HARBORING A FUGITIVE

The Indigo Girls’ “Swamp Ophelia” is the album I came out to at 24. I have a tattoo that says “The Hardest To Learn Was The Least Complicated” (one of the lyrics), which absolutely summarized my own discovery at that age.

 

But time is a funny thing. Songs can mean one thing to you at one time of your life, and another later on.

 

Here I sit at 54, listening to the opening track “Fugitive” again for the millionth time, singing along to lyrics I *thought* I knew for the last 30 years, and suddenly — they’re something else.

 

Something I couldn’t possibly understand at 24.

 

In the context of 30 years of my life, of highs and lows, success and failure, hedonism and heartache, I discover that it’s a song I could easily be singing to my younger self — a young man not at all knowing what he’s about to sign up for, the life he didn’t bargain for — and here I sit, a crying mess.

 

“It’s coming to you,

The lessons I’ve learned

Won’t do you any good,

You’ve got to get burned;

The curse and the blessing,

they’re one in the same.

Baby, I said, it’s all in our hands,

Got to learn to respect

What we don’t understand.

We are fortunate ones,

Fortunate ones… I swear.

Remember this is how it should be.”

https://youtu.be/RYeBc8JTwo4?si=Uvcut8Mj5-NYeGyk

LUCY LAVERICK HIRSCH, 5/10/40 - 7/11/24

My mother, Lucy Laverick Hirsch has passed away at 84. I was in the ER with her when she left us.

She developed extreme Osteoarthritis in her hips and shoulders and had been having mobility issues for the last six years, including a spinal compression fracture. These issues accelerated over last two years with her being unable to walk more than a short distance or stand without discomfort. On Friday, June 27th she woke in severe pain, unable to stand up or walk at all, and went to the ER who evaluated her physical condition and transferred her into a skilled nursing facility.

She was there for two weeks, with no change in her mobility. While her memory had been declining the last few years, it had been getting noticeably worse the last few months, with a sharp decrease in her mental acuity while in the skilled nursing facility. In the last few days, she’d also been fighting some sort of rapid chest infection, which is what ultimately made her body shut down completely on Thursday, July 11th 2024 at 12:44pm; she was heavily sedated and sleeping when her body finally succumbed.

Her passing was a release to her, definitly a burden lifted — it happened quickly, without pain or prolonged suffering. Per Lucy’s wishes, there will be no memorial service. In lieu of flowers or condolences, we hope that her passing can shed light on and help de-stigmatize Borderline Personality Disorder — a mental health diagnosis that Lucy sadly rejected and unfortunately never sought treatment for. I truly believe she would have been happier had she been able to seek help. You can make a donation in her name to Emotions Matter, a non-profit resource for families impacted by BPD: https://emotionsmatterbpd.org

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Upon her passing, my feelings about her are, to say the least, complicated. Any grief I have about losing her was processed a long time ago, alongside a decade of therapy trying to understand and accept a mental illness that she denied and never sought treatment for.

While I had managed to establish a boundary that enabled me to have a functional relationship with her, she was never the mother I wanted or needed. I have a lot of anger and resentment about her decades of emotional abuse; that’s not to mention her decades of serious financial irresponsibility as well, which was a burden to both of her husbands, and ultimately me. She had pushed pretty much everyone in her family away, spent all of her money, and I was the last man standing.

I’ve pushed through years of painful therapy to really understand that her behavior was largely beyond her control and came from a place of fear and deep depression. She was a very unhappy woman, who took out her unhappiness on the people closest to her, while putting on a happy, likable face to the rest of the world.

Jason and I have spent the past seven years trying to make sure she was safe and comfortable amidst her limited mobility, even amongst constant, ongoing patterns of gaslighting and lashing out. I had resigned myself over the last few years to hold both truths: that my feelings for her involve a lot of pain, and that she’s also a human being to whom I can offer grace and dignity as she passes.

It’s been awkward when people console me during all of this — I’m not particularly sad, and I feel pangs of guilt when people expect me to be sad. It’s too complicated to fill in all the blanks with people, so I am trying to be gracious. But it weighs on me.

She was completely sedated while I was with her in the ER, for about four hours. Hilarious side note: I put on a movie on the hospital room TV to pass the time until she was gone, thinking I picked something light and innocuous and dumb with A DOG’S PURPOSE — which was absolutely the wrong choice and I was a total sobbing mess but for all the wrong reasons? Forced catharsis perhaps? Regardless, the stupid dog movie helped.

Eventually I started softly whispering to her, “it’s okay, you can let go now, don’t be scared.” I gasped as I literally watched her vitals start to drop slowly as I kept talking to her softly and gently, encouraging her to move on. “You can let go now. It’s time.”

I even joked with her, “and you know, you were a total pain in the ass.”

I don’t believe in an afterlife — so I don’t mourn her loss, but instead mourn that she had a lifetime of pain and confusion. I mourn that I never truly had an authentic mother-son relationship, but rather had to craft myself into a theoretical “good son” version of me that fit her mercurial needs. I mourn not really having positive family memories with her, but only ongoing drama and heartache that, as the “good son”, I often had to placate and soothe.

As I kept speaking to her softly and watched her vitals nearing zero, I said “I hope you can find peace.”

I truly hope that my mother actually heard me and somehow found peace when she passed.

I know I finally have.