In the past, I have blogged about how hard my mental illness has been on my husband. I went from being his partner to being a blob, who could barely take care of herself, much less provide him any support.  After many months of therapy, I am his partner again.  However, my role as his partner is different than it was before, and it has taken him some time to get used to who I am now.

Since I am not so focused on myself anymore, I have noticed that he has changed a great deal in the last year and half that I have been getting help for my depression.  Here are a few things that I have observed about him.

• He is much more patient than he used to be.
• He understands how much loud noises bother me and make me anxious. He is talking softer, so his voice does not bother me.  If he is doing work around the house, he will ask if it is ok to use a power tool and then warn me before he starts it up.
• He enjoys cooking. When I married him the only thing he could cook was microwave popcorn.  The other day he shared with me that he now enjoys cooking and making up his own recipes.
• He is extremely supportive when I am having a bad mental health day. Before I was being treated with depression, everyday was a bad mental health day.  He would get irritated because he did not know or understand why I was having such a hard time.  However, now that he has a greater understanding about what is going on, he no longer gets irritated.  Now when I have a bad mental health day he is very gentle with me, and understands that I am doing the best that I can.
• He listens better. It has been a struggle for me to get him to really hear me, however, he is now putting a great deal of effort into listening to me.

Do you have a family memory that stands out?  That one memory that represents all the good things about your family?  I do.  I have a memory of an incident where my family was at its best.  Each person had their own role, and did what needed to be done.  The result of all of that combined effort was that my family saved three lives.

Although we are not on the coast, during hurricane season we often experience the hurricane weather.  It consists of very strong winds and extremely heavy rain.  Many trees fall and there is a great deal of flooding when these weather fronts move through.   It is the type of weather, where the best thing to do is to stay home.

It was during one of these hurricane weather weather fronts that we received a phone call that changed all our plans for the evening.  Some friends of ours had called and asked us if we could bring their shop vacuum, that we had borrowed, back to them.  They needed it because their basement was flooding from all the rain that had already fallen. I do not think any of us were thinking properly, because without hesitation we agreed.

As we were getting ready to go, my son, who liked to be prepared for everything, had packed a bag with glow sticks and a strong but light weight rope.  I hate to admit it, but we gave him a hard time about him packing the bag.  However, my husband and I decided to let him take the bag, because we thought he had packed it to give himself comfort while we were out in the bad weather.

We had two ways to get to our friend’s house, a dirt road and a paved road.  Although the paved road is a longer route to their house, my husband decided that would be the best way for us to go.  We had not gone very far down the paved road when we encountered a problem.  There were live electrical wires on the ground.  My husband turned around and we got on the dirt road. The dirt road really did not seem all that bad.  There were a few places where some small creeks had gone across the road, because of all the rain, however, they were easy to cross.  When we had almost reached the end of the dirt road, our progress was suddenly stopped.  What was in front of us, on the road, was a huge river of swift flowing water. It was not supposed to be there.

Suddenly, we saw headlights in the middle of this river, and a nineteen year old young man fighting the current heading toward us.  He told us his girlfriend and her young son were trapped in his truck that had been carried away by the water’s current and now his truck was resting against a tree.  He had waded out to try and find help, but he was afraid that since the water was still rising that very soon his loved ones would be carried away.

Without discussing it, my whole family decided that we needed to do what we could to help this family.  There was no cell reception in this area, and the houses were few and far between, and we all felt that something needed to be done quickly.  This scenario was a nightmare for my husband.  Not only could he not swim, he is terrified  of water.  Which meant, my son and I were going to have to be the ones to go in the water to get the people out of the truck and my husband was going to have to drive to the closest house for help.

I have to wonder, if my husband was afraid that as he left us there that he would not see us again. I was grateful that my daughter was in the truck with my husband, I knew that she would be able to provide him with enough distraction to keep him from worrying about us too much. My fear was not for myself, but for my son. I kept picturing in my head, him being swept away and getting caught on the barbed wire fence that enclosed the cow pasture near us. However, there was no way I could have gotten those people out of that truck without his help.  It was a time that represented a great deal of sacrifice for all of us, but we all felt that this was the right thing to do.

As we headed toward the river, my husband sped away in his truck to get help.  The glow sticks my son had packed came in handy.  He pulled out a couple and that is what we used to light our way through the water. Thank goodness he was prepared.  In just the short time that it took us to make the decision to help this family, the water had risen a great deal and its current had increased.  We locked arms as we entered the water, to make it more difficult someone to be swept off of their feet.  The water was very cold and so was the rain that fell on our heads.  It seemed like it took us a long time to reach the truck.  The young man was exhausted, this was his second trip through the current, but my son and I kept encouraging him to keep going.  When we finally reached the truck we saw a very hysterical young woman and a very quiet little boy.

The young lady did not want to get out of the truck and get into the water.  Every time I asked her to, she told me no, and she was becoming more hysterical as each second passed.  Finally, I had to raise my voice and ordered her out of the truck.  There was simply no more time to be nice.  It worked and she got out of the truck.  I think her son knew that the adults in his life were wrecks and would only let my son get him out of the truck.  Because the water was still rising and was quickly becoming very deep, the little boy could not walk in it, which meant my son would have to carry him to safety.  We all locked arms again.

Heading back to safety was much harder than it had been to get to the truck.  The water was still rising, and the rain was still pounding us.  We had more people to contend with.  I kept telling everyone to take small steps as we moved forward.  Small steps.  Small steps to help us keep our balance.  It seemed to take us so long to get to safety, but we finally did.  We had to keep moving though.  Our place of safety would not stay that way for very long.  As we got to the top of a small hill, a place that would keep us safe from the rising water, we looked back.  As we looked back, we saw the headlights of the young man’s truck go out, and watched as it came lose from the tree and the water carry it away.

We were all shivering from being so cold.  I do not think I had ever been that cold.  Maybe we were also shivering because of all the adrenalin we had expended getting out of the water. Almost as soon as we caught our breath, my husband came flying up in his truck, with a woman following him in her own car.  We wrapped the little boy up in warm jackets and stuck him in the truck with my daughter.  She was great at continuing to help him stay calm.  We got the young man and his girlfriend to sit in the woman’s car, so they could warm up.  Within five minutes, a fire truck and ambulance showed up.  They took over care of the young family and we quietly left.

I love this memory not because of the people we saved, but because of how as a family we all worked together to accomplish something wonderful.  My husband was in charge of getting help, my young daughter was in charge of keeping him calm.  My son and I did what needed to be done to get the family out of their truck.  No person had a role that was more important than another.  We all were vital keys in accomplishing the goal.

Do you have a family memory that stands out in your mind?  What is it? Why is it so significant to you?  Share it here or on your own blog.  I would love to see what memories people treasure.

Mom and Dad

When I was a young child, I loved my parents because they seemed like superheros to me. They knew what I was going to do before I did it, made the monsters go away, and comforted me. When I was a teenager, I hated them because they were human, with all the faults that humans have. As a forty year old adult, I love them because they are human, and full of human emotions.

The draw back to finally seeing them as people and not just as my parents, is that I am more aware of their mortality.  Especially with my Dad.  Dad has always seemed some what invincible.  When I was growing up, I have no memory of him being sick or injured because it happened so rarely.  Even after I became an adult, he still had that invincible quality.

Mom is different.  I can remember that as I was growing up she was sick off and on.  The worst was when she was hospitalized several times for asthma, when I was around fifteen or sixteen.  About fourteen years ago, she was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma, and since that time has experienced other health related issues.  So in some ways, I kind of always felt that the time I had with her was almost like it had been borrowed.

A couple of weekends ago, my dad was telling me about his retirement plans and how he had applied for social security, while he was talking I realized that my dad is aging, and not very gracefully. I am sure the health problems he has had over the last few years have contributed a good deal to his aging.  However, it really surprised me when I realized that he is getting old fast.  Really fast.  It has affected him more than just physically, I believe it has affected him mentally as well.  He has become a cranky old man.

I see him becoming less engaged with his family.  An example is that until a few years ago, he still referred to me as his princess and told me I always would be.  Now he never says that anymore. Another example is that he used to really do a lot with the grandchildren he had at the time, now not so much.  Sometimes I wonder, if it were not for mom, keeping him up to date on stuff, if he would even know or ask what is going on with any of us.  I do not think this is intentional on his part, I believe it goes back to how he has felt over the last few years.  I am sure it is hard to focus on anyone but himself, at times, when he has felt so rotten for a while now.

I see his retirement looming before him.  A retirement filled with nothing but time.  My dad has no hobbies, does no volunteer work, only does a few things around the house, and as a result there is nothing for him when he retires.  I take that back, he has his recliner, his westerns and his ball games.  I cannot imagine that those things would satisfy him through out his retirement years.  I wonder if he also sees this time looming before him.

I am no expert on depression, I only have my own experiences to guide me, however, I believe my dad is going through some sort of depressive episode.  I think that this man who has always been proud of the fact that he was healthier than most people is feeling betrayed by his own body.  I also think that seeing a retirement filled with nothing but time is some what scary for a man like my dad.  The signs that I see that make me think that he may be in a depressed state of mind are the disengagement from the family, his crankiness, a controlling attitude, and to some extent the amount of sleeping (some of his extra sleeping is due to sleep apnea, but not all of it) he does when he is not working.  All of these are things I have experienced in my own struggle with depression.

It is an odd and sad feeling to view my father in this light, as a man struggling with his own thoughts and emotions.  My hope for him is that he finds some measure of peace before he retires, so that it is not the empty thing that is looming before him now.

No, the bats are not in my belfry brain.  They are in my mother’s belfry attic.  What started out as a funny story from my mother has turned into a huge ordeal.

Last week, late at night, my mother who does not sleep well saw something flying around inside her house.  She realized it was a flying rat bat, and then screamed.  This woke my dad up, who was sleeping in his recliner.  My mother continued her freak out and jumped on the couch covering herself with a blanket and dad was left to deal with the bat.  Eventually, the stress of the whole situation got to my mother and she went and hid in her bathroom.  The visual in my mind and my mother telling me about her hiding made me laugh.  When she was on the phone with me, she cracked me up with her idea of duct taping her attic door shut, in an effort to keep the bats away.  It was funny, and my mother agreed that after the incident was over that in retrospect it was funny.

Then things got not so funny.  My mother came home after being out for a while and discovered a bat sitting on her kitchen counter.

Bats serve a valuable purpose, eating bugs and etc. that might be harmful to people, but bats do not belong in a house.  They carry several diseases than can be fatal to humans.  Bats carry rabies.  They also carry histoplasmosis.  Histoplasmosis is found in fresh bat droppings, it is a fungus, and is transmitted to humans by airborne spores.  Unlike bird droppings, bat droppings do not have to have contact with soil for the fungus to be found.

After finding the second bat, things were not funny anymore.  Since my mother and father rent their place in Augusta, they called the rental management company and had them send an exterminator to the house.  Meanwhile, the rental management company kept trying to reach the landlord, who is not returning any phone calls.

The exterminator came to the house, identified where the bats are in the attic.  However, he left without doing anything.  It seems that in Georgia, this is the time of the year that bats have babies, and it is against the law to move them or do anything to them now.  What the exterminator did tell my mother was that if the landlord will agree that the bats need to be moved, the exterminator can go to the proper people and get a waiver.

Meanwhile, the management company still cannot get a hold of the landlord.

A couple of days ago, the management company said that since they could not get a hold of the landlord, and  having the bats in the house is an extreme health hazard, they were advising my parents to move out of the house.  So now my parents, both of whose health is not the best have to move to another house fairly quickly.  All of this has taken place in one week’s time frame.

It kind of makes you wonder if the two asthma attacks my mother had, especially since her asthma has not bothered her in years, were caused by the bats being in the house.