• Apologetics
  
• Arts Ministry
  
• Children's Ministry
  
• Evangelism
  
• Pastors
  
• Worship
  

Helping Families Cope with Mental Illness Part 2
by Norman Bales
All About Families


Send this page to a friend

As my mothers condition progressed, she withdrew from society, even in her rational periods. She had always been an active conversationalist. Gradually she lost interest in many subjects and sat in silence for long periods of time. Besides that, people were afraid of her. The county judge's son was one of our neighbors. The judge encouraged us to move. We felt a certain degree of ostracism. We did find acceptance within the Christian community. A wonderfully dedicated Christian woman visited her regularly as she grew older. During her "good" times she always made it to church, but she was no longer the social person I had remembered from early childhood.

I went through all the growing up experiences that an adolescent normally faces. I didn't waste much time feeling sorry for myself and I didn't care much for the well-meaning do-gooders who told me they felt sorry for me. Two of my best friends lost their parents in a tornado when they were tots. At least I had a mother and a father.

Unfortunately my father and I remained in ignorance concerning mental illness. No physician ever discussed her condition with me until very late in her life. My father shared very little of the information given him by those who treated her. So I remained in the dark, with a lot of unanswered questions. It was not until I enrolled in a graduate psychology course that I learned the name for her condition - paranoid schizophrenia.

When I reached adulthood, I left home and really dealt with her condition only on an occasional basis. I went to college, married, went to graduate school and then spent most of the rest of her life living several hundred miles away from my parents. After Ann and I married, we often brought our children for a visit to my parents' home. More often than not, she would be in a psychotic episode when we got there. We had to balance a desire to have the children bond with their grandparents against our concern for their safety and well-being. They responded to her in different ways, but in time they developed a great love for her, though it was difficult for them to express it. They missed the opportunity to bond with a grandmother who bakes cookies, tells stories and plays games. Although they had that privilege with Ann's mother, we felt a sense of emptiness in terms of developing grandmother-grandchildren relationships. Ann actually dealt with her quite well. She had the advantage of studying behavioral medicine in her nursing training and recognized certain aspects of her behavior. On those rare occasions when my mother was rational, Ann would take her shopping and had the privilege of ministering to her in a significant way on the last day of her life. Life was very difficult for my father. Basically he coped with the situation by losing himself in work, but he remained loyal to her throughout his lifetime, which is more than many husbands in that situation are willing to do.

I felt a certain sense of sadness because I felt such an enormous emotional distance from the person who gave me life. I went to their home and irritated her so badly she asked me to leave. While I knew her behavior was not rational, I found it difficult to handle. Earlier that year, she had undergone surgery for the removal of a malignant abdominal tumor. A month after she asked me to leave her home, her physician called. He said, "The cancer has return and has spread to other parts of her body. She has only days to live. You need to come right now, because she has reverted to rationality, but I don't expect it to last." I boarded a plane the next day and hurried to her bedside. She spoke with more enthusiasm than I had remembered in a long time. Over the next three weeks, we reviewed her life, came to grips with issues that had created emotional distance between us and we talked about dying. She showed no evidence of fear, whatsoever. When the cancer finally took her life, her doctor looked at me and said, "Norman, I can't explain why she was rational these three weeks. Consider it a gift from God." Indeed it was.

NEXT WEEK: "Obstacles A Family Faces in Coping With Mental Illness"

Send this page to a friend: