonimity of the internet it is a rare relief to be able to tell all this...

I am sure there are many more people out there who grew up with mentally ill parents, but i suppose they too cling to their privacy and shroud of silence...

Thank you again for your truly lovely posts...