Missing Her

Taking your daughter for admission to hospital is always going to be an emotional experience.  For the last few months we have been joined at the hip, sharing everything from clothes to jokes.  I have shaped my life around her - even though I always swore I would never do that, never be that sort of mother, it turned out that was the only way to cope - the only way to keep her alive.  Suddenly there we are at the hospital door, and I am handing her over to strangers, trusting them to care for her again just when she is at her weakest point.

I come back to find an enormous Julie-shaped hole in my life.  If they play her favourite song on the radio I have to switch it off.  My shopping is delivered and I look helplessly at all the four-person dinners that will now be shared out amongst three.  I have a bath in the evening, thinking it will be a relief to do something for myself for once, but I don't enjoy it.  I think endlessly about her.  It is difficult to go into her empty room to draw the curtains.  We were watching boxed sets of Green Wing together but there are still a couple of mad episodes to go - will she be out in time to enjoy them with me?  Will she still find them funny when she does?

The hospital has changed a lot in the four months since she left, and changed for the better.  The consultants and managers have all left and new ones have come in with new ideas.  I am stunned to be invited onto the ward: something that was strictly forbidden before.  I step gingerly across the threshold and find a world that is just as bright and warm and normal as outside.  I had always pictured it as a dark and awful place.  I almost cry when they tell me that from now on I can come when I want and sit with my daughter on the ward. We no longer have to pre-book one of the meeting rooms outside the ward, and sit on their hard plastic chairs trying to make conversation.  Everyone is welcoming, I am given a sticky label to wear (which says "Julie's Mum", of course), and there are people playing cards and chatting.  Impossible to tell who is staff and who is a patient.

I come prepared for battle, and I am glad that Rhiannon is able to come with us.  I feel braver with Rhiannon as my wingman.  "I didn't want this admission," I say to the doctors at the admission interview, "and I don't want it to interrupt what Julie had already planned.  She has a GCSE exam tomorrow at school.  We are going to Paris in four weeks.  If she doesn't want to do these things when it comes to it then that is fine, but I don't want someone else to take the decision for her.  I want these decisions to remain in Julie's hands - and mine.  I don't want it to be like last time."

It's not much of a battle after all - they surrender before I even manage to get my gun out of its holster.  They agree to everything I say.  As a sign of their good faith, Julie is allowed out the next day - under my supervision - to return to school to take her exam.  She is allowed out again today to go shopping with me.  It helps, knowing that she isn't locked up there forcibly for weeks on end.  It helps, knowing that she can come home more often than when she was in hospital before.  It helps, knowing that it doesn't necessarily mean throwing away all our plans together.

I am still suspicious - I have had too many bruising encounters with the mental health system in the past to trust them yet.  They may say that they want to treat parents as equal partners, but will they really be able to listen to us?  The power balance is so much in their favour - they have our daughter as hostage - will they even notice if they inadvertently crush us?  What seems like such a simple decision to them - no home leave for a weekend, say - can be devastating.  You have bought tickets to see a show with her, or you've arranged a visit to relatives, or you've bought her favourite food.  These things can sound so trivial if you try to stammer them out to staff over the phone, but they are the stuff of which your life is made.  After all, they are the things that mean family to you - and, of course, they mean family to Julie as well.