Woman Who Could Not Forget (58 page)

The next day was Sunday, and with Christopher and everyone gone, Iris and I were taking a walk on the levee. It was a bright, sunny day. She was quiet as we walked. While we walked, I stared at our two shadows projected on the trail, moving right along with our steps. There was no other sound, just that from our footsteps. She did not want to talk; she was silent, immersed in her own thoughts.

Several days earlier, Brett had found a psychiatrist, Dr. C, referred by one of their friends. At first, Dr. C did not want to accept Iris as a patient right way. After I learned that from Brett, I immediately called Dr. C and told him that Iris was the author of
The Rape of Nanking;
that impressed him; he promised to see her right away. On Monday, October 11, Iris was going to see Dr. C for the first time. Brett asked us to take Iris to see the doctor since he would still be in Illinois and could not make it, so Shau-Jin and I accompanied her to Dr. C’s office.

In the office, I handed to Dr. C my summary report of Iris in Louisville and the current update on Iris. This was the third time in two months that I had handed this report to a psychiatrist. Dr. C told us very frankly that his policy with patients and their family members was complete openness. He stressed that any discussion should be in front of patients. If we sent him e-mails, copies should be addressed to the patient too. I could sense that Dr. C wanted to win his patient’s trust by using this open policy. Looking back, I doubt that this open policy was good in Iris’s case, because we could not discuss and tell Dr. C privately information about Iris that was vital for her mental health. Dr. C did not know that Iris did not trust doctors in general and was not willing to disclose her innermost thoughts to them, rendering him unable to properly treat or diagnose her.

I was living with Iris until Brett got back from Illinois on Tuesday evening, October 12. On that day, I walked with Iris to her mailbox in her nearby post office, which only took twenty minutes. On the way there and back, I tried to get her mind off her worries. I asked her about the
Lord of the Rings,
the series of books that she and Michael had read and enjoyed when they were in high school, as a way of distracting her and perhaps taking her back to happy memories about her favorite pastime in the world, reading books. Iris was able to describe the complicated stories of the Hobbit and The Ring in great detail, including the names of the characters and the places and the plots. I was amazed that her mind was so clear.

After seeing Dr. C, Iris still maintained that she wanted to stop all the medications. Iris stopped taking Celexa on October 7, after the support group meeting. She told Dr. C on the phone that she would discontinue seeing him if he insisted on her taking medicine. As a compromise, Dr. C persuaded her to continue seeing him and then he would decide whether she could gradually decrease the dosage of Risperdal. All of us told Iris that both the medication and the psychotherapy sessions were needed for a rapid recovery. If she didn’t want to take medication, then at least she should have psychotherapy sessions with a doctor. She agreed to continue seeing Dr. C. Looking back at what ended up happening, it was so ironic: Iris was the one who did not want to take the medication, whereas the rest of the family believed in doctors and thought the medication would help her.

Iris called Luann to ask about Christopher every day, sometimes twice a day. She talked to Luann for a long time on the phone, asking details of Christopher’s activities. She missed him greatly.

I was actively looking into exercise programs in a community center for Iris and myself, so we could go together every morning to exercise. I was told that the central San Jose YMCA had a good exercise program. On Friday, October 15, I asked Iris to go with me to check it out. At the beginning, she hesitated, but with my encouragement she went along with me. From our house to the YMCA was not far, about a twenty-minute drive. When we arrived at the YMCA, we went into the lobby. The clerk showed us their programs and allowed us to go in to check out the facility.

When we came out to the lobby, it was about noon and we were quite hungry. We found a tall, thin African man who was busy setting up food on a long table in the hallway. On the table was a sign which read “Free Food Tasting,” and on the other end another sign which read “Queen of Sheba Restaurant welcomes you.” We went up to the man and asked what that meant. He said he was the owner of the restaurant, which was just across the street from the YMCA. He came from Ethiopia, and the food on display was typical Ethiopian food, and it was free.

We could not believe our luck. This was the first time I could remember having a free lunch ever in my life. The food had just been cooked in the restaurant and brought in on the table. The steam with its distinct aroma from the exotic food made both Iris and myself salivate. We each took a plate and dished some food onto our plates. There was injera bread (similar to the Middle Eastern pita bread), black and red bean casseroles or stews, hard-boiled eggs in a special sauce, and some meat dishes and white rice. All the dishes were delicious. We could not believe the owner of the restaurant was so generous. Iris and I sat down at the small table and chairs they set up for the event and enjoyed the meal. I had never had Ethiopian food in my whole life. I found the food delicious and could not believe such exquisite food came from a country so torn by conflict and war.

I saw the satisfactory expression on Iris’s face also. This was the first time she had enjoyed food wholeheartedly since she had returned from Louisville. When we finished the meal and went out to the parking lot, we looked at each other and burst out laughing. This was our usual behavior when we came across unexpected good luck. This kind of facial expression only occurred when both of us were completely happy and satisfied.

This was the last—and one of the most memorable—moment we had together in the final period of her life. I knew she enjoyed life, she loved life. Here was the daughter I knew. Unfortunately, she did not get the chance to experience more of this joy in her life. I am saddened whenever I think about her laughter on that day.

When we came home, I helped Iris sort her papers for donation to the Hoover Archives and other institutes. In the process, Iris told me that I was the best mom in the world. I could not stop my tears whenever she said that to me!

That day was a remarkable, memorable day, but then things deteriorated rapidly.

On Monday, October 18, Iris saw Dr. C, and later we learned from Iris that Dr. C agreed with her: she could decrease the Risperdal to 0.8 mg from 1 mg, and the dosage would be decreased gradually over a period of time. That meant that Dr. C thought Iris was getting better. We did not know what Iris told Dr. C in the psychotherapy sessions twice a week. We learned later, after she died, that Iris had never disclosed her innermost thoughts to Dr. C, who told us at the funeral that Iris had misled him.

Every day, Shau-Jin and I had a routine walk with Iris on the levee. She always told us that she had much unbearable pain, which I assumed was mental pain but not physical pain. I just could not envision it while she described it to us with such anguish. I wished so much that I could relieve her pains by sharing them with her. She also told me that sometimes she felt she was being smothered, as if she was drowning in the ocean. Only later, I realized that the excruciating pain she described could have been induced by the medication she was taking—a serious side effect of the antidepressant after its withdrawal (see Epilogue).

The morning of Thursday, October 21, when I went to see her, she was very unhappy and complained that I was following her too closely. I found she had not eaten well the night before, so I suggested going out for lunch. We drove to a nearby restaurant. In the parking lot, when she stopped the car, she sat there and told me without any expression that she wanted to cry but had no tears. Her face was greenish and in a horrible depressed state. At this time, she had already mentioned that she did not want to live anymore. I also noticed that her arm and leg movements and facial expression were rigid. And it seemed even worse that she wanted to cry but had no tears. Back then, I did not suspect that all these symptoms could be the serious side effects of the medication.

In the afternoon, she came to ask her dad to make a series of duplications of her photos on DVD on his computer. She said she wanted to send them to the archives. We did not suspect at the time, but in retrospect she might have already prepared for her final destiny.

Shau-Jin and I were quite worried that day, so we called Brett and went over to their house. The four of us talked. We told Iris that she should not harm herself. We tried not to use the word “suicide” for fear it would give her the idea or confirm her already-dark thoughts. She did not answer. That night I knew it was a very dangerous and critical time, but I was in despair and did not know what to do. I wanted to write to Dr. C and tell him about Iris’s suicidal thoughts, but I was afraid that he would insist that I send a copy of my e-mail to Iris as he believed in a policy of openness with his patients. I hesitated and did not e-mail him.

Over the weekend I called Iris and Brett, but they weren’t home. I didn’t know what Iris was doing. Out of desperation, finally on Sunday evening, October 24, I gathered my courage and mailed my e-mail to Dr. C. I told Dr. C that Iris had told us that part of her wanted to live, but another part of her wanted to die. She said this occasionally, but on Thursday she mentioned it several times, and I had to do something.

Then Dr. C noticed that my e-mail did not have Iris’s e-mail address and returned it to me. He lectured me that he did not wish to communicate without Iris’s knowledge and wanted me to re-send my e-mail to him and a copy to Iris. I had no choice and did so accordingly.

Brett also wrote to Dr. C the next morning and told him that Iris had been off the Celexa for more than two weeks now and only on Risperdal 0.8 mg and had become increasingly depressed. In the evening, Brett sent another e-mail to Dr. C, sending a copy to Iris and us, and said that Iris had been visiting Web sites like thefinalexit.org and other suicide and euthanasia Web sites. This really alarmed us a great deal.

In the evening, Dr. C called Iris at home and got no response, so he called us. We immediately went to their house and found that Iris and Brett had just come home from a walk. We told them that Dr. C had called and was quite concerned with Brett’s e-mail about Iris’s browsing some suicide Web sites, and he wanted to talk to Iris. Iris returned the call. On the telephone, Dr. C told Iris that she had two choices: either take the antidepressant Celexa or go to a hospital. Iris was stunned. She agreed to take the medication. But after she hung up the phone, she was very angry and told us we had betrayed her by reporting this to Dr. C.

Two days after she took 1 mg Risperdal and 5 mg of Celexa on Thursday, October 28, I took a walk with her in the morning and had lunch with her in her house. I tried to be with her all the time. I came home to rest for a while that afternoon. At 3:30
P.M
., I called to check on her, and there was no answer. I knew she should be alone at home and wondered why she was not answering, so I went to her house. She was not there, and her car was gone. I went upstairs to her office and found that the computer was on. I saw that she had last been browsing a Yahoo map, and that there was an address on the map. I immediately called Shau-Jin and asked him to search for that address. Shau-Jin called me back and said it was Reed’s Sporting Goods and the shop sold hunting equipment. I was alarmed and waited anxiously in Iris’s house for her to come home.

Finally, an hour later, she came home, looking somewhat uneasy. While she was making an excuse about cleaning the garage, I checked her purse in the living room. In her purse I found a safety manual for using a gun and a sheet on how to apply for a license to own a gun. I was terribly scared and went to the garage and confronted her about the gun safety manual. I asked her why she needed a gun. She was stunned and became very unnatural and said that she needed it to defend herself. In the meantime, Brett came home from work and Shau-Jin came to the house too. I told them about the incident. Brett calmly asked her why she needed a gun. We all told Iris that she was safe—she did not need a gun. Then Brett asked Iris to go outside for a walk.

I was very scared that night, but I still did not know the proper way to deal with the situation. Everyone thought I was always overly worried, but the fact that Iris was going to a gun shop was unthinkable! Nobody in our family had ever even
handled
a gun in our entire lives, not to mention
owning
a gun. This was completely out of character for Iris.

It should be noted that the day Iris visited a gun shop was the third day she had resumed taking Celexa, and September 21, when she’d made her first suicide attempt, was two days after she first took Celexa. I cannot help but thinking that there is a strong correlation between her taking the antidepressant Celexa and her suicide attempts.

The next day was Friday, October 29. In the morning when I went to see Iris, she did not want to see me. She apparently knew that I was checking on her very closely, and she wanted to distance herself from me.

Iris had an appointment to see Dr. C that afternoon. Since Iris refused to let us accompany her, I e-mailed Brett that he should take Iris to see the doctor and tell Dr. C that Iris intended to buy a gun. I was glad when Brett told me later that he’d made an appointment to see Dr. C that afternoon. It turned out, however, that the meeting with Dr. C was quite short and Brett did not have a chance to mention the gun to him. In September, Brett had criticized me for worrying too much about Iris. Now he apologized to me because he realized that Iris indeed had suicidal tendencies.

After October 28, the day I found out she had gone to a gun shop, Iris avoided me. On Sunday, October 31, I went to a farmer’s market in the early morning and bought some fresh flowers. I made a flower arrangement to send to her, plus some healthful food I’d bought from the farmer’s market. In the evening, I invited Brett and Iris to have dinner with us. This was the last evening we were ever with Iris. It was Halloween night, but it did not have the flavor of Halloween; I might have totally forgotten that that night was supposed to be a holiday. The four of us ate the meal quietly. No one seemed to want to talk. It was strange, but Iris was very calm and peaceful. She told me “thanks” and “the dishes were delicious.” I had the illusion that we were at our Urbana home. She was a little girl and was happy and content. When she finished the meal and told me how delicious the dishes I’d cooked had been, suddenly I felt very comforted and relaxed, a feeling I had not had for a long time. I was overjoyed.