Nick's Mom
2010-11-16 - 11:59 a.m.

before/after
strangely non-functional guestbook

Nick's Mom

I got the call late Friday night.

I had just sat down and opened a beer.

It was Sam, talking in his whisper quiet voice of menace,

"Yeah...Nick's mom just called him

for his weekly phone-call,

told him goodbye,

that she's going to take a bunch of pills

and kill herself. Then she hung up.

Why...why...don't you give her a call and talk her down."

A multitude of thoughts ran through my head,

not the least of which was the sheer sadism of the woman involved,

what she was doing,

it was like beating an animal in a cage,

the animal defenseless and brutalized,

what kind of thrill can a person get from that?

What kind of hate must she hold in her soul?

I sighed, resigned to the situation,

dug up her number and gave her a call.

She was an attractive older woman,

a former homecoming queen

lost in a large house in the white suburbs of Detroit,

with distant children and an uncommunicative husband,

a woman utterly detached from reality.

It had not panned out for her, you see.

She had the big house,

but no point nor purpose to her life,

the accolades had faded shortly after high school,

there was no such thing as a job or work,

and her kids were gone,

one in placement,

the other, a daughter living far removed and hating her.

She slurred into the phone, dreary as the pills took over,

as I patiently listened to her self-pitying bullshit,

dishing out occasional cliches, wondering if she was right,

in fact, the only real reason for her to live

was her son,

the one she was currently torturing,

with some sort of bizarre man-hating fervor,

like poking a rat in a cage with a sharp stick.

He would be devastated,

possibly ruined beyond repair,

a moron himself, a large man-child

busted for selling weed out of a KFC drive-thru

by attempting to slang to police

while stoned out of his mind.

He actually tried to grow pot plants in his closet

in his bedroom at mother's home,

and she...never noticed.

So there I sat,

interminable hours on end,

listening to this pathetic woman

babble incoherently about how horrible her life was,

how it was unfair,

how she deserved so much more than she had got,

even though she had been as kept and pampered

as a middle-aged house cat,

never once denied anything of her desire.

Eventually she promised me she would not commit suicide

by taking the rest of the pills, but mumbled in closing,

"I have to go pass out now, the pills are making me sleep."

and hung up the phone.

I called the local police, and had them kick down her door,

stating that it could be a life-threatening situation.

They found her, unresponsive and called an ambulance.

Pumping her stomach at the hospital they found a plethora

of sleeping pills and other medicines, which earned her an

eight day stay at a local sanitarium.

And this was something for which her family blamed me,

never forgiving me for her incarceration,

and maybe

just maybe,

for saving her life.