| Musings |

Another Mother

By Tzipora Bar-Lev | October 21, 2020

I’m in a psych ward. I can deal with that. Can’t I?

Mothers shouldn’t have to be in a place like this. Mothers shouldn’t have to be doing this.

My brain was on autopilot, answering the doctor’s questions while ignoring my peripheral vision, which was seeing images I didn’t want to process.

The white-coated orderlies. Brightly lit hallways with gated windows. The locked door behind me.

From somewhere down the hall a wail echoed in my consciousness. A keening sound, painful and piercing.

I tried to tune it out. To focus on what was right in front of me. I was here. Had to be here for my son’s sake. But mothers shouldn’t be standing next to their firstborn sons talking about hallucinations and disassociated reality.

Mothers should be hugs and freshly baked cookies. Mothers should be able to fix all problems with a kiss on the knee and a Mickey Mouse Band-Aid.

How did I get here? How did I get from his very first doctor’s appointment where I kvelled over his weight gain, to discussing psychotic symptoms with the admitting psychiatrist?

I’m in a psych ward. I can deal with that. Can’t I?

No. I can’t.

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Comments (1)

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Ester Jakabovits
5 years ago
Reply

Dear Tzipporah Bar-Lev,
With tears in my eyes for a mommy who longs to erase her child’s pain with her embrace, I want to echo your son’s comparison of you and Rochel Imeinu. Your courage to share a journey most people keep in the recesses of their hearts may very well be at the root of Rochel’s courage to do the “unpopular, risky thing, to give over the simanim to her sister.
In your act, in sharing your journey toward bringing your son to a psych ward, you may have given words to others who are too afraid to speak, camaraderie to those who don’t know how. On the yahrtzeit of Rachel Imeinu, which recently passed, I davened for your special son.
How do I know he’s special? Because his is obviously a sensitive neshamah, feeling things at a frequency most of us don’t. Perhaps his soul lacks the dressing, curtain, mechitzah, that allows us to function in this world, but gives him no rest.
Sending you continued strength,