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Memories of Mom

by Laura Salvaggio
1/20/2007 / Family

Mental illness is a presence, a dark puzzling presence. You can feel it in a quiet house, a clock ticking, a bedroom door closed, and children not playing.
My mother suffered with depression and paranoia. As a child, I didn't understand why my mother slept most of the day. She didn't bother to get dressed some days. My mother hid herself, never really getting involved in my school activities or any activities of her own. She might try to start and for a day or two would join a ladies group or church group, but within a few days,she would quit.
Her depression caused her voice to be tired, often sighing when she spoke. She sat in her chair, like a prisoner unable to go anywhere. Being tired, her thoughts kept her from going beyond herself. She thought so much that her thoughts became paranoid. My mother often felt people were against her, plotting against her.
Mental illness is the silence through the house, a breeze blowing, a dark bedroom, happiness far away.
My mother was beautiful physically, though she never saw herself that way. She was like a tiny flower, trying desperately to push up through the weeds, trying desperately to push beyond her world of chains. She had times when she was so close to pushing through, to being a beautiful flower standing among the weeds. But the heavy rain, the hurricane force winds of mental illness beat her down and eventually drowned any hope of going beyond.
As a child, I wrote a letter to Jesus almost every day asking Him to help my mother. To help me and my brothers because life was often like walking on a swaying bridge about to give way. Swaying, swaying. moving back and forth. You just never knew when that bridge was going to give way. Often it did, and when it did, it meant days, moments of wishing you were anywhere but here. My mother's paranoia produced a sharp, hurtful tongue, she could cut you to pieces in seconds. Her words, produced by her own feelings of hopelessness, could reduce you to tears. My brothers and I cried in silence. Behind closed doors. We all hid,in different ways. I hid in my room, a sancuary for me. I would write, pray. listen to music, dream of being far away.
For my family, mental illness was a thief. A leech. Holding my mother captive and sucking her dry. The thief robbed us of a mother who was never able to realize her potential. A mother who was beautiful and gifted and funny at times yet was never able to go beyond the depression, the vacuum that sucked the life from her.
My mother passed away two years ago. My heart was broken when she died. But my spirits were lifted when I realized that my mother was now free. She was free to laugh, to love! She was free from the heaviness, no longer a prisoner. She was set free in the loving arms of Jesus!

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Laura Salvaggio is mother to 4 year old Grace and wife to husband Frank. She and her family live in Panama City Beach, Florida.

Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com-CHRISTIAN WRITERS

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