The Art of Misdiagnosis
Page 21
My sister-in-law Magdalene recently said, “She was an operatic person. It was an operatic way to go.” I hadn’t been able to take those words in fully at the time, but now I feel that aria, that crescendo. I feel the strange majesty of the act, which both startles and comforts me.
The Mayans believed suicide by hanging was an honorable way to die. The goddess Ixtab would accompany the hanged, along with warriors who died in battle and women who died in childbirth, to paradise, where she would serve them food beneath the leafy shade of the World Tree. I wonder what she fed them; bread and juice, perhaps. I raise my plastic bottle in the direction of the gate before I pull away from the curb, leaving part of my mother behind at Golden Oaks, flaring like the sun.
Resources
More than eight hundred thousand people take their own lives worldwide every year. That’s one suicide every eight seconds. In America, a person commits suicide every thirteen minutes. Eight hundred thousand moments of desperation a year; eight hundred thousand hearts intentionally stilled. Millions of loved ones left to grapple with confusion and regret and anger, with the particularly complicated grief that suicide leaves in its wake.
When my mom died, I felt so isolated; I couldn’t remember knowing anyone who had lost a loved one to suicide. Since then, I’ve learned that many people I know had faced such loss; since then, some of my closest friends have themselves lost loved ones to suicide.
It helps to know we are not alone. It helps to talk about suicide loss, to take this often stigmatized grief out of the shadows, to give it air and light so we can process, so we can heal, so we can let go of lingering ghosts of shame.
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention sponsors the annual International Suicide Survivors Day in November, with events around the world (http://www.survivorday.org). They also organize annual Out of the Darkness walks (https://www.afsp.org/out-of-the-darkness-walks), and can help you find a suicide-loss survivors’ support group at https://www.afsp.org/coping-with-suicide-loss/find-support/find-a-support-group.
The American Association of Suicidology offers resources for people coping with suicide loss, including an annual Healing After Suicide conference (http://www.suicidology.org/suicide-survivors/suicide-loss-survivors).
Some survivors of suicide loss are tempted to end their own lives. If you are feeling suicidal, help is available. The Suicide Prevention Hotline can be reached at (800) 273-TALK (8255).
Seek out the resources that speak to you and what you need most directly and clearly. None of us have the exact same path, but we can help shed light along one another’s journey through grief.
Let’s keep talking. Let’s stop hiding this loss. We are many, and we can help each other live.
Acknowledgments
This is the hardest, most necessary book I’ve ever written, and there were many times I wasn’t sure I was up for the challenge. I’m so grateful to everyone who kept me and my work moving forward.
Thank you deeply to everyone who read early sections and drafts of the manuscript and offered invaluable advice and support: Laraine Herring, Rebecca O’Connor, Elizabeth Aamot, Susan Ito, Ellen Geiger, Bernadette Murphy, Suzanne Roberts, Cindy Bokma, Renee Sedliar. Special thanks to Arielle Bernstein, who generously read several drafts of the memoir and greatly informed its evolution. You are all goddesses.
Tremendous gratitude to Julie Greicius at the Rumpus, Jennifer Pastiloff and Angela Giles Patel at the Manifest-Station, Jennifer Niesslein at Full Grown People, Sarah Hepola at Salon, Elizabeth Cohen at the Saranac Review, Erika Kleinman at the Nervous Breakdown, and Rebecca Rubenstein at Midnight Breakfast for publishing (and helping shape) portions of the memoir. Thank you, too, to everyone who shared these essays online and wrote to me directly—you helped me realize my story could reach beyond myself.
Workshops with Lidia Yuknavitch, Emily Rapp, and Saeed Jones generated material that ended up in this book—thank you all for your fierce and vital inspiration. I also wrote several scenes during in-class writing time in my workshops at Sierra Nevada College and am grateful to my students for being so kind as I shared very raw work (I’m also wildly grateful to June Saraceno for changing my life by bringing me to Sierra Nevada College). Thank you to all my current and former students and colleagues at both SNC and Antioch University Los Angeles (and at workshops I’ve taught around the country)—you are such gifts in my life.
I am thankful beyond words for my agent, Christopher Rhodes (and my friend Peter Selgin for connecting us). Your insight and guidance and encouragement helped make this a better book, and you found the perfect home for it at Beacon Press, with the perfect editor, Amy Miller Caldwell. Amy, thank you for understanding my vision so deeply and using your thoughtful, thorough eye to help me hone it. Everyone at Beacon has been a joy to work with—thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Thank you to the amazing writers who wrote blurbs for the book; your kind words take my breath away.
Thank you to my therapist, Laura Cueva-Miller, for suggesting I write to my mom—it was transformational for both me and the structure of this book. The writing retreat at St. Mary’s Art Center in Virginia City was also transformational; thank you to all the women who were there—you helped midwife this memoir in so many ways.
Thank you to all my dear friends—too many to name—who called and wrote and brought food and comfort after my mom’s death. You were such important lifelines. Special thanks to Nancy Tedder and Jennifer Vallely for being such loving, wise grief doulas during that painful time, and to Jane O’Shields-Hayner, Bill Hayner, and Cati Porter for holding me and my family in so many ways.
My family. How can I thank you enough? Michael and my kids, Arin, Hannah, and Asher—you are my greatest treasures, and I love you all with every fiber of my being. Sue and Jon, you and your wonderful spouses, Larry and Magdalene, walked through this experience with us with so much love and grace and strength; I am so lucky to be your sister. Thank you to Cousin Bobby for flying out to support us and our dad (and thank you to all our other relatives who reached out, with special thanks to my brother-in-law, Craig, and my neice, Mo. What a beautiful mishpucha.) Dad—I miss you so much. Thank you for always supporting me and my writing; thank you for leaving such a legacy of love. Elizabeth. Elizabeth. How could I have gotten through this without you? You have been at the heart of my life since the day you were born, the day my memories began. I know how hard my writing this book has been for you, and I’m so grateful for your ultimate understanding, your ultimate blessing. You are my anchor, my sister of blood and bone and gut and heart; you are my everything.
About the Author
Gayle Brandeis is the author of Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write and the novels The Book of Dead Birds, which won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction of Social Engagement, Self Storage, Delta Girls, and My Life with the Lincolns, which received a Silver Nautilus Book Award, as well as a collection of poetry, The Selfless Bliss of the Body. She teaches in the low-residency MFA programs at Antioch University Los Angeles and Sierra Nevada College.
BEACON PRESS
Boston, Massachusetts
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 2017 by Gayle Brandeis
All rights reserved
Text design and composition by Kim Arney
In some cases, names and other identifying characteristics of people mentioned in this work have been changed to protect their identities.
Portions of this memoir appeared, in different form, in Full Grown People, the Manifest-Station, Midnight Breakfast, the Nervous Breakdown, the Rumpus, Salon, She Writes, and the Saranac Review.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Brandeis, Gayle, author.
Title: The art of misdiagnosis : a memoir / Gayle Brandeis.
Description: Boston, Massachusetts : Be
acon Press, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017002002 (print) | LCCN 2017029234 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780807044902 (e-book) | ISBN 9780807044865 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Brandeis, Gayle—Mental health. | Schizophrenics—Family relationships—Biography. | Suicide victims—Biography. | Mother and child—Biography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | PSYCHOLOGY / Psychopathology / Schizophrenia. | PSYCHOLOGY / Suicide.
Classification: LCC RC514 (ebook) | LCC RC514 .B676 2017 (print) | DDC 616.89/80092 [B] —dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002002