Up to this day, I believe something must have happened during the April book tour that made her very fearful. In the past, she’d known how we would worry about her safety, so she usually hesitated to disclose to us the details of anything unpleasant that had happened to her. She believed that on that tour, someone had threatened her and she hadn’t handled it well. As a result, she felt like someone was after her. Was this true? I don’t know. I guess I will never know. But we do know that she became increasingly fearful.
At the beginning of May, Iris was finishing up her public appearances. Around this time, Brett went to his hometown in Illinois to attend his high-school class reunion. For Mother’s Day, with Brett not being home, Iris said she wanted to invite me to a Mother’s Day concert at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. I told her, “You are a mother too. Why don’t we celebrate together?”
On Saturday, May 8, the day before Mother’s Day, Iris came to our townhouse holding a dozen red roses and a dozen purple irises in one hand. In the other hand, she held a lovely white basket that contained a beautiful purple flowered plant. She was determined to celebrate Mother’s Day with me and to forget about her recent unhappiness. I was deeply touched, but at the same time I felt that something was missing.
On Mother’s Day, Iris drove me to the concert hall in Mountain View. At the concert, she sat beside me. When the lights dimmed, I could see that her facial expression was unsettled. She was also quiet in the car while we were driving to the concert. This was unusual, quite unlike her usual talkative self. I wondered what was going through her mind.
When the choir sang Handel’s Silent Worship, my eyes welled with tears. I was thinking of my mother. I wondered what Iris was thinking about. Was it about her book tour? Was she thinking about being a good mother? I looked at her sitting next to me, but could not figure it out; I could only see that she was sad, feeling a sense of loss.
Around this time, Iris was looking into daycare facilities for Christopher. She was also earnestly engaged in talking to her neighbors who had children of Christopher’s age, hoping to organize a playgroup. When both Iris and Michael were young, I had organized a playgroup with my friends in Champaign-Urbana. Once a week, the mothers took turns hosting and watching over the children, so that not only could the kids play with each other, but the mothers could get a little break. Iris liked this idea.
One day, Iris was happy to report to us by e-mail that “Christopher now knows his numbers! Yesterday, he laid out before me three wooden numbers—1, 2, 3—in a neat row, and this evening, he handed Brett, one after another, a perfect sequence of numbers from a jumbled pile of numbers (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0). Isn’t that amazing?”
On June 9, Iris called me because she had a phone interview over the phone at 6:00 A.M. with a radio station in Boston. She asked Ping to come earlier that day to take care of Christopher. She said she would like me to come to watch Christopher at 4 P.M. when Ping left. When I went to her house at 4 P.M., I noticed that Iris’s face looked gray and very tired. She said that she had just finished the phone interviews with the tank battalion survivors and she wanted to take a nap. I was heartbroken. It was obvious that she had not gotten enough sleep.
On Saturday, June 12, Iris was awarded an honorable degree from the California State University at Hayward. Iris had told us several months before that the university president had informed her that she was the 2004 recipient of an honorary degree. She would be the keynote speaker at the graduation ceremony that day. Shau-Jin and I were very happy for her and told her we would be there. In 2002, when Iris had been awarded the honorary degree from Wooster College in Ohio, we were not able to go. Now we lived in the Bay area, and we certainly were honored to be there to observe the ceremony and see Iris honored.
The president of the university, Norma Rees, invited Iris and us for an early breakfast before the ceremony. At the end of the ceremony, Iris came over to us with the president and asked us to join them to take several pictures. Iris was dressed in a cap and gown, holding her honorary degree certificate in her hands. She was very happy and had a big smile. This was one of the happiest moments of her life and it was also, as far as I ever saw, the last one.
In June, without any other public engagements, I noticed that Iris was spending more time with Christopher, and she was also starting to observe Christopher’s behavior and his speech very closely. She took an interest in watching the other kids of his age and compared him to them. Christopher’s second birthday was only three months away. Iris was starting to wonder why Christopher had not yet spoken in complete sentences.
I told her that children developed at different speeds. I told her it was very normal for some children to speak later than average that she should not be concerned about it. Indeed, Shau-Jin, Luann, Ken, Brett, and Ping all agreed that Christopher was quite a handsome and intelligent boy. He had learned how to walk at about one year old and was very active. There was no sign indicating anything out of the ordinary, except that he was overactive and full of energy. His excess energy sometimes caused headaches for everyone. He was just like a little “curious George” in the house. We needed to pay extra attention in watching over him.
For some reason, Iris did not agree with all of us and kept telling me that she was worried about Christopher. She then began actively doing research on child development. I cannot remember the exact date, but it was around this time in June that she started to tell me that she suspected that Christopher had signs of autism.
Because Iris was talking about autism, I started to do some research on it too. There was a group of activists in the U.S., particularly in California, who claimed that a preservative, a mercury-containing chemical used in vaccines, could cause autism in children. This controversial theory had been debated in the media for a long time. On one hand, the government health officials and many other scientists claimed that the mercury in the vaccines was in such small amounts as to be insignificant, and that further studies did not show any strong link between the mercury in vaccines and autism in children. On the other hand, the activists claimed, the government study designs had flaws, and they did not believe the results reported by government health officials. Iris sided with this group of activists and believed that the government’s results could not be trusted.
My birthday was very close to Father’s Day. We usually celebrated the two occasions together. On Saturday, June 19, I made lots of Chinese dishes and invited everyone in the family to come to celebrate Father’s Day. Iris gave us a beautifully framed picture of Christopher with his handprint next to the photo. Iris specially framed it for us as a gift for this special occasion. Again, like Mother’s Day, this was the last Father’s Day Iris celebrated with us. Although on the surface she looked fine, I could see that she was quieter and seemed preoccupied, almost obsessed, with something. That night, Iris wrote me a thank-you e-mail:
Dear Mom,
I’m glad you like the framed picture of Christopher with his gold handprint. And thank you for fixing such a splendid dinner tonight, and for helping Brett watch Christopher when I was away in Texas!
Christopher clearly understands many more words than he can vocalize. This evening, we read a book on colors, and he astounded me by the size of his vocabulary. When I asked him questions (like “Where is the frog?” “Where is the sheep?” “Where are the slippers?” “Where is the glass of orange juice?” “Where is the tiger?”) he pointed accurately to all the pictures. I was so impressed!
Much love, Iris
On June 30, I bumped into Iris on the path in our housing complex. She said she was on her way home after taking a walk on the levee in the back of our townhouses. She looked tired and unhappy. I told her she looked sick and asked what was the matter. She told me that she just had a conversation with Susan Rabiner in New York. Susan told her she was editing a book about the Gulf War Syndrome. The book described that the sickness of those Gulf War soldiers, which was diagnosed when they came home, was actually caused b
y the vaccine injected in them before they went. Iris was quite upset about this. She said that the author of the book did research and found out that the vaccine given to the soldiers was tainted with experimental chemicals. Iris said, “The government wanted to do tests on the vaccine and used the soldiers as guinea pigs.” After Iris died, I found out the book is called Vaccine A: The Covert Government Experiment that’s Killing Our Soldiers—And Why GI’s Are Only the First Victims, by Gary Matsumoto. The existence of this book made Iris further believe that the autism in children was caused by the vaccines they received. Furthermore, she did not trust the health institution of our government and regretted that she’d let Christopher receive so many vaccinations as an infant.
On Wednesday, July 14, I went to see Iris and found no one home. I saw that the flowers she had planted in the big pots in front of their house had withered. She had forgotten to water the plants, I thought, as I knocked on her door. It turned out that Iris and Ping had taken Christopher to Fremont to see a doctor. She had Christopher’s hair, urine, and blood tested for any toxins, such as mercury.
Iris took Christopher to see many more doctors. She started to investigate the cause of autism and do whatever she could to help Christopher, who she presumed was autistic. This was very natural for a mother who loves her child so much under such circumstances. She would explore all kinds of remedies to help her child, and yet the rest of the family regarded her concern as excessive. Later I learned that Iris had already read many books and done extensive research on autism. As a writer, she was very sensitive and keen in her observations. She might have already detected some subtle clues indicating autism in Christopher while the rest of us did not.
On Wednesday afternoon, August 11, Ping called us and told us Iris was sick and had asked us to come. Shau-Jin and I immediately went to see her and found her in an exhausted and devastated state. We did not realize the seriousness of her health situation until then. We learned that she had not been eating well and had hardly slept for several days. We found that she had been browsing for hours on the Internet, reading many books and working incessantly in her home office. We knew she was going to Kentucky to interview the tank battalion veterans the next day. Ping was the first one who suggested that Iris should not go on the trip. After seeing her current state, we also tried to persuade her not to go. For the next hour while we were there, Iris seemed to feel better. She told us that she would be all right. She asked us all to go back home so she could rest and take a nap.
Early in the morning of the next day, I got up and immediately went to see Iris. She was up already, and she told me that she was fine. She said she had managed to fall asleep for a couple of hours. She was busy packing and preparing for the trip. Ping had not yet arrived. Christopher and Brett were still asleep inside.
I asked Iris, “Are you sure you want to go today?”
“Yes, Mom, I think I’ll be fine,” she replied.
It seemed to me that she was strengthened and determined, unlike the day before. She told me that she had spent a long time arranging the interview with those veterans in Kentucky and other Midwest states, and that she could not just cancel the trip at the last minute. I figured she was old enough to make her own decisions, and I reluctantly let go of my maternal instincts to prevent her from going. This is, of course, my biggest regret.
After I saw Iris get into the cab and leave for the airport on her way to Louisville, Kentucky, I waited until Ping came over and then headed home. I comforted myself while walking home by recalling that Iris had told me that she’d slept a couple of hours and felt fine. On top of that, I reassured myself that she could take a nap and rest on the airplane.
Luann arrived in the afternoon of the same day. She had come to help while Iris was out of town, as prearranged. That night, I received a call from Iris in a Louisville hotel room, informing us that she had arrived safely. This was her usual routine when she was traveling. I had been anxiously waiting for her call all day. On the phone, she said she was very tired and had a headache. I told her she should immediately lie down and go to sleep. When she called, it was almost midnight in Kentucky, since there was a three-hour time difference. She said she had not eaten yet but was too tired to go out. I suggested that she call room service, but she said she was staying in a hotel where there was no restaurant in the hotel. I told her to call a nearby restaurant for take-out, and she promised she would.
That night, we went to sleep and assumed that Iris would be all right. But at about 2 A.M. California time, in the early morning of Friday, August 13, we were awakened by a phone call. I picked up the phone, and it was Iris. Her voice was shaking, and told me she had seen some frightening pictures on the TV in her hotel room. Iris and I then had a conversation about this. Apparently she could not fall asleep, so she turned the TV on. I asked her what kind of pictures were on the TV screen. She said it showed some horrible atrocities and ugly images of children torn apart by wars. She said that the TV was showing something similar to scenes from hell, like an imagined World War III.
She had then turned off her TV, waited a while, and then turned it on again, to find that the ugly images had disappeared. I responded that maybe the TV had been showing a war movie. It’s very possible, I said, that during the wee hours of the night, TV stations would show such a genre of horror films.
Then Iris told me she did not feel things had been quite right from the very moment she’d arrived at the hotel. The clerk at the front desk looked suspicious to her, and spoke to a person who later kept looking at the window of her room. While Iris was talking with me on the phone, she told me that she could still see that person standing outside on the lawn not far from her room. He looked at her window as she peered through her curtain. She told me she suspected her room was wired and that what she had seen on the TV was real and intentionally shown to threaten her.
It was past 5 A.M. in Kentucky. I asked her, had she gotten any sleep at all? She said she couldn’t fall asleep, and she was exhausted and had a terrible headache. She was sick, I could tell. She had to be ill, because she had not been able to sleep for the three or four days prior to the trip.
She had also not eaten enough, nor had she drunk any liquid for some time. She said she had ordered some take-out dinner that was delivered to her room, but she did not have any appetite and hadn’t eaten anything. She didn’t want to drink anything either, afraid that someone might poison her. I knew that under severe sleep deprivation, people could have delusions. Under this circumstance, all I could think of at the time was to have some friends nearby to help her. We did not call Brett because we didn’t want to wake up Christopher or Luann at such an early hour.
I asked Iris whether she knew anyone in Louisville. I reminded her about the people she had made contact with for this trip. She said she knew a retired former Army officer, a veteran, living near Louisville, but she said he was very old. I told her that at least he lived nearby, and maybe he could come to help her. It would be comforting for her just to have someone else with her. I didn’t want her to be alone.
Iris waited until after 6 A.M. in Louisville before she finally called this kind veteran. Subsequently, he and his wife came to see Iris in the hotel room. The wife was a retired nurse and, after observing Iris for a bit, recommended that she go to a hospital. Iris was soon in an ambulance on the way to a hospital.
After Iris left for the hospital, I called the ER unit of the hospital. They informed me that Iris had arrived and was waiting in the ER ward for a doctor to examine her.
In the meantime, Brett was informed of what had happened, and he called the hospital and answered all the questions that were necessary for admitting Iris into the hospital. Brett continued to call her to monitor her condition. Michael was calling constantly, to monitor both us and his sister’s situation. I was busy on the phone all day long. I was also frantically trying to get airplane reservations to fly to Louisville right away. The earliest available flight was the next day. On August 14, Shau-Jin an
d I took a 6:20 A.M. American Airlines flight and arrived in Louisville at 5:25 P.M. after a three-hour layover at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. My heart was pumping hard all the way. I could not wait to see Iris.
As soon as we arrived in Louisville, we immediately went to the hotel where Iris had stayed. The hotel let us into her room, which we had had them lock up for us before we arrived and was reserved for our stay. We found that her two suitcases were there, safe and sound. We immediately took a taxi to the hospital. In the hospital, we were told that Iris was in the Psychiatric Unit.
When we arrived at Iris’s room, she was sound asleep. Her room was a standard hospital room with a bathroom, very similar to the maternity ward I had stayed in when I gave birth to both children. We realized that she had been given shots that made her sleepy. We patiently waited for her to wake up.
Then, suddenly, she turned and opened her eyes and spotted us. She screamed out “Mom!” as she sat up abruptly and burst into tears. I came forward and embraced her tightly. After she cried for a while, she seemed to feel much better and I could see she was somewhat relieved. She started to describe to us what had happened, from the hotel to the hospital. She told us that in the Emergency Unit, they’d done a lot of medical tests on her. She was sent to the Psychiatric Unit because they had not found anything wrong with her physically.
Obviously, she was still under the influence of the medication the hospital had given her. She was very fragile and emotional at that moment. We comforted her and explained to her that she was overly exhausted because of lack of food and rest. She was in good hands and would be better soon.
A couple of nurses came to the room and checked on us from time to time. Later, all the nurses told us that they were very glad that we had come. We stayed with Iris in her hospital room until 9 P.M., leaving when visiting hours were over, and we assured her that we would come back to see her first thing in the morning.
Woman Who Could Not Forget Page 39
