Christmas . . . .

At about the same time that I saw Dr. C., we also had our first appointment with Catie’s neurologist, Dr. Rosenblum. He had to squeeze us in his busy schedule, so he had us come to the Capital District Psychiatric Center (CDPC) instead of the Center for Disability Services. It was dark out at five PM in early December. The dark and cold only served to make our journey through the cement parking garage into the weirdly designed labyrinth of varying floors, catwalks and hallways overlooking vast open spaces with funky colored doors and rough concrete walls all the creepier. It was unnerving, and we were already anxious about what Dr. Rosenblum might tell us regarding Cate’s development. As it turned out, the appointment was quite uneventful. He was pleased with her smiling personality, tracking, and overall examination. Phew! We could relax for a little bit and that was a welcome relief. Especially with Christmas coming.

It was our first Christmas with our new baby girl. The kids all believed in Santa Claus and were bursting with anticipation and excitement for his arrival. My Aunt Mary wanted to do something special for us at Christmas because of all the drama and chaos we had experienced with Catie’s birth. The previous year she had hired a “Santa” actor to visit her own grandchildren and she wanted to do the same for us because they had loved it. She wanted to cheer us all up.  We were thrilled. “Santa” called us, gave us a date/time, and told us to buy some gifts for each child and deliver them wrapped and labeled to the nearest Stewart’s store where he would be waiting about a half hour before he came to the house. (This was about a week before Christmas.) The boys were into ‘Masters of the Universe’ figures at the time so I bought them each a couple of their favorites, wrapped them secretly, and Mark dropped them off along with a little doll for Cate as directed.

Mark snuck out while the kids were taking their baths and getting pajamas on for bed. When he returned, he called them down for a story so we could wait for the BIG event. It wasn’t long before we all heard bells ringing outside and the kids jumped up to see what was going on. “It’s Santa” they said in unison. Sure enough he was wandering down the street in front of our home shaking several strands of sleigh bells. The kids were exploding out of their skins, opened the door and yelled hello to him. Santa said “I’m looking for the Roche’s.” “That’s us” they yelled.
Santa was soon in the middle of our living room chatting with the kids, telling them to be good, and finally handing out presents to all. He was fat, and had a great red velvet suit and a quality wig and beard. I was convinced he was the real deal. What fun! However, the minute he left, our six-year-old, Mark said “That guy is not Santa. Santa doesn’t bring presents in a Hefty bag.”

What?! We could not believe our ears. The gig was up for him.

A day or so later Mark got a call from his sister Trisha. She was in a facility in Connecticut receiving treatment for severe depression. This sweet girl had been sexually assaulted while walking along the street near her home in the suburbs years before. The perpetrator had wielded a knife, attacked her, and then drove her back to where he had originally found her earlier. She memorized his license plate number and the man (who had already been imprisoned before for the same crime) was incarcerated again. This terrible tragic crime occurred prior to the establishment of rape crisis centers. Mark’s parents didn’t know quite how to handle it all. Trisha kept saying she didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t want counseling. There was little information on how to deal with it all at that time so they basically followed her lead. She seemed to do well at first. Soon, however, her father had a heart attack and other puzzling symptoms which would stump his doctors for years. Frank was eventually diagnosed with lupus. Then their Mom, Louise, developed breast cancer. Trisha was the one home at the time. She helped with her mother’s care and watched her weaken and suffer, and finally die. Not long after Louise died, Tricia began a downward spiral of depression and substance abuse. She ultimately attempted to take her life, and so, was hospitalized in a place her Dad had researched as being among the best of its kind.

Trisha was on the phone asking Mark if she could spend Christmas with us. Mark bought time and said he’d check on what we had going on with my family. We might be going away, so he’d check and get back to her. When he told me what she wanted, I broke down hysterically. I loved Trisha and we had a very nice relationship, but I didn’t think I had it me to deal with both brain damage and acute depression that Christmas. I felt torn and uneasy, so I prayed for guidance, got the bible, and opened it up randomly. My eyes fell on these lines from Isaiah 58 . . ..
“They seek me day after day, and desire to know my ways, . . ..”
“They ask of me just judgments, they desire to draw near to God.”
“Is this not, rather, the fast that I choose: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking off every yoke?

Is it not sharing your bread with the hungry,
bringing the afflicted and the homeless into your house;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own flesh?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your wound shall quickly be healed;
Your vindication shall go before you,
and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,
you shall cry for help, and he will say: “Here I am!”

I started to sob. “Mark, look at this! We have to take her in.” And we did.

It was tough. Trisha was emotionally flattened by the medications she was on. She sat around disheveled, doing little, barely speaking, and looked incredibly sad and lost. There was an oppression, a heaviness, hanging in the air. Mark and I put on our best “game faces” and “celebrated”. Of course, there was real joy watching the boys in their innocence and delight at the magic of Christmas morning. But in between cooking and opening gifts and all the other festivities we were carrying out in our efforts to be “normal”, I’d run upstairs to both nurse Cate and cry. Truth be told, I think we more or less pulled it off. Trisha was heavily medicated and not picking up nuances in our behavior or affect, and the boys were caught up in their toys and treats and fully enjoying themselves. But for Mark and I, much of the day was torturous.

Poor Mark was crushed. He’d lost his mother at fifty when he was just twenty-two, watched his father become ill, withdraw, and then die the previous year at only fifty-seven. And now he watched his sister, a young woman in the prime of life, enduring the brutal aftermath of a sexual assault that began destroying her life at age thirteen because her pain had been buried alive. My good husband was also distraught about his newborn baby daughter . . .. And he constantly told me of his worries about the changes in me.