It was one of those hot and sultry Southern summers that leave a person wishing to God for nothing more than central air blasting at full. I was languishing in my stylishly modern home that felt more like a pre-fab bomb shelter than any true dwelling. School was starting the next day which meant another year of aimless and lonely wandering through a parochial hell big enough to have an 'in' crowd of which I wasn't part, but small enough that I could never get away from the girl I loved but who thought I was really 'nice.'

In other words, I wasn't in the best of moods and I didn't react well when my mother told me to accompany her in taking my brother back to school. He was a nursing student in one of Memphis' better hospitals on some outrageous scholarship designed to give students a chance to [succeed] despite a rather poor academic history. In my opinion, he was a male who was willing to give bedpans a whirl in an age that needed male bedpan whirlers. Unfortunately, he realized that nursing was an actual job requiring more work than he would ever be willing to do. That meant that after a whole week of classes, he was about ready to give in and was giving mom the old "I'm sick and can't go back to school routine." Driving with these two did not seem like a good idea to me at all.

My mother has never been what you would call the strong type. At the age of fifteen, I had already taken the control of my life away from her and into my own hands. In fact, I don't think I even considered obeying her usually misguided demands. On most days, it was a simple matter of telling her no, but not today. "Get in the God-damned car!" screamed my mother. Intrigued and more than a little frightened, I did as I was told. I should have ignored her again.

Pulling out of the drive-way, my mother started to talk about road signs. Road signs. What the hell kind of conversation is that, especially pulling out of the driveway? Road signs, road signs to hell, road signs from God that lead to a ruined life of drinking and missed opportunity. This wasn't really directed at me rather than my brother's blossoming alcohol problem as well as my father's already well-established addiction. Obviously, mom was on one of her highly emotional and deeply religious kicks, the only sort you can get from a good charismatic catholic upbringing. This wasn't too big a deal for me -- I had been watching her speak in tongues since my early childhood. To me, it was just part of who she was.

The talk continued through my brother's protests and my indifference. It also continued despite my mother's rather disconcerting lack of direction. I mean that figuratively and literally. While the conversation spun through world religions, signs from God, and torturous disasters in the future, the car sped through Memphis, never quite getting on the right track to my brother's dormitory. In fact, we ended up on the other side of town near that wonderful and mystical place called "Graceland." I really don't know what most people's ideas are concerning this monument to some fat freak who died on the toilet, but to most Memphians it's just that: a monument to some fat freak who died on the toilet. But there we were, hearing a discussion of biblical tidings while pulling our old Cougar into the driveway of the King's mansion. Of course, this is a rather heavily guarded area due to the tides of lunatics that come to wail over the fallen icon. As soon as my mother stopped the car to emphasize some point, security was rushing the car and screaming to get moving before they called the cops.

In most any other situation, my mother would have smiled, immediately backed the car into traffic and been about her way. Today, she simply stared. Her eyes were wide open with a look of vague but palpable terror etched into every crevice around her lids. My brother and I were screaming as loud as the security guards but all sound, all movement, all thought stopped as a wail of utter despair ripped from my mother's throat. It seemed as if a life time of pain and frustration had welled up at once only to burst into the world as one pathetic signal of resignation and surrender. Accompanying the sound, huge tears welled-up and fell like rain drops down her cheeks. I guess my mother's entire life had been spent looking for God and his grace. Here, at the iron gates of the land of grace, she was denied and told to turn back.

She quickly recovered from her thwarted attempt. Flashing the guards a grin and calmly pulling out of the drive way, my mother stopped the car in a nearby parking lot. My brother's patience ended here and he forced her to give up her role as driver and relegated her to passenger. As with all things with my brother, this was accompanied by a torrent of curses, insults, and accusations. My mother listened attentively the entire time, every so often saying "ok," or "all right." Over and over she simply accepted the tirade with an "ok," or "all right."

My brother was one of those types of people who took great pleasure in forcing his will onto others. In a life replete with failed attempts at the gridiron, classroom, and in love, it was about all he really had to keep his place in the world. Unfortunately for my mother, she was the usual target for his tirades for no more reason than she never put up a fight. Today she received the full force of my brother's impotent and loud fury. The stream of profanity continued as the miles melted underneath the churning tires of the car, pulling my brother closer to his destination, while my mother was losing her way. Finally, we pulled into my brother's home away from home. With a few more well-placed curses and insults, my brother bid us good-bye and told mom to go straight home and to drive safely. After all, he did care about her. Mom once again took control of the vehicle and we sped away. At the time, I knew pretty much nothing about the streets of Memphis because I never paid attention to where I went, or even how to get to anywhere that I couldn't walk to. I wished I had as my mother pulled onto one of the major expressways.

This, of course, was the time for the calm and caring voice of the younger son to give a sense of stability to the situation. Quite honestly, I wasn't very calm and I hadn't really cared for anything in a long while, and my mother was anything but stable. However, I have always been a mediocre actor, and from my mother's blank expression, she didn't care too much anyway. "Mom, I understand that you think religion is very important, but sometimes, you have to keep your head." On and on I went, bashing religion and bashing faith. The entire time, my mother continuously agreed with me, "Ok," and "all right." It didn't occur to me at the time, but she responded to my words the same way she responded to my brother's. My brother and I have never had too much in common, but we did share this; my mother didn't hear either of us. Soon, we left the expressway and went right into a heavily wooded area.

I asked her to turn around, I asked her to stop acting so strangely, I asked her to get us home. She simply stared straight ahead. "I don't know where we are," she said finally. "I don't know where I am going." Perfect. We were incredibly lost in the woods with my mother acting more than strange and I was being called upon to actually fix a situation I couldn't understand and was too afraid to try. Slowing the car to a complete stop, she turned to me in a moment of near-clarity. "We're going to get through this. But I need your help." This was too much, I was a kid in high-school who knew too little about too many things. I knew I couldn't help her and I didn't know who could. I studied her profile; her eyes were intense but unfocused. It was like a blind person trying to do a crossword. If only they could see the clues, they could figure the damn thing out.

As we continued driving, my mother had another revelation, this one more mundane than the others. "My stomach hurts, I have to go to the bathroom." Even better, we're in the middle of nowhere and she gets a stomach ache. I watched for an endless eternity as her face contorted in pain. I couldn't tell if it was her stomach or what she was seeing, what she was hearing. Whatever it was, I knew we had to get off the road, fast.

Soon, we came upon a fire-station that must have been built specifically for our emergency, because there certainly was no civilization nearby worth saving. We pulled in and my mother walked right past the men on duty and into the bathroom. The firemen could obviously tell that she wasn't quite right, so they readily agreed to anything just to get us out of there. I knew I was seriously out of my league in terms of problem solving, but I had to try something. I ran through my mental rolodex of what could make my mom act like this. The only thing I could possibly think of was her hypo-glycemia. Yep, low blood sugar to cause all these problems. At the time, this solution seemed so simple and I desperately needed to take control of the situation. I talked with the fireman on duty and he made my mother a ham sandwich, a snack helped, sometimes. She was very grateful (after she had left the bathroom behind) and quickly ate the sandwich. She then looked directly at me and asked what to do next. A lost mother asking her child directions. I didn't know the way myself, and for that afternoon, we stared into the woods, lost. Finally, I broke down and admitted defeat by calling my father to come find us. As we traveled home, mom was pretty quiet. I thought at the time that she was content now that we were on our way home. However, it later became evident that mom had started a journey at the gates of Graceland. That journey wouldn't take her home for a long time.

The event described happened nearly 6 years ago, but still remains etched in my memory. The next day, my mother was taken to a psychiatric ward where she spent months dealing with psychotic episodes of what I later learned was Bipolar I Disorder, a severe mood disorder characterized by violent shifts between heaven-like manias to deep depressions. My mother lost touch with most of reality that day. She could hear, but could not answer. Her scripted and wooden responses were all she could muster no matter the person speaking. The roadsigns of which she spoke were most likely another offshoot of her psychotic state. Latching onto the only pieces of reality she could, she spun an entire schema which made sense to her at the time. I compared her to a blind person trying to do a crossword. Her mind wanted to make sense of the world, but it couldn't deal with the incoming information.

In a retrospect provided by study in abnormal psychology, I saw this coming for miles. She was always "moody" and religious by nature, but a week before she broke down, she announced to all who would listen that her ailing back was "healed" by God and she threw away all of her pain medications, as well as the rest of her prescriptions. The day this happened, she was up at dawn cleaning and scrubbing the house with relentless energy. However, nothing in those spirited moments hinted at her drastic downward spiral. She has improved as newer medications have helped her regain stability. However, she hasn't worked consistently for more than a few weeks since that time as she tries to reclaim what was taken from her.

Mental illness doesn't leave a rash or cause one to have cavities. It's not a broken arm which just needs a cast and perseverance. Mental illness steals into the core of those things that make us most human and twists hard, turning that most extraordinary phenomenon of human consciousness into a hideous nightmare causing us not to talk about that uncle no one talks about because of his "history" with hospitals, or that child who seems to find more trouble than anyone else her age, or maybe even that guy ranting and raving in front of the convenience store. This nightmare must be brought into the open light so that the disease itself can be understood, and potentially conquered.

Don't feel sorry for my mother or others like her. Instead, take from it the preciousness of our humanity, the validity of the study of the mind, and perhaps even the will to make a difference. My mother saw roadsigns to ruin and destruction. Perhaps we can start looking for roadsigns leading in the opposite direction.

Chris Przybyszewski ('98) is a Psychology major with a minor in Biological Basis of Behavior

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