Our mother is not well.
Not well in the sense that she is a mental case; neighbours are calling me to come take my mother; this is one call I often dread and I have held my breath for more than 6 years now…hoping I never get this kind of call’ hoping my mother will remain on her meds…
Well, it has finally caught up with me and I have decided I have to bring her to live with me; the difficult part is not going to get her, even though I live in another area of town and because of Covid-19, my husband would be reluctant to have her brought to live with us. He is diabetic and has a history of high blood pressure, so I can understand his concerns because you see, my mother lives with a retinue of cousins and relatives we cannot vouch for; people who think coronavirus is a scam.
The difficult part is having to tell my husband a secret I have kept locked up for years.
What’s this secret?
My husband doesn’t know about my mum’s mental illness!
My mum suffered from postpartum depression when she gave birth to my sister, years ago.
My sister, the last born in our family is 32 years old, so you know we have been dealing with this for long. At that time, it didn’t have a name, but certain events that surrounded her illness helped me piece things together as I grew up and later a doctor confirmed it.
Of course, I was very young then, I being the first daughter, first child. I was just about 8 years old then. My mother went to the hospital to deliver a baby; she came back a changed woman.
After a few days of confusion for me, I overheard my grandma, telling one of my aunties that ‘blood had rushed’ into my mother’s head as she gave birth and she was now losing her mind. It didn’t make sense to me then; how could giving birth cause blood to rush to one’s head?
My mother never wanted to see her baby, she never wanted to breast feed, in fact, she said the baby was responsible for her ‘misfortune.’
What was mother’s misfortune? I was too young to understand but I later got to know that my dad, had impregnated another woman in my mother’s office (my mother worked in a bank, then) and both women put to bed a few days apart, first the woman, then my mum. So that must have been the bad blood that rushed onto my mother’s head, such betrayal can make anyone lose their minds.
Well, that is what happened, our dad moved out of the house, grandma came in to take care of my mother and the baby and the rest of us.
My mother was like a wild woman; she was always talking non-stop, would not sleep throughout the night, would recall over and over again incidents that culminated to her meeting my dad, ‘rescuing him out of poverty’ and descending low to marry him only for him to betray her by sleeping with one of her friends and impregnating her…
Mother told this story, over and over again, she only stopped when she was asleep; after she had been induced of course. My sister couldn’t even be properly named after the usual 8 days because my father was nowhere to be found, he had moved in with the other woman, we didn’t know that at that time and my mother was always bitter, cursing. Yes, the curses, she was always cursing!
Afterwards, mum was taken to Yaba. She was a patient there for a long time. At that time, too, I was too young to understand the impact of this on us; with both parents out of the house and my grandma caring for my siblings and I, it wasn’t long before one aunty came and took my baby sister and I; another uncle came for my two younger brothers to live with him.
I still didn’t understand much but occasionally, we would take food to my mum at the hospital in Yaba. You know, my aunty would take me along to visit, during visiting times, that’s how come I knew my mother was truly not well and she was in a hospital even though I still didn’t fully comprehend what was going on.
So maybe I should start cutting short the story; my mother was placed on certain drugs that she must take, for life; because after she was released at the hospital, she became an outpatient.
Then our fight started with the stigma.
People treated us weird, like they expected us to lose our minds just like our mum.
They taunted our mum, I don’t know if they did it out of ignorance but you would often hear people say to my mum, when she was arguing with them about something; ‘go and take your meds’ or ‘have you gone off your drugs?”
It was painful to watch because my mum would either calm down immediately or become even more agitated and quarrelsome. Two things would often happen, we had to go find her drugs and cajole her to take them or find ways to calm her down.
This was very disturbing over the years because you just never knew when my mum would go off. One minute she was the good mum, the next spitting and cursing people, her sisters, her own mother, her brothers…everyone became the enemy.
You can also understand that after a while, people began to say she may be mentally unstable but she was speaking her thoughts and the thoughts were really bad.
Like when she was going through any episode and picks on a particular person; she would talk about the person from their birth to their death…you know what I mean?
I didn’t grow up with my mum since age 8; as I explained before, she was mostly unstable but I love my mother; I love her to pieces.
On her ‘good days’ she was awesome to us her kids; she would visit me at my aunt’s; listen to me, advice, buy stuff for me. My younger siblings did live with her, though. I continued to live with my aunty and from there, went to school, after school, I served and moved in with a friend until I got married.
Now, over the years, we have had episodes where people would call us- my aunty or uncle and of recent me, that our mother had gone mad again… like literally, that is what they would be saying to us; we would then find out mother hadn’t been taking her meds or had neglected to go on seeing her doctors at Yaba or something and we would have to find a way to cajole her to go, often times we would take her there ourselves.
I know mother hated the medicines, she complained they made her sluggish and some made her fat, so she would pretend to have taken them but never did and in a matter of weeks, she would be agitated, quarrelsome, wouldn’t sleep, would remember things done against her years before I was even born and we would have to start the circle of care again.
I hid this part of my life from my husband; I am not proud of it and I never wanted him to use it against me should we quarrel, you understand? There are family secrets you need to keep.
Now it seems the shit has hit the fan and…well, I don’t even know what to do. I have done everything I can but with this virus on rampage, I can’t bring my mum to live with me because I have been told she has gone virtually everywhere; I know I should start by telling my husband but how?
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)