It's been 23 years since she passed...My mother deserved a better life, then, and she deserves to be more than just a memory now...My Mom suffered from depression...(now, they call it bipolar disorder)...back in the 1950's & 60's...well, basically much of her adult life. The way the medical community dealt w/ this disease, back then, was by prescribing powerful drugs, like lithium. They were mood altering prescriptions that would change a person's personality, and since they had no idea, how one would react to it's dosage, my mother became a guinea pig for their so called theories. When that didn't seem to work, the doctors (educated men) recommended electro-shock therapy, that blotted out my Mom's memory & made her a shell of her former self, just like... ("One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest")... It was a daily nightmare for my father & family...My Dad suffered, our family suffered moving in with aunts, uncles & our grandparents for years at a time, it was no way to grow up & be a family...My younger brother and sister have, no really good memories of my Mom...but I do (I was a bit older)...I remember how she taught, me, my prayers at night. She took me to my first movie (Some Like It Hot-1959). She took me to the circus, to Fairyland, and to visit her mother in S.F.-traveling on the bus to the city and out to Woolworth's for lunch. I remember her making homemade pizza (oh,it was really good)...She showed me how peanut butter & jam on raisin bread is the best next thing to cake...and she taught me how to... laugh... before her illness, got out of control....Yeah, my Mom deserved better... Yep, more understanding, love & patience... and laughter (something I try to do)...but then, under the circumstances, life, for Mom, just kind of rambled on...in & out of the Psychiatric Ward in Napa and other county hospitals...Different doctor, Different pills, different opinions, different therapy, different psychiatrist...No one, No one deserved this...but in strange way...I guess she helped, in paving the way for new drugs, that help people today suffering in the same manner...but it's so little...with her life lost to depression...I tell you Mom, with all this...I still say... Thank You, for this life... you gave me...because I still remember, the good times...we had... You taught me how to... laugh...and that's the only medicine, I'll ever need...R.I.P. Mom
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