by Liz Levine
Now, at 40, I finally appreciate Toronto: the city, my neighborhood, and, most important, the family home. I’m finally inviting my friends to hang out at the house with me. And I wonder what my life would look like if I hadn’t needed to escape so badly.
EPIDEMIC
At first I thought it was just that I was noticing suicide more after Tamara died. The ignorance struck me first: how pervasive it is, how casually one says, “That just makes me want to kill myself” or “Go jump off a bridge.”
Then I began to notice the language around the act. What it means to “commit” something. Why that sounds like a crime. The fact that very few people correctly refer to this as a disease.
And as all the language landed around me, I began to see the prevalence of the illness itself. The flurry of suicides in my life that followed Tamara’s: three acquaintances in the film industry, a friend’s son, random people who were grieving a similar loss smattered across my social network platforms.
Maybe, I thought, maybe I’m just noticing it more now.
But also, maybe this is an epidemic.
EVIDENCE
We collect it, as proof. I have been building an arsenal for decades. But the thing about evidence is this: it has to be an outward sign, something plainly visible, and it’s never that easy with Tamara. She is not only crazy, she is also crazy smart.
It’s nearly impossible (to my mind) to create photographic evidence of lies and deceit. It’s impossible to take a photo of the inside of someone’s head and to show someone else the whole picture in a single image.
So for years my evidence amounted to only anecdotes. There were always some witnesses, but like most people who witnessed something shocking, it was always indescribable, at least until after the end.
But I presented the evidence regardless of its viability. I thought quantity over quality would surely win out in a case like this. I thought hundreds of anecdotes and missing puzzle pieces and gaps in facts and narratives would be enough.
But it was like screaming into a wind tunnel. My mother didn’t want this evidence presented to her. It fell on deaf ears. No one was interested in all the proof I had gathered. Quite the opposite. I was encouraged, often commanded, to “let it go.” It wasn’t “nice” to call my sister crazy—just let her be, it’s just a little white lie, she just needs attention.
But it was a LOT of little white lies. A life built of them. Every detail of each imagined and expanded exchange. I worried she wouldn’t be able to keep it all straight, that if one card got pulled from the bottom, her whole house would come tumbling down.
Decades. I collected this evidence in my head for decades. And I presented it against my mother’s will on a weekly basis.
Then Tamara’s psychotic break happened. And then she needed to be institutionalized. And for that we needed a Form 2. And suddenly, all the emails I’d kept and the voicemail messages and the Facebook diatribes and tweets I’d photographed before they were subsequently deleted all had a place—they were needed. Lex and I got to put everything down on paper and attach appendixes and PDF documents and audio files, and it felt like progress. Like all this collecting could amount to something, like saving a life.
But it didn’t. It was too little and, to my mind, too late.
Now, after all these decades and with my sister dead in the ground, now my mother wants proof of her own. The first thing she wants is a chronology of events. I’m not sure what “events” she wants listed or who she wants this for.
Lex takes this on, as he always does. The lawyer presents all these details, emotions, near misses, and heart-crushing realities as fact.
Mom,
As requested, chronology of events is below and copies of all correspondence attached. You’ll see that the suicidal thoughts come in bunches. There’s a period in mid-October (which coincides with when she was doing so well) where everything seems fine and then it picks back up again in November, possibly (I would say likely) as the meds wore off.
April 3, 2016—Tamara sends an email to Mom re bridges and balconies.
September 23—Tamara sends an email to Mom and Dad confessing that she has had suicidal thoughts, following inquiry from her doctor about it. Detailed description wondering how people would find out.
September 27—Tamara emails our stepsister to say she has been having suicidal thoughts and ask for advice on akathisia.
September 30—Tamara emails Mom and Dad to say she has been researching cases of people on Invega committing suicide.
October 2—Tamara sends poem to Dad about killing herself by jumping off her balcony.
October 4—Tamara sends a detailed draft of her final suicide note to a family friend.
October 4—Tamara sends an email to Mom and Dad complaining about group therapy.
October 6—Tamara sends an email to family asking for support to overcome suicidal thoughts.
October 6—Tamara emails Dr. G to say she is contemplating suicide.
Mid October: Pax Tamara—Tamara enjoys a period of tranquility and equilibrium.
October 29—Email to stepsister re suicidal thoughts
October 29—R, our first cousin, comes to Tamara’s apartment; Tamara shows him draft of suicide note.
November 9—Tamara prepares Worksheet as to whether and when she should kill herself; also includes question to self—“Am I serious, or am I just seeking attention.”
November 10—Tamara sends email to Allan re being a burden.
November 15—Tamara sends an email to Mom and Dad regarding stopping Invega and suicidal thoughts.
November 15—Tamara sends a Google Chat to Scott Willis saying “T minus 48 hours”
November 17—At 8:29 a.m., Tamara emailed an assistant at Mount Sinai saying she had the flu and would not be attending the group session that day.
November 17—Tamara sent an email to Mom and Dad re money and jobs (3:37 p.m.). No subsequent emails.
November 17—Tamara sets her alarm for 1:30 a.m..
November 18—3:40 a.m.—Death
Lex includes all 18 attachments. And it’s enough to get Mom through Christmas. But by January, she is looking for more. By midwinter, every Sunday chat she walks me through an annotated list of Tamara’s stuff that she’s sorted through in the past week. She says she knows her better now in death than she did in life. She’s obsessed.
By spring, the evidence pile is getting slim. Tamara’s apartment has been emptied out and is now lived in by some happily oblivious other human. Her childhood bedroom has only stuffed animals and photos and journals left to go through. So my mother reaches further; she has lunch with Tamara’s friends, she grills them on whether or not Tamara felt supported by her family, she pulls medical files and psych reports and plows through them one painstaking line at a time.
I don’t know what all this evidence is for. It’s been seven months since Tamara died, and it doesn’t matter anymore. It doesn’t matter who was right, how long she was sick, how sick she was, who she told, or who didn’t tell us.
It all means nothing, so I ask my mother, “What are you looking for here?”
She tells me, “Just anything that says this isn’t my fault.”
F
FEAR
We weren’t always afraid of Tamara. Afraid for her?—more often. Afraid for our reputations, our shared group of friends and later, our social networks?—always. But physically, actually afraid of her? That took time.
I was probably the first to be afraid. She was angry at me first. It seemed ridiculous to be afraid of her. It made me feel weak. But she was fierce and furious, and there was always something in her eyes when she was wound up that could make my blood run cold.
And now, as her sickness gets worse and she is home in Toronto, I am hearing stories from my dad about cousins who she approached on the street and made incredibly nervous. And friends are sending me awkward Facebook messages about running into her. And the more often I say, “I hope that was OK,” or “You know s
he’s not well,” the more I hear the confessional outpouring of their fear when confronted by her. Lex doesn’t want his kids to see her alone anymore.
My mother brushes this all away.
Fear can be contagious. But it’s more than people starting to catch my feeling. It is that people are actually recognizing that Tamara is dangerous. And it’s more than the stories and behaviour now. It’s physical. I can see it. Her eyes roll like she has receded into her head, and what is left out front is empty and disconnected. She has strange shakes, and the skin around her mouth and eyes is dry like she’s suffering some kind of dehydration. But the definition of “disease” here is still intangible. If I could point the symptoms out and call it cancer, you would understand. But we don’t understand it like that, not yet.
It’s December 20, 2015, and my mother has, somewhere in the last few days, experienced a stress fracture of her tibia. It isn’t life-threatening, but it’s annoying and she’s almost 70 and it’s exactly what she doesn’t need in this moment before Christmas while she’s shopping and delivering and decorating and doing in the cold and snow.
Tamara texts me a long and frenetic text about Mom’s injury. She is angry and off-kilter and blaming Mom—for what, I have no idea. The text is insane and far too long to want to repurpose here. You’ll have to trust me on this. The subject matter ranges from terrorists to love.
In the morning, Mom calls me to tell me that on her way out the door the night before Tamara went on a rant about the Taj Mahal and being spied on and plotted against. Mom said it was really crazy and that Allan had to escort her out of their house. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard a story like this from Mom. She always defends Tamara and can always rationalize her behaviour. Mom goes on to tell me that Tamara is coming to pick her up to go for a coffee and hopefully apologize.
I’m not sure someone who doesn’t recognize their own actions can apologize for them. But I don’t bother to start this discussion with Mom.
Three hours later, I get another phone call from Mom. She’s in tears. She and Tamara went to the Second Cup in Forest Hill Village. Just as they started to sip their cooling coffee, Tamara began to get worked up, so worked up that she started yelling. So my mother gathered her winter coat and her giant purse and her crutches and left to walk the 15 blocks back to the office in the swirling snow. Tamara followed her, trailing behind, at some points yelling and at other moments trying to reconcile. And now Mom is in her office with the door locked behind her, half crying and half laughing into the phone with me. She acknowledges her fear. “I ran away from her,” she says to me. “I actually ran away from her.”
It’s midnight, and Messenger bings with a text from Tamara.
It was actually fun to see Mom. I like being able to look after [her]. When she is on crutches it is the only time she does not run away and we can actually talk and I can do stuff for her. I do love and as always get some small pleasure out of being able to treat and care for someone.
I don’t respond. It’s midnight, after all.
And now it’s four days later, on Christmas Eve, and I am at my brother’s house early to help prepare and we are having an actual conversation about where the knives are being locked away.
And now I’m sure we are all afraid.
FUNNY
I’m sure I’ve figured it out. I’m not guilty. It’s funny. It was survival. Right?
Dealing with someone with severe mental health issues is indescribable to those who haven’t experienced it. In our family, it was also indescribable to those who refused to acknowledge it or see it. This meant that for years it was just Lex and me. For us it started with shared looks across the table, a knowing glance when the conversation turned or the lie surfaced or the behaviour felt “off.” But as Tamara grew increasingly ill, our communication around the issue intensified. We began to talk on the phone on a regular basis, to compare stories, to get updates, to blow off steam, to complain, but mostly to laugh.
We didn’t intend for it to be cruel. Quite the opposite. To continue to manage both her illness and my parents’ silence, we needed to find a place where this insanity was bearable, and that was in humour. One year, following a Christmas in which Tamara’s gift to Lex was a surprise in the trunk of her car (which never materialized) and her gift to me was a nasty letter about what it was like to live with snapping crocodiles, I created a Twitter account just for Lex and me.
The account was called @mayorofcrazy. The mayor only followed other irrational people, including Charlie Sheen, Britney Spears, and an assorted gaggle of other high-profile nut jobs. Then, in 140 characters or less, the account would tweet all the insane things Tamara would say, like, “I am writing a book with the President. It’s about cell phone tracking. But I can’t tell you about it. I’m being tracked,” or “I shaved my head and told my family I was dying of cancer. I told them they would regret it when I was #dead,” and even, “Yesterday I told my Dad that my stepfather of 20 years was cheating on my mother. He’s not.”
While we understood others might find it cruel, it’s what we had to do to survive. After all, this came long after the fight with our parents. Long after I yelled and screamed and cried. Years. I had been fighting this for years. I’d first fought my mother (which I’m loath to do), then negotiated with my father, forced family interventions, and lobbied my other siblings. And so I needed to laugh.
I survived by laughing. Sometimes even by ridiculing. I got good at it. Very good. It was quick, and it was relief, not just for me but for my brothers and for Dad. I could even drown out the howling, crazed message that sounded more animal than human that Tamara left on my voicemail with the sound of Lex and me laughing about it.
I pretty much stopped communicating with Tamara directly, yes, but I was still gracious. I was warm at family gatherings and would ask her about life and work, even slid in one-on-one coffee get-togethers, kept the text messages flowing, and eventually returned most of her calls. Even the last texts from me to her are nothing but love.
But I was too wrapped up in the war of my own outrage. I was so angry that no one was listening that I didn’t pay enough attention to the small signs.
* * *
It’s Christmas 2015, and I arrive in Toronto direct from sunny LA just in time to help Mom put a few last decorations on the tree and greet the first snowfall of the season. She tells me that the other kids have all gone home. Lex’s daughter was sleepy, and Tamara had caused a scene, and between kids crying and adults yelling, everyone had decided to retire early.
By this point, our Twitter feed is running at full speed, and every detail on Tamara is more than anecdotal. It is fodder! So when my mom tells me that Tamara freaked out because the purple stripe on my brother’s shirt identified him as part of the conspiracy and that the Tim Hortons cup on the counter was a message because of how the banana in fruit bowl was pointing at it, my reaction is to take notes. I will definitely need to pull this apart with Lex later.
That humour comes easy to me now. Too easy. It might even be mean. But I add a banana conspiracy tweet to the Twitter feed, get Tamara something generic for Christmas, avoid spending any real time with her, and in my free time with Lex and my friends I am increasingly persistent in finding the funny. It’s like a life preserver.
We are all laughing so much that when Tamara gets put in the psych ward for a month and tells everyone there that all her bones have broken and she needs milk to heal them overnight, we don’t think it’s crazier than anything else we have heard. In fact, as Lex relays these details to me over the phone, I find that they fit the narrative in 140 characters or less.
So on September 17, 2016, two months after Tamara’s release and a year since I last updated the Twitter feed, when she texts me to say, thank you for being there to support Mom over the coming weeks. She will need your caring voice, I don’t notice the complete lack of context.
And when she texts me on September 23, be good to Mom, I slam back at her for constantly saying t
his to me.
I am always good to Mom!
She responds with, I know. I just want to be sure she can share with someone and she is particularly close to you when it comes to sharing.
I write back, absolutely! just to be done with the conversation.
And on September 29, when I ask how she’s doing and she says, I’ve been a bit depressed and suicidal, I roll my eyes and suggest exercise and friends and keeping busy.
The exchange gets so crazy that by the time she gets through some cryptic political stories that reference Guinea and Nicaragua and the downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight and arrives at lack of a reliable method and concern for Mom are the only two things keeping me alive right now. I need a hug. I sound crazy, my first thought is, Yes, yes, you do sound crazy. And then I laugh at my own joke. I completely miss the message: lack of a reliable method.
Now I keep scrolling back in her texts to see if there are any more clues, but when I get to August of 2016, my phone won’t scroll back any farther. And I realize I can’t take this back. And it’s not funny.
FILLER
It’s 12 days after my sister’s death, and France is driving me to the Whistler Film Festival. I have to moderate a panel and talk in a writer’s lab. More than the obligation, it is the need—I need to get away from evidence bags and urns and cemeteries; I need this moment to catch my breath before a long run at home over the Christmas holidays.
It has become habitual—going west to escape Tamara. And this time it is healing. And necessary. But I can’t exactly catch my breath. I can’t because everyone knows. My family spoke publicly about Tamara right away, and Lex’s eulogy was posted online and is being shared widely. By the time I arrive at the festival, I am the-girl-whose-sister-jumped.
