Beneath The Rain

I stroked her forehead, repeatedly whispering, “I love you so much, Cara.” The tears spilled from my eyes as I prayed and begged my firstborn, my miracle baby, who was struggling to breathe on a ventilator, to survive the overdose of pills she took. 

The nurses watched me almost as closely as they did Cara, afraid I would break. I’d been crying for three days now, only leaving Cara’s side to use the bathroom and go home to sleep when the nurses finally made me leave at the end of every day. I would have slept in the bed with her if the nurses had allowed it. Every day, I drove home on automatic pilot, still crying. 

I cried myself to sleep, stopped eating, and focused only on doing everything possible to help Cara survive. I prayed to my deceased parents (Cara’s grandparents,) my deceased sister, my deceased niece, and my deceased husband to please help save her.

My younger daughter, Miranda, who was seven years Cara’s junior, dropped everything when I called her crying to tell her what had happened. She arranged for time off work and drove six hours that day to get here. 

“Miranda?” My voice was shaking, and she immediately knew something was wrong. 

“Mom, what happened? What is it?”

I couldn’t hold back my tears anymore. “Cara overdosed. She’s unconscious on a ventilator.”

Miranda’s heart sank. She wasn’t close with her sister because of their age difference, but she still loved her and didn’t want anything to happen to her.

No one knew if Cara would survive - according to the doctors, she had taken enough medication to kill two people - but she was a fighter. Every time doctors tried to remove the ventilator tube, Cara would begin struggling to breathe. They removed it so many times she could only whisper for more than two months and would gag, drinking even the tiniest sip of water for months afterward. 

It broke me. Watching my firstborn child struggle to breathe and live tore my heart apart. I know I’d always love her more than she would ever understand, but I couldn’t let her break me again.

I discussed it with my therapist, Miranda, and Cara’s psychiatrist. Everyone agreed Cara’s emotional regulation actions were toxic to us, and our toxic treatment to protect ourselves was deadly to her. The disabling pain of losing Cara enveloped and drowned me in darkness.

I broke my hip a few years back and went into a depression, pushing everyone away but Miranda. I was too fragile to deal with Cara, so I cut all ties with her.  

Until that dreadful day, Cara and I had been more like best friends than mother and daughter. She told me things most daughters wouldn’t be comfortable telling their mothers, and we discussed topics most daughters wouldn’t, or couldn’t, with their mothers, like men and sex.

Despite my fear, I supported and helped her understand her emotions when she miscarried the day before her blood test came back positive.

But, she reminded me so much of my late husband: the quick temper, the screaming in public and not caring who was watching, the insults and accusations when she was mad or upset - “I hate you," "You love Miranda more," "At least you got one kid you could love and be proud of, etc...” - and now that she discovered I lied about her grandmother’s instructions for her inheritance, she became verbally abusive - “You’re a lying bitch," "I hate you and will never trust you again," "You don’t love me," and "You would be happier if I were gone,” among other comments.

Because Cara and Miranda fought more than talked, I hired our lawyer to co-execute my estate with Miranda. I needed to know they would be fair with one another, especially when it came time to divide my things and their grandmother’s jewelry I hadn’t yet given them.

. 

Cara and I tried to reconcile a few times, but each time, one of us would mess up, and we would have to start again. Eventually, I was tired of constantly feeling guilty when I messed up and stopped calling and taking her calls. 

At first, she called frequently, leaving voicemail messages alternating between hurling angry insults and accusations at me and crying, begging me for forgiveness. “I hate you for lying about Grandma’s will and ignoring her instructions,” “Grandma would be so disappointed in you,” and “You’re a fucking bitch who thinks you can run my life by controlling me!” “Please talk to me!" "I’m so sorry, I’ll be good, I promise." "Please don't do this to me,” "Please don’t leave me,” " Mommy, please, I’m begging you to you to me!“

It finally hit Cara she was wasting her time. Her mother wanted nothing to do with her, and neither did her sister. They abandoned and rejected her, the fear of both being the number one symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder, Cara’s primary illness. The one that drove everyone away. 

When Cara got sick in her mid-20s, her friends all walked away from her, unwilling or unable to deal with her emotional outbursts. By her late 30s, she had no friends except two, who lived in another country. She met them online, and the three had so much in common, despite one being a very recognizable award-winning actor girls adored.

But, to Cara, he was just ‘Mike.’ Although she thought him adorable, he was a few years older and had more life experience, often acting like a big brother, offering advice and support. She also became close friends with Marie, Mike’s manager, who she spoke with every few days. She was also in therapy and got one hour of support and help, learning to cope with her emotional dysregulation. 

There is no medication to treat Borderline Personality Disorder -the only way to treat it is with therapy and re-learning how to react to any adverse situations that might arise. Cara, regardless of how badly she wanted her mother to talk to her, understood she had no control over the actions of others, only how she reacted. And although she was learning how to respond appropriately in therapy, only it didn’t seem to make any difference. At least not a rapid one.

As soon as Cara awoke five days later, I burst into tears when I saw her eyes flutter open. “Someone, please come! She’s awake!” Two doctors and a nurse rushed over, checking her vitals and pulling out the ventilator tube for the last time, making Cara cough and gag. She was still groggy, and I never felt such debilitating emotional pain or so helpless before in my life.

“Cara, it’s Mom. Can you hear me?” I stroked her forehead, brushing away strands of her blond hair, tears streaming down my face. 

“Yeah. Why are you crying?”

“Don’t you remember what happened?” One doctor motioned at me to slow down my explanation so Cara wouldn’t become upset and overwhelmed.

“I fought with Dave. He took back the ring and told me if I was so ‘fucking depressed and suicidal,’ I should just kill myself already.” Her eyes filled with tears. “So I took all the meds I had - a full month’s supply - called you to tell you what I did, and while downstairs waiting for the ambulance, you sat in the lobby and ignored me.” Cara started to sob, her whole body shaking.

My heart shattered into a million pieces. I could never admit it to anyone, but I knew I was partially responsible for Cara’s overdose, and I couldn’t bear to look at her compact form in the hospital bed, surrounded by machines monitoring her.

“Cara, I want you to always remember I love you more than you’ll ever know.” I wiped my eyes. “I have to go now. The doctors will take good care of you. I love you so much,” I said, getting up from my chair by her bed and gathering my things. That was the last time I saw my eldest daughter. 

Miranda and I took the advice we'd gotten and cut Cara out of our lives to protect ourselves from her toxic verbal abuse. The two of us drove home, the silence punctuated by my sobs. 

When the doctors released Cara from the hospital a few days later, she called me and Miranda to tell us. Miranda was the one to call her back and tell her neither of us wanted to see or speak to her for our protection, and she was on her own.

I signed a notarized document stating I would continue to support her financially, regardless of where she lived or if she was working, and in return, she was not to contact either of us. 

Miranda blocked her every which way possible from contacting her - her cell phone, her landline, and her email. I didn’t block her but didn’t answer her calls, texts, or emails. She was an adult, and I felt it was time she acted like one.

Miranda and I bonded in our joint pain of losing a family member who was still alive, and I remembered the almost ten years of fertility drugs, operations, and medical treatments I went through to get pregnant with Cara. She was my miracle baby, but to save my sanity, she forced me to say goodbye to her, the one thing I loved most in the world.

Cara stared at her phone in disbelief. Crying, she called a cab from the hospital to go home, where she proceeded to throw out the clothes she overdosed on wearing.

For more than two years, she lay curled in a ball either in bed or on the two-seater black velvet couch in her Japanese-styled living room, crying, berating herself for being an unwanted burden and wishing the overdose worked. 

She wrote me letters and left me voicemail messages while crying and begging me to talk to her, and I rejected all of them.

After two years, she decided to change her life. She began writing poetry again, first published when she was only 13. I would periodically pull out the anthology in which she had two poems published and cry reading the one called, “Alone,” which seemed to foreshadow the current state of her life. At 13, she predicted she would be alone, and she was right.

I felt so guilty for abandoning her, but I had to put my health and well-being first, as did Miranda. But to do so, we had no choice but to cast Cara away.

One morning, Miranda called me. “Mom, I’ve been trying to get in touch with Cara for almost ten days and I can’t find her anywhere. She’s not on social media and closed her blog. I’m at her apartment and there’s a stack of letters on her dining room table addressed to various people, including you and me.”

My heart stopped. “What do you mean you can’t find her? Did you call her building? Check her other sites online? Email her? Text? Call?” I was becoming frantic.

“I even called her therapist, but she couldn’t tell me anything. Oh, fuck!” Miranda started to cry.

The world stopped. My baby girl, who I abandoned, was missing. I immediately blamed myself for pushing her away and possibly over the edge. “Is there any sign of foul play? Pill bottles? Knives?”

Miranda was silent for a moment. “No, but there’s a sealed box under the letters addressed to you. Should I open it?”

My heart constricted. “Yes,” I whispered, terrified of what she would find. I heard Miranda scream, “NO!”

“What? What is it? Miranda, talk to me! What’s in the box?” 

Miranda caught her breath and whispered, “It’s an urn, with her name engraved and a notarized document of her last wishes. No, no, no, no, no! We did this to her.”

I broke down, dropping the phone and sinking to the kitchen’s white ceramic tile floor. I could hear Miranda calling for me, her voice becoming panicked. I picked up the phone. “I’m here,” I cried. “Please come over. I can’t deal with this alone.”

Miranda arrived twenty minutes later, carrying the box and the envelopes addressed to various people, and handed me mine. I put it on the table, face down, so I wouldn’t see Cara’s distinctive handwriting. “I’m not reading it. I can’t. I destroyed my firstborn, and I’ll never forgive myself,” I moaned. 

“Her last wishes are there is to be no funeral, wake, or service of any kind; her inheritance is to be donated to a mental health awareness and suicide prevention organization; and we are to forget she ever existed. She doesn't even want a headstone or footstone, she doesn't want an obituary, and we are to sell or donate all her furniture and things.”

“I didn’t think she would go through with it,” I moaned, burying my face in my hands, devastated.

Miranda, her face streaked with tears, asked, “What do we do with the urn? I think it might be best if I arranged to have it buried or have her ashes spread.”

I nodded. “I’m a terrible mother. I killed my daughter.”

Three days later, I stood with Miranda in the pouring rain, holding an umbrella, and watched as the cemetery workers lowered the urn into the ground. “Stop! Wait!”

“Mom, what is it?”

I didn’t answer her. I knelt next to the urn, my fingers tracing Cara’s engraved name. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to your cries for help. I’m so sorry I hung up on you when you called me suicidal. I’m so sorry I abandoned you, and I’ll never forgive myself for destroying and killing you.”

I picked up the urn with both hands and kissed it numerous times. “I will love you for all eternity and will never forget you, unlike you wanted us to.” I kissed the urn one last time, and my hands shaking, I placed it back on the wooden slab, lowering down into the hole in the ground.

“I’ll always love you, Cara. I'm sorry we didn't get along.” Miranda choked back a sob.

She and I watched as the cemetery workers buried Cara’s ashes.

We stood in the pouring rain almost an hour after they were gone, holding each other and crying.

“By putting ourselves first, and cutting her out of our lives, we destroyed her. And now I have to live with the knowledge I killed my firstborn because her behavior reminded me too much of her father’s anger and verbal abuse.”

“I’m so sorry, Cara. I hope you can forgive me one day because I will never forgive myself.”  

“Goodbye, Cara,” I whispered as we left the cemetery.