Dad just finished taking a shower and getting dressed. The entire house smells like twenty-five-year-old cologne. I’m gagging. Earlier today I decided that I don’t have a sinus infection but do have a cold, and I can only imagine how bad the smell would be if I weren’t congested. He must have slathered the cologne on, maybe taken a bath in it. “You smell like a French whore,” I said. “I’m going to blog about it.”

***

I spent the day coughing and reading a hundred pages in a book by Andrew Solomon called The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression. It’s 445 pages of total text, and it’s not exactly what I would call light reading. But I’ve had it checked out of the library for over a month and I’m determined to finish it.

A couple of months ago, my mom and I watched Andrew’s TED Talk called Depression, the Secret We Share (30 minutes), and we both cried. So I checked out his book from the library, and Mom read it first. Having been clinically depressed for over thirty years, she identified with Andrew and marveled at his ability to put into words many of her dark feelings and difficult experiences. So more than anything else, I’m reading the book to better understand my mom and people like her.

Mom’s depression started shortly after I was born, and I don’t have many memories of her without it. I guess as a kid I didn’t fully understand, but I remember that she had to go away for maybe a year when I was six or seven to live in a hospital in Baltimore. I guess all kids are embarrassed of their parents, but I can remember thinking that my mom seemed different than the other moms. Maybe it was just that she wasn’t able to do as much.

At some point, Mom had to quit her job as a nurse. The depression was too bad. The electric shock treatments affected her memory. From what I can gather, nursing was one of the few things that she really loved about her life, something she was really good at, and I think it’s taken her a long time to come to peace with the loss.

I’ve heard all my life that Mom has a type of depression that never goes away. Her doctor says that it’s like that for a small percentage of people. Some days and some years are better than others, but it’s like she’s never really out of the woods.

When I was in my early twenties, Dad had a heart attack. I remember going to the Van Buren City Park the next day and jogging. I started going to the gym soon after that, subscribing to Men’s Health. Even Dad will admit that the heart attack didn’t scare him into changing his lifestyle. He’s heavier now than he was back then. But it certainly scared me. Looking back, the jogging, the working out, the reading—it was all motivated by fear.

I’ve spent the last fifteen years really digging into health—what it is, how we lose it, how to get it back, how to keep it. It’s taken me down some pretty interesting paths, both traditional and alternative, and I’ve learned a lot. And whereas I thought that it all started with Dad and his heart attack, I’m sure now that it actually started with Mom and her depression.

Over eight years ago, I took a class in Reiki, a hands-on form of healing that originated in Japan. I usually preface any mention of Reiki by saying that it’s really weird, but it seems like things that are weird are becoming more and more mainstream lately. Anyway, my Reiki teacher says that there is a divine intelligence that is capable of healing any illness. Anything is possible.

Frankly, I love this idea, and it actually lines up quite nicely with my Christian heritage. (I can do all things through Christ, God can move mountains, etc.) Still, there’s a big part of me that has a lot of evidence—like Mom’s depression—to the contrary. So it’s something I really struggle with, this idea of whether or not things like pain and sorrow come and go or simply come—and stay.

I think it’s a huge part of the reason that I get so frustrated when I get sick. Every illness feels like it could be permanent. I can handle a sinus infection for a week, but the thought that I’ll have to handle them for the rest of my life is pretty unbearable. Those are the times it feels like everyone else has things that get better, but I’m the exception. Worse, it feels like I’m doing something wrong. Like if there’s a divine intelligence capable of healing, it’s either not willing to, or it must be my fault when things don’t get better.

Last night I started reading a book by Pema Chodron called Comfortable with Uncertainty. I picked it up at an estate sale last weekend in Tulsa because I liked the title and because I’m not. There’s a line in the first chapter that says, “We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is.”

Wow.

“We try not to push it away.”

I can’t tell you how hard I try to push pain away, how hard I work to make health a permanent state of being, to make it certain. (A history of chocolate cake and cigarettes notwithstanding.) But clearly, the truth is that it’s uncertain. As Saint Teresa of Avila says, “All things pass away.” (I just got up to take some Claritin and Ibuprofen, and the house STILL SMELLS like a teenage boy who’s discovered Axe Body Spray. So—obviously—some things pass away more quickly than others.)

A few years ago, Mom’s depression started on an upswing. I can remember going out to eat with her in high school or college and her not saying a word. Now she talks and talks and talks some more. (It drives Dad crazy.) She’s still sick, but it’s a remarkable difference. And I think that’s one of the benefits of my being here now. For the longest time, it’s been easy for me to keep Mom’s illness at a distance, to personally run after health and treat someone else’s sickness like something that doesn’t concern me. Looking at it now, that’s because I haven’t been ready to admit just how scared and vulnerable I really feel about it.

So this week my goal is to do my best to lean in, to be more okay with having a cold or a mother with depression, to open up to this present moment rather than trying to push it away. And rather than wishing things were different than they are, I can look for the gift in this present moment—a chance to experience compassion for myself and others, a chance to experience my heart.

[The top photo is of my mother when she was in nursing school. Isn’t she lovely?]