Chapter 28    Our Black November     During this entire period when the attempts we had been making to live with Bill's mother had been deteriorating, for the many and complex reasons he and I have been attempting to set forth in these pages, both of us would fall back on blame - either self-blame or blaming each other, I suspect, in order to attempt the assuage the guilt we both felt for our evident inability to do so. Bill fluctuates, in these pages, between agonizing self-blame, for not attempting to set limits with her, and equally harsh judgmentalism toward me for attempting to do so, occasionally with threats and intimidation, when I would finally lose my patience with her!   Neither of us seems to have recognized fully how futile and how damaging to our relationship it was to lay blame for the unfolding drama that was being enacted by the three of us. I kept reverting to the belief that if I just did the right thing, said the right words, his mother would give up her version of the drama and learn not to hate and fear me - and then, when she would not, I would become angry and exasperated with her, fearing that she might be right! Bill kept reverting to the belief that it was my lack of self-control and his own lack of involvement that was causing the whole problem. His ambivalent viewpoint is especially clear here, when he writes about his mother's problems.   I continue to separate the two accounts, his and mine to maintain a focus on my own reactions rather than simply reproducing his, as the toll of the strains on our relationship continued to escalate during the last days of October and for three weeks in November, as her condition deteriorated from something I could handle at home to the necessity of hospitalizing her in the only place that would accept her - Hudson River State Hospital in Poughkeepsie. The tale is a sorry one at best. Even though we were each doing our best with it, its ending was forecast from the start, and in the end took the heart and soul of our marriage with it - or so it seems from this perspective. Click here for the details in Bill's words. I could offer an account that would be pretty close to his, but it seems fairer to me to let his words prevail. ......................................   During the month of December we continued to make the long trip down to Poughkeepsie and back every Sunday, and his mother's condition stabilized at about the level he describes. However, the gulf between Bill and me, typified by his report of Morgenstern's comment that I "felt guilty about doing in his mother" &endash; which is not an objective version of what was actually said, I feel sure &endash; did not improve. On the other hand, the years since our arrival in Albany that I had been spending trying to worm my way back to a more livable state through both individual and group therapy had begun to work, in a sense, because I began writing poems - either allegorical or derogatory of the therapeutic process itself - for the first time.   We managed to get through Christmas with difficulty. Bill's report of the year just past reflects his state of mind, a complex mixture of rational objectivity, depression, judgmentalism, self-loathing, genuine grief and equally genuine caring about his family:   Year's end summary for 1962:   Was this the toughest year yet? Certainly, it wasn't one of the best. I reach the end of it in a low mood, harried, depressed, anxious. I am feeling so uncertain of myself and everything else at the moment that I am very hesitant to say anything about the year or what happened to anyone in it. In fact, I'm so fed up with myself and all the twaddle I've been writing all these years that I may break off in mid-sentence and never write another word of this stuff. What about that fine, hard, terse objectivity that was part of the original program of this thing and that seemed to sustain me so long? Can't I call upon it to summarize the year? Yeah, well, I now see that that too was largely a neurotic defense against things and myself and so pretty much a sham. I really don't have very much to say. I'm not really writing about anything that is important or that I really care about. And, after all, I'm not really writing to anybody. What a sick performance!   Still, habit should sustain me, even when faith fails and reason quakes. So here goes the stupid, dehumanized, deadpan recital, but perhaps still with the suppressed scream underneath.   It was a bad year for Mary, at least a hard one, but she may have made a start on attaining levels of self-knowledge which most af us never achieve. She started the year with almost frenzied activity in the cause of peace and saving mankind from nuclear destruction, but her own weaknesses betrayed her. A month in the hospital with the still dubious diagnosis of rheumatic fever, a month or so more in bed at home, were only a prelude to even more trying times in the late months of the year. Mary's psychotherapy, pursued with her usual enthusiasm and all-out vigor, has shaken us all to our foundations. And finally there was the weird, prolonged, ambivalent, guilt-ridden, still to me largely incredible, conflict with my mother that culminated in such sad, deep guilt - scarring defeat for both parties. Mary will never be the same person after this year - maybe better, but not the same.   For my mother, of course. it was a downhill year, at first gradual, and then she went over the edge into black depths that cannot be exceeded, even in death. The unsolved problems of a lifetime were probably overtaking her anyway, even without any added tensions, but the disruption of our own family life, culminating in our asking Mother to start to make plans to live elsewhere, were too much. First she broke physically, almost died when an old ulcer hit a major blood vessel. Her remaining physical vigor surmounted this shock, but her mental adjustment, always neurotically precarious, gave way completely.   Those three psychiatrists we called in all said that the trouble was basically organic - cerebral atherosclerosis, perhaps precipitated by temporary anoxia, but we feel that there was a major functional breakdown too. And yet, at year's end, she seems to have recovered more than they said was possible - or has she? Is it only a brief remission, already fading? Realistically it seems that there is not likely to be much more in store for my mother but a few more miserable months, going steadily downhill in a strange and lonely and threatening world.   And if there is guilt to be assigned, or if there is still something that ought to be done, all paths lead ultimately back to me, and it is more than I can bear, which means that I become even more helpless and incapable of action, and therefore more guilt-ridden.   Certainly a year full of death and despair. In February came the rather sudden death of Phil Thompson, one of my oldest and best friends, and with him somehow died the last vestiges of my long dead youth. And then, as if ominously varying a theme, came in August the suicide death of another symbolic figure, Walter Solmitz, a fellow misfit and hanger-on in the field of philosophy, and, on the conscious level at least, his reasons were that he was forced to acknowledge at last his own total inadequacy.   And the general drift of Mary's problems and the unwinding of her therapy seems to be that my inadequacies lie at the root of most of her problems, and those of my children too, of course. At the same time I am feeling more inadequate in my work, a feeling which my department head finds it necessary to play upon, because of his own problems. Wherever I turn, or whatever I look at, I find myself involved in deep troubles.   Financially I've felt increasing pressure too. Fortunately, our new medical insurance coverage here in New York saved us from the worst ravages of Mary's illnesses. It's also true that I made considerably more money than in any previous year. But our expenditures went up even more precipitously. We incurred new debts and did little about paying off old ones, and there are prospects of more heavy expenses lying ahead. We are supporting a son in college and we bought another car this year.   This heavily mortgaged old barn in which we live is in need of drastic repairs.   As far as the children are concerned, the picture is more cheerful, and this is, I suppose, as it should be. Billy finished high school in very good form indeed, spent a dull but virtuous summer taking care of Bucky and his grandmother, and has had a stimulating and successful fall, as he started his freshman year at Cornell. He was awarded both a Regents' scholarship and one by Cornell for almost full tuition. Unfortunately, they do not supplement each other financially. Billy started out in electrical engineering, but he is now thinking of switching over into liberal arts, has the weird idea that he would like to become a college teacher.   Peter too has made strides toward finding himself. He still doesn't seem to be able to turn in a very good academic performance, but his talents for expressive and creative activities have blossomed out in a number of directions - drama, informal humor, singing, the graphic arts. He is also showing more social competence.   Tommy undoubtedly has problems, but, since they are the kind that hurt him more than anybody else, they are perhaps too easy to smile at and ignore. He has matured rapidly during the last year, shot up in growth, looks very mature for fourteen, assumes responsibilities beyond his age. He has been making a good deal of money lately, doing baby sitting, snow shoveling, and other chores. He handles his money with pride and judiciousness. He saves but does not hoard, enjoys making well-considered little purchases, is generous but strict about loans he makes to his more wayward siblings. He has certainly been the most helpful and considerate of the children in our times of troubles. His school work has improved somewhat, not brilliant, but it is respectable. He has broad and deep interests, and he is capable of very fine feelings. He is a good person, maybe in some ways too good for his own best interests.    Tom, Milne School student Ellen got through her bad year at school last June, and things are at least somewhat better this year, but her teacher seems uninspired and the school routine dull and old-fashioned. Mary would like to put her in the Albany Academy for Girls, an expensive private school, but I don't honestly see how we can afford it, with the three boys to put through college in the next few years. And it isn't a step that one could take on on a temporary basis. We're a little concerned about Ellen however. We sometimes think that she has shown increasing signs of withdrawal lately, spends more time reading on her bed, sort of mopes around, doesn't eat well, is lakadaisical and hard to mobilize for even the simplest action. Still, I don't honestly feel that this goes very deep. There's a great deal of imagination and fun in Ellen, and a mind as sharp as a razor once it is really unsheathed and brought to focus on a problem. She's amazingly good at card games and things like that, for instance. She has become perceptibly more feminine this year, not so much physically as emotionally. She's still deep in middle childhood, and sometimes it seems like early childhood when she squabbles with Mark over toys, but something is beginning to stir within her. She will probably change even more during the coming year.   Mark has had a stormy year, and he is still very stormy. At least he is thoroughly committed to an extrapunitive approach to his problems, so he isn't likely to hurt himself too badly. He's sharp and quick, shows good speech and muscular development, is like Peter in his muscular coordination and motor learning (rather than like Tommy and Ellen in their clumsiness and physical timidity), but he has almost no frustration tolerance at all and seems retarded in emotional development in that he still shows the extreme emotional dependence on his mother which, as I understand it, is most characteristic of the second year of life. On the other hand, he doesn't seem to be able to resolve his Oedipal conflict at all - he just plain hates me for the most part (maybe that is a resolution), and I suppose that this must be my fault, but then, so many things are that I have a hard time keeping track of them all. I still feel that, if things ever simmer down around here a little, particularly for Mary, Mark could get better organized, but I no longer claim this as an objective judgment. We tried him in nursery school briefly this fall but had to take him out. He kicked up too much of a fuss about being left. We'll try again shortly.   Finally, there's Bucky, who, whether we're willing fully to acknowledge it or not, is a member of our family. We tried sort of abandoning her this year, but it didn't stick, and at year's end she's back with us. At least Mary got rid of the too great burden of managing her financial affairs. We think that Bucky had a slight stroke this summer, and we really thought that she might not last out the year, especially when she tried to take an active hand in running her own life this fall, but at year's end she seems to be in remarkably good shape. Other people feed her better than we do.   The world out there moved to "the brink" again this year, perhaps more dramatically and precariously than ever before, but it fell back a little way near year's end, so we'll all be around to have a try at least one more year.  Write me at   maryskole.aol.com   Move to Chapter 29