I hardly know how to begin, but I have to try, in order to save myself.

Those of you who have gone through something similar will understand at least a little, or maybe a lot. We’re all the same and yet so different. It’s one thing to say, “My mother has been diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer’s.” [Note: diagnosis not official after all. - JHF] It’s quite another thing to say that this has happened to Helen Farr. That makes this the Helen & Johnny Chronicles as well, of course, and only I can tell the story of what’s going on now with both of us.

The one who gave me birth

Sobbing in the carport of this stupid, stinking trailer, completely broken, swatting bugs and staggering, trapped here now in the hell-hole that is Tucson. Why does anybody live here? I can’t imagine. Unbearable, putrid heat all day and night, humid too, this time of year, with millions of mosquitoes in the goddamned desert. If ever a city deserved to die, this one does. It shouldn’t even exist, running on water that fell as rain back in the Pleistocene. But why am I talking about Tucson? What’s this place ever done to me??

I freely admit that my Tucson experience has always been colored by the hell of familial disfunction. I could tell you about the time my father was drunk, crying, and threatening violence as my wife and I were leaving, both parents wielding knives and screaming… so we took my mother with us to a McDonald’s on the outskirts of town. We all shared cardboard burgers we couldn’t taste and then my wife and I drove off, leaving my mother to wait long enough for the old man to pass out so she could call a taxi. But oh, there was so much more. There is so much more.

My father died back in the ’80s from lung cancer at age 67, not long after he told me, shaking with rage, that “No one knows what goddamned hell it’s been to live with that woman!” This isn’t a preface to an indictment of my mother, but rather to show the ground in which the current catastrophe has grown. Not from which, but in which — the larger tale is steeped in karmic mystery, of course. I can tell you what I know of what’s happened in my lifetime that relates, and perhaps I will, if I am able. Years of Jungian analysis has taught me how to shine a light into the catacombs where I’m always anchored, though my eyes are in the sky.

The present disaster has many layers, twists, and turns, which makes a linear narrative quite difficult. And always there’s the context, the heaving, painful, hideous tapestry of lies and idiocy, greed and nonsense, drenched in tears and blood. Yes, blood. You might not see it, but it’s there. So maybe some will understand when I say that when I heard that Helen was in the hospital with pneumonia and that my brother and sister needed me to come, I heard the banshees wail.

South of Socorro, on the way to Arizona

She’s sitting 15 feet away now as I write this, at least as lucid as she was when I was last here almost two years ago. Her dementia (or whatever it is) phases in and out, like the moon moving behind the clouds. Earlier today she all but needed physical restraint, but dementia is easier to deal with than the periods of so-called sanity. I live in dread of those right now, because I’ve already started taking over all the finances, and in this state she might remember. I’ve gathered up the credit cards and checkbooks, taken control of various accounts through power of attorney vested in me years ago if this should come to pass. I wonder if she knows she agreed to this just last Friday, at her bank. Please God, don’t let her ask about it now: I can’t take another fit of screaming.

She hears voices almost all the time. A common theme is sex and dope parties at the neighbors, late at night, people voting for her and against her, whisperings in the dark. An hour ago she came out from the bedroom and wanted to know who that woman was I’d been talking to. I told her I’d been sitting here at my computer the whole time, totally alone. We’ve actually “discussed” the idea of a nursing home, easier when she’s in a weakened state from which acquiescence almost flows. She doesn’t think it’s time, of course, but then she thinks I’m here just visiting. JUST VISITING??? I’ve cried for days, not knowing what to do or where to turn, and she has no idea. I’d say it’s more than I can bear, except I seem to still be here, where I would never want to be.

The pneumonia almost killed her and left her with a concrete-hard mass of congealed pus outside her lungs, restricting their expansion. My sister (a nurse) came out from California to oversee the situation, discussed this with my mother, and both agreed there’d be no major surgery to correct it. No extraordinary measures, no derring-do, let nature take its course, etc. At the same time, my sister, overcome with guilt, decided she would quit her job in LA to stay here and take care of mom — a position she’d only recently gotten after earning her nursing degree at the age of 50. With this decision in her mind, she allowed the hospital to release Helen for home care, thinking that she and my brother could manage the daily injections of antibiotics into the kick-line (IV) that Helen would need for several weeks more. That’s not the end of this installment, though.

While this was going on, I was on my way to Tucson in a rental car, straining against the loss of every mile that brought me closer to the vortex. It was like driving through giant thunderstorms of pain, and when I hit the Arizona line, I slowed down, knowing… Rolling into Tucson at midnight and 92 degrees, I headed for Helen’s other trailer, the luxurious double-wide she’d recently abandoned for the awful place she lives in now — this requires a separate episode — where I could camp out in the wreckage of my mother’s life and get some rest before heading over in the morning. While I was still asleep the next morning, my cell phone rang. It was my wife in Taos, who’d gotten up early and read the email from my sister:

“Sweetie, I know youre not up yet, but I wanted you to know: M____ has gone back to Los Angeles!”

Oh really? Oh God.

I didn’t have to know the reason, though. The context, remember. Always the context. Of course, she’d seen that everything was impossible, never mind her best intentions. Not only was Helen raving mad and vicious when she wasn’t, but my sister had realized she couldn’t quit her job and lose her health insurance, since she’d just had surgery for thyroid cancer and needed radiation treatments. No money would be forthcoming from Helen, either, since the dispensing of funds is always tied to coercion in the name of “doing what’s best.” No hope of getting compensation for giving up her life to stay here, then, assuming she could stand it.

I walked in the door and found Helen sitting in her chair, seemingly completely out of it. I bent down to give her a hug. She knew who I was, but not that I had come from Taos. The morning did not go swimmingly. She obviously couldn’t be left alone and yet there wasn’t anyone to take care of her. No one person can, certainly not my brother. Not me, not my sister, either. No one to take care of her, and what to do? Now everything was up to me, and here I sit, almost a full week later, Helen babbling constantly through the entire writing of this post.

Babble, babble, babble, each absurdity inviting an exasperated response I dare not utter.

I took her to a doctor on Friday (as soon as I could manage it), hoping to get some help, but he wasn’t her “primary care physician,” who wasn’t available anyway, so the idiot could do nothing except tell me to take Helen to the emergency room and leave her there. That’s right: ABANDON MY MOTHER at the hospital door and walk away! This advice came from a doctor,, and he’s not the only one who told me so.

This is America in 2008. This is what we have to answer for, all of us, and I’m white-hot with rage.