Continued…
“You have Agitated Depression,”
My New Therapist/Psychiatrist Said & Suggested Hospitalization
Previous Rendition:
When my father and I arrived home from Manhattanville College, we unloaded the cars.
My father asked me about his sister, my Aunt Rosie.
“She’s in a coma from an accidental overdose. What do you think we should do?” he asked me.
Years later, I realized that because I was in a coma, he assumed that I would know what it was like and be able to offer advice. It had its own kind of strange logic. That was my father.
Was the overdose accidental? Did my overdose give her tacit permission to take her life? Probably not. My mother and father kept my attempt secret, no doubt; it was the stiff-upper-lip New Englander way. But I’ll never know.
I had no idea what to tell him. The coma was and still is a big missing piece from my life — a big nothing.
