In November 1999, my mother fell unconscious for three days. She would wake up to tell my brother and I not to call the police. She would be ok.

She wasn’t.

When she woke up, she was paralyzed on the left side of her body. She couldn’t swallow, she couldn’t lift anything, she could barely speak.

Xander and I became her caretakers. I would do the laundry, shave her legs, massage her feet, make her food. Xander would cook for us and ask Saint Germain questions. We were nine years old, but we grew up mentally so much in those three days. 

Eventually she lost weight. She became emaciated and her hair began to fall out while her skin turned a pale yellow color. She could only eat thin broths, so when we went out to eat she would take along a strainer and she would send Xander or me up to the counter to ask for boiling water.

Then she would choke on watered down mashed potatoes. She would cough and sputter and spit her food out, and hack. While Xander and I sat opposite, blushing and not looking at her. Pride was important in my family, and she would glare up at us with hate, hissing “Do I embarass you?” Her eyes always took on a metallic quality when she did this,”Maybe I should just stop eating and let myself die so you won’t be embarassed.”

Sometimes she’d storm out before we’d gotten a chance to eat, hissing that she was hungry too, but since we wouldn’t help her why should she help us?

These were the times that i’d step back from myself and look at her with disgust. Not because she was disabled, or because she had just coughed up most of her dinner, but because she was the mother, she was supposed to protect us. She wasn’t supposed to scream at us, or decide not to feed us because she couldn’t eat. That’s when I began to divide up my feelings for my mother, and a part of myself began to hate her.

I’d go home, and i’d try to talk to Xander about it, but he’d stare at me in horror and and say “Mom loves us! You can’t say things like that, she’s our mother!” And i’d want to scream back “I know she’s our mother! That’s why she shouldn’t be acting like this!” But I never did. 

Looking back, I can’t imagine how scared she must have been. How frustrated. But I was a nine year old, and I resented the fact that I had to take care of her, that I had to be independent. I had been responsible when we were little and she had seizures, but we’d always had help from one of our family members.

It was the first time the three of us were truly alone.

To make matters worse, she began spending a lot of her time with Xander, having him ask questions. So he became her crutch. She hated being separated from him. Unless we were at the hospital.

Oh yeah, did I mention the hospital yet?

A couple times a week she’d go to KU medical center, and she’d be in there for hours, leaving her two homeschooled nine year olds in the waiting room.

So we’d go to the foodcourt to get icewater, and we’d make detours going through all the floors. Eventually we knew that hospital like the back of our hands. We saw everything, from the maternity ward to the psych ward. Once we even ran into a dead body, and quickly turned around to run the other way.

After about six months of this, my mom went to a retreat, came back, sat us down, and ate a cookie. The first time she had had solid food in years. A miracle.

As Xander and I looked at each other in relief and happiness, we knew it was the beginning of something new. A month later we were on the road to Washington.

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Right before I moved into K and V’s home, my mother and I were in her car, and she was yelling at me for something. I wasn’t really listening until she suddenly said “It’s your fault I’m like this.”

I snapped my head up and stared at her in disbelief. “What?” I asked in a quiet voice.

She gave me one of her looks. “If you had called the police when I was unconscious, I wouldn’t be like this today.”

I was so surprised I started crying. “That’s not true.” I whispered.

“Yes it is.” She said.