Voices – Page 10 – Marilea C. Rabasa

Lifting The Fog

August 11, 2015 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Memoir Excerpt:

“Angie came out to stay with me at the condo just about every weekend, and on one of these visits I had to take her to the emergency room. She had a bad case of cellulitis in her hand and needed a heavy dose of oral antibiotics to clear it up. As we were leaving the doctor said that if the oral meds didn’t work she would need to be hospitalized for IV treatments. I was a little puzzled by this; it looked like a simple infection to me. Why, possibly, would she need such extreme intervention? Angie explained it away as a symptom of her hepatitis.

I should have seen what was right in front of me; I should have questioned her bland explanation. A year later when I got more educated about drug addicts and what they do when they run out of veins would I realize what had really been going on. These last few years I’ve gotten more involved in support groups around addiction, and I’ve seen a few movies about what addicts do, where they inject. Strange places I hadn’t thought of: their ankles, their necks, and their hands. At the time, I didn’t realize what she had started doing—again. At the time, I was too focused on my daughter promising to rebuild her life—again. At the time, I didn’t dare face the fact that bringing her back to D.C. might have been a very bad idea… But I wasn’t responsible for what was happening. Yes, we brought her home, and the wheels of fate kept turning. Our daughter was an addict, and whether she was living in D.C. or Uganda, Angie had a disease that she alone must wrestle with. At this point we could only stand by and watch. Angie knew what she needed to do if she wanted to fight her illness and get well.”

Mountaintops

July 27, 2015 Marilea C. Rabasa2 Comments

Memoir Excerpt:

“Hi Mom. Guess where I am! My sponsor took me on a ride on a tram in the San Jacinto Mountains! It’s gorgeous up here. I can see for miles and miles.”

“Thanks for calling, Angie, and sharing this with me. I love you!”

I always ended our communications with those three words. Even if we were fighting, and the words got ugly, I made sure she knew that I loved her. I no longer took for granted that this was just another phone call. I never knew if this was going to be the last one. High up on the mountain with her sponsor, could they see what was coming? In the movie Out of Africa, Karen Blixen said, referring to her imminent illness, “The world was made round so that we couldn’t see what was coming down the road.” And that’s a good thing. How would our lives be altered if we all had a crystal ball?

That summer I wanted her to come visit and see our farm in the Southwest. In she flew from sunny Palm Springs to sunny New Mexico, and it was a joy to have her with us for a few days. Angie is, among other things, a very talented artist, and I asked her to paint a little sign naming our farmhouse Casita del Mar, so named because of my huge shell collection. It still hangs on the post in my front courtyard, though in the years since her visit it has sustained a lot of weather damage.

We had fun, tooling around Santa Fe, and visiting the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. I knew she would appreciate seeing this artist’s work. Angie had a gift for expression, both in the spoken word and in her renderings. As a child she wrote a lot of poetry. She also could capture on paper a face or expression with great accuracy. In art school I was good at drawing elevations and brick walls, but I couldn’t begin to draw someone’s face. Angie had a great gift.

We continued north up the slow mountain road to the Taos Pueblo, where we visited a potter we knew and bought some more of her pieces. The next day we took Angie up the tram on Sandia Crest, where you can see for miles in three directions. Looking out for hundreds of miles—and looking within. I knew I was doing a lot of that in my own recovery, but Angie never shared her recovery work with me. On our last day together we celebrated her birthday at dinner in Corrales. Of course, she had to get back to work. We hugged at the airport and said goodbye. Again, there were so many goodbyes—so much uncertainty. I will never allow complacency into my life again. I will never, ever, take a moment of happiness for granted.”

Alice in Wonderland

June 9, 2015 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

My daughter, Angie, has been at many crossroads during the fourteen years of her drug addiction. A few times, she chose wisely and well. Other times, not so wisely. Most of the time, sadly, it was addiction that was making the decisions, and addiction, like cancer, wants to survive. My prayers continue every day that my daughter stays alive long enough to reach that pivotal milestone on the road to recovery.

Memoir Excerpt:

“Alice: ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’

The Cheshire Cat: ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.’

Alice: ‘I don’t much care where.’

The Cheshire Cat: ‘Then it doesn’t matter much which way you go.’

Alice: …’So long as I get somewhere.’

The Cheshire Cat: ‘Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.’”

Split in Two

May 8, 2015May 9, 2015 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Memoir Excerpt:

“Oh, God, no, this wasn’t happening. THIS WAS NOT HAPPENING! I don’t know this person. Something has taken over her body and transformed her. Angie, my Angie, no longer resides in this walking corpse, this skeleton. She doesn’t live here anymore.’

I poured Angie into my car and took her to the psych ward. While she was there, Gene sat with her at one or two in-house meetings. Xavier and I soldiered in to see her every single day, with her favorite food, and smiles, and earnest talk about how she could start over any time she chose to. On one such visit, I asked her about the contents of her suitcases.

‘It’s all perfectly legal, Mom.’

Collecting myself and keeping calm, I asked myself, if I was living on another planet, or was what she was doing illegal? No matter. It didn’t matter to me because this person who was glibly telling me this was not the person I had raised. This person had no moral compass whatsoever. And from this moment forward I knew that I was dealing with a split personality: two people, my Angie, and this hair-brained addict. I wanted to kill the addict, murder her in her sleep, and watch my Angie rise like a phoenix from the ashes.”

My Daughter/Myself

April 10, 2015May 9, 2015 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Back Down The Rabbit Hole

February 7, 2015May 9, 2015 Marilea C. RabasaLeave a comment

Memoir Excerpt:

“She used to sit in her living room and crow about her improved life: “I bet you never thought I’d make it to this place, after all I put you through, did you, Mom?”

And I gratefully agreed. If this was the best she could do for verbal amends, I’d take it. She flew up to Massachusetts to see her grandmother for the long Memorial Day weekend. In so many ways, she seemed to be on the mend, and making amends, to the people she loved.

That spring of 2005 I earned my M.A. in Teaching at George Mason University, and she and her brother loyally attended the ceremony. I turned around in the auditorium and saw her there with my son. I felt so proud not only of my achievement, but that Angie had turned her life around, and seemed to be happy in her recovery.

But when the program was over, and we started to file out, I saw that she had already left, and I felt a sense of foreboding, one of many that I would have in the years to come. That dark cloud began to cover the sun once more and once again, unbelievably to me, she began to tumble back into her addiction.”