In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother’s Suicide Book Excerpt
By Nancy Rappaport, MD
“It is family lore that I am the last person my mother saw before she killed herself. She drove to my father’s house pleading to see the children, but I was the only child at home. My father demanded that she leave. Bee, our housekeeper, hustled me out the door and down the driveway toward my mother who waited desolate on the street. She bent down and caressed my hair – I remember – as she whispered instructions to Bee to watch over us, especially me. And then she left….I am often asked if I remember my mother. I appreciate that the question is a way to express the hope that my loss has been tempered, at least, by a photograph, a necklace, or her words – anything I might call on to evoke her presence. But I have few mementos and even fewer memories. My mother is defined by her absence….
Over the years, I have investigated the life history of my mother, looking for any clue to figure out more about who she was. I found a report card that my mother saved from first grade, in which the teacher’s comments portray a boisterous, bright, popular, and sometimes exasperating child:
‘Nancy knows a good many words and has a good accent, but is sometimes too sure of herself and does not listen carefully….She has a marvelous fund of general information, a real interest, and an insatiable desire to find out more about the subject she is interested in….Nancy’s idea of a grand time is to start some kind of argument with her friends. I have tried every method I can think of to give her another point of view. The most successful has been to give her responsibility. She is then very polite and thoughtful….She is an unusually gifted child and intellectually she will be able to do very fine work.’
I found a picture of her at about seven years of age with her arm hung casually around little Judy’s shoulder. The sisters are standing on brick steps in front of a large house. My mother is a good foot taller than Judy and looks protective and self-assured. They are pressed against each other with a casual intimacy and smiling in a conspiratorial way, as if they are used to getting into mischief together. It is the only photograph I have that shows them together and I stare at it with morbid fascination, knowing something they were unaware of when this picture was snapped: that they will be abruptly, brutally separated. A year later, over the winter, her sister drowned. There are no other school reports to reveal how this might have dampened my mother’s spirit….
I can only imagine how my mother reacted to her sister’s death. Indeed, we often wish we could uncover the deep feelings of a family member who cannot share the memories….My mother may have been the only witness to her sister’s drowning – although no one has told me where she was at the time. I wonder if my mother was taking a nap while her sister wandered outside….I can only imagine how much she hoped they would find Judy somewhere safe and how terrified she felt when they did not. I hope that she had her eyes covered when the police recovered her dead sister’s limp body. I wonder who comforted her. When a child dies accidentally, usually someone feels blamed. Did my mother feel terrible that she did not hear her sister’s cry for help?…Sisters and brothers provide scaffolding for our emerging sense of who we are. Roughhousing, teasing, playing dress-up, feelings of jealousy and affection, and countless negotiations all yield a sense of mastery and confidence. When a sibling dies, brothers and sisters miss sharing their lives and the security this brings. Many bereaved siblings believe that the death of a brother or sister has irrevocably changed their lives. They often feel more vulnerable to illness and experience survivor’s guilt. They are uneasy – unsettled by the disconcerting belief that they should have been the one to die. Surviving brothers and sisters are often melancholy during family celebrations and sometimes have difficulty concentrating. Healing occurs when family members comfort each other, when children are allowed to grieve in their own ways and share memories with their loved ones. Lacking comfort in her parents’ house, my mother as a young girl was alone with her thoughts, her possible guilt, her questions.
I do not want the same kind of distance with my children, the shadow of unexplored grief. Rather than burdening my children with my bereavement, I want to let them see how I deal with the painful longing for lost family without depriving them of my presence. I don’t want to be overly nostalgic about my mother. I don’t want the upheaval from my loss to undermine how I connect with my children; rather, I want to find strength in understanding.
My children have watched me as I have tried to understand who my mother was, knowing that I write ‘letters to Mama’ that are my way of telling my mother who I am and who my children are becoming. I try to penetrate the incomprehensible mystery of her death and to somehow show them our enduring connection to those we love. Cory, ever the concrete thinker, once asked me where I was sending the letters. Lila said that maybe in my dreams my mother would write back.
Sometimes, I peer into an apparent void, a one-way dialogue with too much room for projection. My family history gives me a fragmented and sanitized view of my mother. I often feel as if I am figuratively tugging on her apron strings pleading for something more, starved for a tasty morsel that will satiate my desire to know her in a way that is intimate and familiar….Losing my mother when I was so young cannot be sugarcoated. I needed her. I will always want my mother, but raising my own family and having the steady presence of my husband next to me make it less urgent most of the time….I cannot avoid the fact that there may be times when I am tested….Yet I have cultivated an endurance of will and stubborn refusal to succumb to the current of despair. Fighting back. Reaching for help from my family….”
About the Author
Nancy Rappaport is the author of In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother’s Suicide (September 2009, Basic Books). She is assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is attending child and adolescent psychiatrist at Harvard Teaching affiliate Cambridge Health Alliance, where she is also Director of School Based-programs with a focus on servicing youths, families and staff in public schools. Please visit her website at www.inherwake.com