David's Inferno (27 page)

But, deeply concerned and acutely aware of fluctuations in my tone of voice, he had to find ways to help me maintain a veneer of functionality, especially in front of colleagues and customers—without forgetting I was holding on by a thread. Efforts for which I remain grateful to this day. Once, cowering in the back of his car—he and his wife up front—acutely aware that they were suffering my despair almost as much as I was, I said, “Well, let's not institutionalize my psychosis.” The irony of which didn't escape any of us.

What about mom? Kids going through an emotional trauma should be able to count on their parents for support. By the time you're 85, however, you don't expect having to worry about a 55-year-old son with the stability of an 8-year-old. Especially when, for many years, you've relied on
him
for the occasional emotional lift.

My mother accomplished a lot in her life. She worked for many years as a social worker in the days when most women still stayed home with the kids. She was one of the first female trustees of an Ivy League University. Plus, she put up with my father for 47 years … an act of courage that was admired by him and all who knew (and loved) him.

Until very shortly before she died, she was independent and
active. Every month or two, however, she'd call and say, “I need a David fix.” She'd been doing it ever since my dad died in the early 1990s.
Translation:
I feel a little down and I need you to cheer me up.

The phrase always made me cringe. Now, it made me want to run for cover. Still, I couldn't blame her: it wasn't that long a drive, she only wanted me to stay for a night, maybe two, and she took me out to some of the best restaurants in town. Plus, she liked to stay in bed late, reading the paper, drinking her coffee, not coming out for a late breakfast until 9 or 10. By then, I'd usually walked off at least the top layer of frenzy and could sit more or less still and have a more or less sane conversation. Bike ride, nap, good dinner, some TV … By 10
P.M
., I'd successfully negotiated another day of madness. It was kind of like reverse “respite care” for Wendy who could have a few days of real peace, without worrying about me being off in some cold-water motel in Kentucky, pounding my fists into the cushion.

Maybe for some people, depression is linked to stuff they have to work out with their parents. I can't speak for them. Mine didn't have that kind of psychological underpinning.

That may be hard to believe in this confessional age, but my mother inadvertently proved it: Toward the end of her life, as she reached the stage where she was functional enough to drink a little wine at dinner but not to go to the bathroom by herself, friends back home started encouraging me to see if there was anything my mom wanted to say before she died. Leftover psychological stuff. It felt artificial to me. But one day she confessed, “I feel like I'm on a merry-go-round and don't know how to get off.” Figuring I might as well take advantage of the opportunity, I carefully asked if there was anything she wanted to say while she could still say it. Her response? “Oh David, don't be morbid …” (To get the full flavor, you had to hear it with the full Providence accent: “Don't be maw-bid.”)

Instead of making me feel guilty for not being able to be there for her during my madness—as any self-respecting Jewish mother should be able to do—she actually managed to concoct a little Jewish
guilt of her own for passing along some of her dolorous Romanian DNA. Her brothers, my uncles in particular, strike me, in retrospect, as kind of old-world depressives—barely “worthy” of the name—who'd like to smile more but don't know exactly what to smile about; as if it were a skill that wasn't really taught in their family.

My father's family of voluble, sharp-tongued Lithuanians was the opposite. As kids, we never knew whether the spot-on and often cutting one-liners exchanged between siblings and in-laws were grounded in love, annoyance, or humor. Eventually, we too realized that all three were important ingredients in the traditional familial
tzimmes
, and slowly learned the fine art of trying to keep them in balance.

As far as they were concerned, my mother was a saint. After all, she had spent all those decades simultaneously enjoying my father's intelligence and wit, enduring his volubility and temper, and worrying about his health (first heart attack at 43) and affection for Scotch (Dewars on crushed ice with a twist of lemon).

Maybe I was just bringing both sides of my genetic demons out of the closet. Maybe my mother felt subconsciously that it was a necessary thing I'd done
for the family
and that she
should
do her part to exorcise them with me. Family meant a lot to her.

And so, while I didn't have a helluva lot of emotional support to offer her at the time—and my spontaneous humor was often more tragic than comic—she continued to call, every month or so, and say, “I need a David fix.” And I would cringe. And I would go. And I would amuse her as best I could. While she would make feel me at home as only a mother can.

Sometimes a little denial is a good thing. In fact, sometimes it's a subtle and profound form of acknowledgment and acceptance.

In terms of family, the holidays are the best of times and the worst of times. Particularly for those struggling to make it until the turkey/Klonopin/whiskey kicks in. (Don't try this at home … or anywhere else for that matter.)

At least you don't have to deal with the everyday stresses of
work. When it's just you and the family, it seems perfectly reasonable to say, “I think I'll go to my room and take a little rest,” as opposed to, “I think I'll skip this meeting, go to my office, close the door, and hide under the desk.”

On the other hand, you usually have to deal with the stresses of being with a lot of people who haven't seen you all year. This involves masking your symptoms in entirely new ways—unless you want to spend all weekend watching mom and close relatives give you deeply concerned, if furtive, looks.

I assure you, however, that a lot of those “looks” are in your imagination (along with a familiar toxic brew of other paranoias). You may
think
you're broadcasting your fragile state at full-volume. But, for the most part, it's muffled by the cacophony of conversation, laughter, china, turkey, TV, and the occasional frustrated expletive.

I remember my traditional Thanksgiving walk with my brother in 2005. It was the first time my nephew joined us. Being able to pepper him with questions about school, sports, music, and the latest technology gave me a lot of “cover.” My brother did see through some of the act. But, even now, he admits to not really understanding what I was going through until he started reading my descriptions of that time.

Rest assured, even people who can tell there's something wrong have a hard time figuring out how serious it is, especially when you respond with the Traditional Depressives' Holiday Disclaimer:

Yeah, I had a bit of a hard time a while back, but things are getting much better. In fact I just started [choose one or more] …

NOTE:
When reciting this disclaimer, always speak quickly and finish the run-on sentence with:
“… So hey, how are you doing?”

Talking to kids is another issue altogether. A friend with a seriously depressed wife and two young children wrote me how he could hardly bear the thought of his kids having to feel the weight of their mother's moods any more than was absolutely necessary. I'm sure it was no easier for her.

Based on the many autobiographies that reference—or are substantially based on—a parent's mental illness, it seems that children are far more affected by what's really going on than what you pretend is going on. I doubt kids can ever avoid the natural tendency to develop defense mechanisms, whether it's to withdraw into their own world, lash out in anger, match your moods swing for swing, or come up with some other creative response. In some cases, they try to parent you. While humbling, this might be, to some extent, unavoidable … particularly in single-parent homes.

Maybe the best you can do is to remember that it's your depression, not theirs; a thought that can be particularly helpful when your kid does something so annoying it triggers an explosion of some of that intense agitation, frustration, and/or rage you've been harboring. Regular outbursts like that can easily take a bunch of therapy sessions for a kid to get over—now, or when they're all grown up and find themselves behaving the same way. I'm sure that every parent, kid, and family is different. And that “age-appropriate” is more than a buzzword. There are a lot of professionals with much more experience than me dealing with this issue. One wrote me:

I can't vouch for the approach personally, but the image is spot on. Depression
is
like a whole other person. It
does
feel like a black cloud. I sure struggled hard not to make it seem like the whole of me. Next time, I'll give it a name. Maybe I'll call it Dante. That'll teach him.

Fortunately, at the time of my breakdown, our daughter Emily was in her mid-20s. She knew I was having a rough time. But also that I'd had rough times before and pulled through. Since she lived a few hours away, there wasn't a whole lot she could do besides visit occasionally, be sympathetic on the phone, and exchange occasional emails in which I provided updates in language so articulately restrained that it concealed, to some extent, the tempest underneath. Plus, we are both familiar with the power of self-medicating with humor. It's a drug we share whenever possible.

It was probably more important for me than her that I tried to “own” my states. It's one thing if you can't manage to act normal with friends. They can make you a cup of tea, give you a hug, make sure you're safely home, and call to check in later. It's way more discomfiting to show that kind of weakness in front of your child, whatever age he or she is. Having him or her feel like they need to parent you undermines the very structure of your relationship.

There are whole books written by and for people in their 50s and 60s about how to deal with sick parents in their 80s and 90s. Certainly when my parents were dying, my brother and I had to take on some traditional parental roles, from balancing the checkbook to dealing with doctors. That's to be expected. But there aren't as many roadmaps for dealing with a successful, high-functioning middle-aged parent who's suddenly been reduced to a dysfunctional blob. In fact, in those cases, most people write books about how their parent's trauma traumatized them!