Explaining Bipolar Disorder to My Grandparents

“I took my sister down to the ocean,

  but the ocean made me feel stupid…

  I picked up a seashell to illustrate my homelessness,

  but a crab crawled out of it, making it useless.”     –Jens Lekman

 

There are some days you just know are going to be important in the grand scheme of your life, like college graduation, or giving birth.  Like you know you’ll think back on it with uncommon clarity when you’re on your deathbed.  That’s how I felt the other day when I drove to the country to explain to my grandparents why my mom had been admitted again to a psychiatric facility (or, as the number is programmed into my cell phone, the Crazy House). 

Now my mother is not actually crazy, but she has bipolar disorder, and my father is an alcoholic.  These are merely facts of my life, like my student loan bill or the mark on the right side of my chest that I’m pretty sure is a third nipple.  Here are a couple of other facts:  I don’t feel like my parents are all that different than most, as emotional imbalance seems a prerequisite for motherhood, and all dads can be assholes sometimes.  Next fact:  I don’t feel superior to my parents.  So what if my dad’s average blood alcohol level is higher than Nick Nolte’s in that infamous mug shot?  I can easily see myself just a few years and a couple of personal tragedies away from soaking in a claw-foot bathtub full of pure gin and then drinking it, all, through a garden hose. 

All this to say:  most of the time, stuff is manageable.  But anyone who knows a bipolar also knows that they take a lot of meds, and have to go in for regular checkups to make sure their meds are working and not screwing up their systems.  Recently my mom’s medication needed to be adjusted, which meant a stay in the hospital.  And since I have a 14-year-old sister, this means some creative juggling to make sure she has someplace to stay during this time. 

So I went to visit my mother’s parents, thinking we could talk about any anxieties they have about when this happens, and let them know everything was okay and would be okay, even when I am living in Boston and my brother in Chattanooga, as will be the case as soon as a month from now.  I’m not sure what to say about my grandparents, except that they are super-hard workers and practical out the wazoo.  My grandpa’s name is Clyde and my grandma’s name is Wanda.  Doesn’t that say it all? 

I sat in the living room of their house, my grandma beside me on the couch and my grandpa across from us settled in his recliner, hearing aid on high.  Their shitzu and toy poodle were competing for my attention, clawing at my lap.  The poodle, Scamper, peed on my leg.  I declined a diet coke and got down to business.

We talked about my mom and my dad.  Mostly I was surprised to find that they were unclear about what bipolar disorder is, and why my mom needs medicine at all.  I explained that it is a sickness, an irregularity in the body. 

“The way I look at it,” I began slowly and simply, “both mom and dad have a disease.  Being bipolar or being an alcoholic is like having diabetes, or arthritis.”  To my surprise, my grandpa nodded in agreement. 

“That’s right about the drinkin’,” he said.  “It’s an addiction, just like you get addicted to anything else, like to cigarettes or coffee.  Well me and Wanda, we drink that coffee every morning, we need it, ‘cause we are addicted to what’s in that coffee.  And who knows?  It may be that drinking coffee like we do may be just as bad for you as the alc-y-hol.  It may end up destroying our livers or something else on the inside.” 

I gauged my grandmother’s reaction to this.  She look pissed.  Her eyes narrowed and she turned her head to my grandpa.  “Well, Clyde, coffee don’t make you pass out,” she spat. 

I had to agree. 

Carefully, I continued.  “In any case, that’s why it’s important to make sure mom’s medicine is doing what it’s supposed to do.  It evens her out.”  I formed my hands into an imaginary scale fluctuating in the air. 

“Can you tell me, what causes this bipolar disorder, anyway?” my grandpa asked.  I didn’t hesitate.

“Well, it’s a chemical imbalance in the brain, and it’s genetic.”

My grandpa started laughing.  “Wonder whose side she got that from, Wanda?”

“From you,” she said with some venom. 

“Now that you mention it, I do have some crazy folks on my side of the family,” grandpa conceded to me.  “Did I ever tell you that I had a double first cousin who killed his wife with a baseball bat and then tried to kill his five kids?”

“Those poor kids,” my grandma sighed.  “They ended up with metal plates in their heads.” 

“Aw, old Rusty turned out okay,” said my grandpa.  Then he continued, “Do you know what a double first cousin is?”

“I think so,” I said.  “Like when your aunt on one side and your uncle on the other get married?” 

“That’s right,” he said.  “So then you’re really related to your cousin, more than to a regular first cousin.” 

“And,” interjected my grandma, “did you know that Clyde’s grandpa murdered his last wife by strangling her?”

“Well, now, Wanda, that’s not something we really wanted to get out,” chastised my grandpa.

“Oh, I won’t tell anyone,” I promised.  “Except on my blog.” 

“Your what?” 

“Huh?” I said.  “Did you say something?  I’ll take that diet coke now, I think.” 

 

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Now that I’m moving, now that I’m moving to Boston, I’ve started having these nightmares.  In them, my grandparents get sick and die while I’m gone.  Then I feel guilty, because I knew they were old, and maybe wouldn’t be around that much longer, and I left anyhow.  And even though they’re just dreams, some residual fear remains while I talk to them, like this could be the last time I see them, or one of the last times, and shouldn’t I make something important out of it? 

Track #2 on Jens Lekman’s newest album is about taking his little sister down to the sea.  He wants to tell her something important, something that will make her understand him better, something that will help him understand her better.  But then they get there and “all the words” he had prepared “vanish into thin air.”  Later he laments, “We rode home on the bikes we borrowed, but I’d still never told you about unstoppable sorrow.” And then, “I still don’t know anything about you.  Is it in you too?” 

And even though Jens is crazy himself, and the next song on the album is about pretending to be a friend’s boyfriend so her parents don’t find out she’s a lesbian, isn’t this always how it happens?  We plan these trips to the sea, where we’ll finally be able to explain to the people we love who we are, and that we have these sad seeds in our souls but that it’s okay, but then it doesn’t happen that way, and instead your grandpa tells you about all the murderers you have in your family. 

I don’t mean for this to be a life lesson, or Ira Glass tying it up all neat at the end, but it’s better that way, right?  It’s the right way for things to turn out.  And it certainly makes for a better story.