CHAPTER 1
REFLECTIONS OF THE PAST
I looked around at my surroundings and wondered, was I doing the right thing? I had come to New Mexico to try and find the answers that troubled me, but was this the right way to do it? I was in the Sandia Mountain range of Albuquerque in Bear Canyon, on sacred Native American ground. I was sitting on my sleeping bag surrounded by prayer ties I had made and praying for a vision. My daughter Sharon had been in a coma now for ten months. I had several questions and no answers. I began to reflect back on what had brought me here.
Sharon Renee Freeman was born November 15, 1971 in Cambridge, Massachusetts after a long and difficult labor. I remember the doctor saying during the delivery that she did not want to come out. That was my first indication that perhaps her life this time would be difficult for her. Sharon was my first child. Her reddish hair stood out when I first saw her in the hospital nursery surrounded by the other babies with much darker hair. She had brown eyes like her father. Feeding Sharon was a challenge. The first time I fed her four ounces of formula she immediately vomited all over my dressing gown. I felt there must be something terribly wrong and called the nurse. I took the nurse’s suggestion and started to feed Sharon only one to two ounces, and she was able to keep that down. Sharon had difficulty adjusting to a normal sleeping pattern. She would fall asleep around 2 am and would sleep most of the day even though I tried to keep her awake by tickling her toes. Nothing would arouse her from her daytime sleeping. This bizarre sleeping pattern persisted for two months. When I took her for her two month checkup the doctor said she was doing fine, but I looked exhausted and asked what was going on. I explained the situation, and he suggested that I feed Sharon, make sure she had a clean diaper, and put her in her crib. He warned me that she would cry but eventually would get back to a normal sleeping pattern. He was right. For three nights she cried and by the fourth night she went right to sleep. As she grew she was full of energy, always excited and eager to venture out and explore her world despite the consequences she encountered both good and bad.
Seven months later my husband Ron and I decided to move to Arizona. Ron had allergies, and we were tired of the winters in Massachusetts and decided the Southwest would be where we would settle. We sold our used car because it wouldn’t make it that far. Ron convinced Bill, a friend of his, and Ron’s younger brother, Chick, to take the trip with us to help us move. We left Massachusetts September 15 with a total of one thousand dollars and our belongings in a rental truck being driven by Chick and Bill. Sharon was nine months old. The backseat of the car was her domain with a mattress that covered the entire backseat and her favorite toys surrounding her. The only problem we encountered was the day we spent traveling through Texas. The car had no air- conditioning. It was hot, and the smell from the cattle fields we passed lingered in the heavy air. Sharon spent a good part of the day crying and fussing, and nothing we did helped the situation. By the time we pulled into the motel parking lot in Gallup, New Mexico, we were all exhausted and ready for bed. We got a good night’s rest, and the next morning on the way to breakfast, we started to notice the cultural differences. Colorful Indian totems graced the entrance to the pink stucco restaurant. Inside were blue and gold piñatas. The Southwestern décor was inviting and serene.
After breakfast we got back in the car and continued our journey.
We arrived in Flagstaff, Arizona, around midday. The sunshine felt warm and welcoming. We stopped for gas, and the station attendant overheard us commenting on how nice the weather was. He told us it was about 80 degrees and asked us where we were headed as he glanced at our license plate from Massachusetts. We told him we were going to Phoenix. He chuckled a little and said it was a lot hotter in Phoenix, probably around 110 degrees. Ron and I looked at each other in shock wondering if we had made the right decision. As we descended the mountain, the bottle of milk I was feeding Sharon dried on her mouth like chalk. That was our first indication we were entering a climate we were totally unfamiliar with. Ron and I had grown up in Connecticut, and this was a new experience for us. The cactus and giant saguaros along the side of the road were magnificent. We felt peaceful being in the desert.
The man at the service station was correct. When we got to Phoenix, it was 109 degrees. We checked into a high-rise hotel in central Phoenix, which was fairly inexpensive and began searching the newspaper for an apartment. After three days we found an apartment with a view of the mountains, put down $300 for the first month’s rent and settled into our new life in the desert. We loved the warm weather. We felt we had made the right choice in moving West. We spent a lot of time in the air-conditioned apartment and drank soda pop when we went outside. We couldn’t get enough to drink. We both looked for work, and I was lucky enough to find a job the first week in a hospital doing medical transcription on second shift. Ron was not so lucky and spent many hours searching the employment section of the local newspaper. It was difficult living on my salary. Occasionally when there was not enough money to pay for rent and for food too, Ron would eat at the local mission. The day before Thanksgiving we debated about whether we really had enough money to buy a turkey since the rent was due the same week. Ron eventually found a day-shift job, and this worked out well since we couldn’t afford the money for daycare. Sharon and I spent our mornings at the pool in the apartment complex. Her other love was watching Sesame Street.
We spent two years in the apartment, our finances improved, and we decided to look for a house. Ron was a veteran having served in the navy for four years during the Vietnam War. House payments weren’t much more than we were paying for the apartment. With no down payment required for a veteran loan, we found a nice new housing development on the west side of Phoenix. We bought a house in a neighborhood filled with families with small children so Sharon had many friends. Sharon was now three years old. One of her friends was nicknamed Shorty, and he lived next door. Shorty really liked Sharon and would come by each day to see if she could play. He was content to do whatever Sharon wanted to do, and so she directed their activities. One day I glanced outside to see my newly planted flowers dug up and lying on the sidewalk. I saw Sharon with a small shovel in her hand. She put it down and came inside along with Shorty behind her. I asked her if she had dug up my flowers, and she didn’t answer me. Shorty quickly came to her rescue and said he did it. No matter what Sharon did wrong, Shorty was willing to take the blame so Sharon wouldn’t get into trouble. Sharon also had a friend named Roy who lived across the street. He would tease Sharon telling her she couldn’t do certain things in his yard or play with certain toys, and they would argue. One day I was pruning my flowers in the front of the house when Sharon came from across the street. She seemed upset and went in the front door. Within a few minutes she came back out with her pop-up toy that had a handle. When you rolled it on the ground, the colorful yellow and blue balls would pop out of a larger plastic ball and make noise. With a determined look in her eye she quickly put the toy over her shoulder and started to walk down the sidewalk and across the narrow street separating the houses. I asked her where she was going with the toy. She loudly proclaimed she was going to hit Roy with it. I glanced across the street to find Roy’s mom glaring at me. I got up quickly from the garden area and took the toy and Sharon into the house to find out what had happened. She kept saying, “Daddy said I could.” Ron came to her rescue and said he was tired of her not standing up to Roy and coming home crying and she should do something about it. Of course, he didn’t know she was about to take things into her own hands and hit Roy in the head with one of her toys.
Snowball was Sharon’s first dog. Snowball was a white Samoyed. They were inseparable. Snowball was very protective of Sharon. One day I was scolding Sharon for something she had done, and when the tone of my voice changed, the dog came and stood between us and growled at me. The next day Sharon was playing with friends across the street from our home. I glanced out the window to see Snowball dashing across the street. I knew something was wrong since Snowball had been trained to stay in the front yard. I immediately went across the street to see what was happening. The next thing I knew the dog was flipping a gopher in the air. Desperately the gopher tried to get back to its hole and each time Snowball blocked the hole with her paw. Finally, the gopher laid lifeless on the cement. Sharon was holding her finger and crying. She had gotten bit by the gopher when she put her finger down the gopher hole. We took Sharon and the dead gopher to the emergency room. The doctor informed us had we not had the gopher Sharon would have had to have a series of rabies shots. Within weeks we got the results back on the gopher. Luckily, he did not have rabies.
Sharon was five years of age when she wanted to know where babies came from. Ron and I went to the local bookstore and found a picture book which was appropriate for her age. It was a story about an uncle and aunt who loved each other and then had a baby. One day my neighbor, Pam, called me to let me know Sharon was outside on our lawn giving lessons on where babies come from. I immediately went to the front window and saw a group of her playmates surrounding her in a circle as she flipped the pages in the book we had just bought. I called her inside for a nap and promptly put the book where I could keep an eye on it. Her inquisitive nature persisted surrounding babies, and she came into the kitchen where I was cooking one day and put her little hands on her hips and announced that I didn’t love her daddy. I said, “Of course, I do.” Ron heard her from the other room and wondered what this was all about, and he stood behind her. She was three feet tall, and he towered over her at six feet. She was very insistent that I didn’t love Daddy because if I did love him I would have a baby. I could see him laughing and shaking his head yes behind her. Three months later I waited anxiously in the doctor‘s office for the result of a pregnancy test. The results were positive.
When I picked Sharon up at school that day, she was running across the large parking lot from the school to the car yelling, “Are we going to have a baby?” By the time she got to the car everyone in the parking lot knew I was pregnant. Sharon had heard Ron and me talking the night before about my doctor appointment, and she had been waiting anxiously all day to hear the news. Sharon was not one to keep things to herself. You always knew how she felt about something. She generally let her opinion be known.
Sharon was now in school full-time, Ron and I were working full-time, and Snowball was home all alone. The dog began to dig and destroy things. We came home one day to find our newly planted tree nowhere in sight and several additional holes in the backyard. Friends of ours really loved Snowball and had the time to devote to her and so reluctantly we made the decision to give her to them with the thought we could always visit. Sharon was busy with her friends and school and didn’t seem to notice Snowball was gone.
In November 1977, our son, Christopher was born. Sharon was now six years old and attending the local Catholic elementary school. She was very excited about having a new baby in the family. Chris, unlike Sharon, had normal sleeping and eating patterns. He would eat as much as you could feed him and want more. She loved to hold him and was overly attentive to him. One day while I was in the kitchen and Chris was in his baby swing, he started coughing and choking. I turned to find his face all red. He was noticeably in distress. Not knowing what had occurred, I picked him up and saw all the cookies in his mouth. I immediately cleared his throat and asked her what happened. She replied, “He was hungry so I gave him some cookies.” Chris was only one month old at the time.
A year passed and the heat of the summer was getting unbearable with an average temperature of 101. I really wanted a backyard swimming pool. We had gone regularly to the pool at the neighborhood high school, but I didn’t like the crowds. I wanted to relax in my own backyard. We put a pool in the next year rationalizing that it would add value if we ever decided to sell the house. Once we had the pool, it was time to teach Sharon to swim. Each morning Sharon had swim lessons at the neighbor’s home around the corner. The neighbor had gotten a group together and hired a private instructor to teach six of our children. Sharon screamed each time I took her, so finally I just stopped taking her. I knew we had to do something because she didn’t know how to swim. Ron was a great swimmer and had broken several swimming records in high school, so he took on this task. He took Sharon outside each evening to the backyard pool and told her she was going to learn how to swim. I stayed inside and would occasionally peek out the bedroom window to see how it was going. Over the course of the next several weeks, she was doing okay and actually seemed to enjoy it.
Two years passed. The house was feeling more crowded each day. We began looking for a house on the east side of Phoenix, which we felt was a nicer area to raise a family. We decided on the city of Mesa and found a lot for sale in an area of nice homes. We hired an architect and built a much larger home. We moved in November of 1979 when Sharon was eight and Chris was two year old. Sharon attended the local elementary School, which was three blocks away from our home. When Sharon was nine years old, she decided she wanted to learn how to play the piano, and so we bought a piano and she began lessons. She was also taking gymnastic lessons and was on the swim team for the City of Mesa. By now she was an excellent swimmer and had won several awards, one being the 2nd-place trophy in the city championships. She loved to be outdoors, and as a family we would frequently hike into the Superstition Mountains or the South Mountain area of Phoenix. When Sharon was ten years old and Chris was four, we decided to get another dog. I missed not having a pet around, and so we went to the local Humane Society. We found a small terrier that was three years old and seemed attracted to Ron. The dog’s name was Scruffy, and it soon became apparent that she would be Chris’ dog. Chris was quite active as a youngster and would run around the house followed closely by Scruffy. They became playmates.
Sharon loved cats and also wanted a pet of her own. Butterscotch was her first cat. It was beige colored and loved to sit and lounge on the couch. One day Butterscotch was let outside and never returned. Sharon soon got herself another cat named Puka. Puka was not as friendly as Butterscotch and would hide from everyone. Sharon generally found her hiding places and would carry Puka around the house.
Three years passed and we were members of the local Catholic Church. Sharon, now aged thirteen, was a member of the youth organization at the church and on the softball team at the local junior high school. Chris spent his time teaching Scruffy how to play soccer. Chris was playing soccer in one of the city leagues, which had games every Saturday. We spent each Saturday morning at the local soccer field supporting our team. Chris also was enrolled in Taekwondo, a martial arts course. When it was time to enter high school, Sharon wanted to attend the private Catholic High School in Phoenix. Ron and I felt the private school would provide a better education for Sharon and we had both gone to Catholic schools, so we agreed. She took the entrance exam and was accepted. Financially, it was a struggle to pay the tuition each month, so I took on a second part-time job as a medical transcriptionist, working two nights a week and Saturdays in addition to a full-time job during the day. I felt the sacrifice was worth it if Sharon got a better education. Sharon found reading comprehension difficult, so Ron and I decided to have her tutored. She spent two nights a week being tutored for six months and her grades improved. Sharon was a good student and on the school’s volleyball team, had lots of friends, and seemed to enjoy school. In her junior year, her behavior started to change. She became more rebellious and determined to do things her way no matter what the consequences. The school notified us she was found drinking alcohol at lunch in a local fast-food restaurant with friends. She was grounded on several occasions for underage drinking and for signing our names to permission slips from school to leave early or to show up late so she could party with her friends before and after school. We took away her television in her room, her stereo, and telephone. All she had left was furniture and clothes in her room. Nothing we did altered her behavior. She was involved in two car accidents, neither of which she claimed were her fault. At the end of her junior year in high school, my husband and I decided to take her out of that school and have her attend the local high school closer to home. We were hopeful that making new friends in a different location would improve her behavior. Sharon became very depressed after switching high schools, and we sought the help of a counselor. Sharon saw the counselor for about six months. On one occasion, Sharon came to Ron and me stating she wanted to enter a local wet tee-shirt contest and a bathing suit competition in one of the local college clubs. We adamantly told her no.
In her senior year of high school, Sharon began to look forward to college. We visited the campus at Northern Arizona in Flagstaff. Sharon was excited at first about attending Northern Arizona State but then decided she would rather attend the local community college in Mesa closer to home.
It was in early 1991 when my husband got laid off from work and was unable to find any work in Arizona. We had vacationed in Oregon the previous year and enjoyed the coast. We got the Oregon newspaper each week, and Ron found there were jobs available for which he was qualified. I also looked for jobs and applied for one and was offered a position at one of the major hospitals in Portland. Arizona had been our home for nineteen years and it was a difficult decision to make. Our children had grown up there and our plan was to retire there.
Sharon was twenty years old and adamant about not moving with us. She was attending the local community college at the time with plans to go to Arizona State University. She had a boyfriend and did not want to leave Arizona. She made arrangements to move into an apartment with two other girls, and we helped her move the week before we left for Oregon. We had put our house up for sale, but it hadn’t sold by the time we moved, and so we had to leave it in the hands of the real estate broker and hoped for the best.
It was a painful adjustment once we got to Oregon, moving into a small apartment from a house, starting all over again with mortgage and rent payments.
Sharon called us every two weeks to update us on what was happening in her life, and she seemed happy. On one occasion she told us she wanted to get breast implants. This came as a shock to Ron and me, and we strongly objected to the idea. Sharon didn’t say any more about it and switched the conversation to another subject.
At the end of our second year in Oregon, we finally, after a long search, found a house we could afford, but it needed a lot of work. We spent our weekends painting and remodeling the house. Chris was sixteen years old and spent most of his time playing soccer and was on the high school soccer team.
It wasn’t until the third year we were in Oregon that Sharon came to visit for Christmas. She had a new boyfriend, Ted, and she seemed to be quite busy whenever we would call her and assured us everything in her life was fine. Prior to her visit we got a call from her boyfriend to tell us he was concerned about her. He said she was taking drugs and was trying to quit and was a dancer at one of the topless clubs in Phoenix. This news shocked Ron and me. We decided to speak to her about this. She got off the plane, and when I looked at her, she blurted out she had gotten the breast implants even though we did not approve. She was thin and didn’t look well. We confronted her with what we had learned about being a dancer and the drugs. At first she was reluctant to discuss it. After a few days and an intervention by a close relative, she agreed to enter rehabilitation. She stayed for another six weeks and was admitted to a thirty-day inpatient drug and alcohol rehabilitation hospital in Washington State. It was during this time she was diagnosed for the first time with a bipolar disorder by a psychologist on staff at the hospital. She was given a prescription called Depakote to help her mood swings, which were mostly manic in nature. Ron, Chris, and I went twice a week to see her and attended meetings for the families of the patients. Each meeting helped us to understand drug and alcohol addiction and how it affects the entire family and what we could do to help Sharon.
After getting out of rehabilitation, Sharon moved back to Arizona. For the next few years her life became even more tumultuous. She had another car accident in which she hit a utility pole in Phoenix and was charged with a DWI along with having to pay restitution for the utility pole. She suffered cuts and bruises and had several stitches in her head. She was in jail for four months because of a second DWI charge. After being released from jail she moved to Maryland with her boyfriend, Ted, whose family lived there. Both she and her boyfriend were hopeful that a fresh start in another state would be a positive step forward. It was the first month she was in Maryland that I got a call from the boyfriend’s mother stating that Sharon couldn’t stay there. She knew of Sharon’s diagnosis of a bipolar disorder before the move but was unable to tolerate her outspoken and sometimes bizarre behavior. We paid for Sharon’s airline ticket to Portland, Oregon, and we met her at the airport. Waiting for her plane, I expected the worst, but much to my surprise, when she came off the airplane, she was fine, looked good, and was glad to be in Portland and away from the boyfriend and his mother. The only regret Sharon had was leaving the dog she and Ted had named Caesar, a two-year old Rottweiller that she had gotten as a puppy. Chris was now in college and not living at home, so we had plenty of room for Sharon to live with us. Sharon didn’t have a driver’s license because of the previous DWIs. She found a job as a receptionist within walking distance of our house and developed new friendships. Each month she paid her restitution charges to the courts in Phoenix for hitting the utility pole, and she was still on probation for her DWIs. Ron would take her to work in the morning, and she would walk home at night. I drove her to counseling appointments with the psychiatrist who was treating her for the bipolar disorder, and each time her medication was renewed. She attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings twice a week near our home. Sharon met a young man named Fred at one of the AA meetings who was very nice and liked Sharon. He was determined to stay sober, and he had two little girls he loved very much. Sharon got along well with the little girls, and their relationship seemed to be going well. One night Fred came to the door to meet Sharon, and I went into her room to get her. I noticed her eyes looked funny, and she was slurring her words. I asked her what she had taken and she replied “nothing.” I knew she had taken something and pressured her for an answer. By this time the boyfriend came into the room and spoke with her. He left shortly thereafter, and we never saw him again.
I spoke to Sharon the next day about this episode, and she told me she had taken an extra one of her pills because she didn’t feel “normal” and sometimes alcohol or an extra pill would help. I told her she couldn’t do this, and she had to tell the doctor and he could adjust the medication. She wouldn’t listen but kept saying, “It isn’t working.”
Sharon continued to work and attend meetings and counseling sessions, and it wasn’t very long before she had another boyfriend, John. They dated for about six months. She came home one day and announced she wanted to move with John whose work was transferring him to Austin, Texas. Ron and I sat down with both of them and voiced our concerns about this move and her disorder. We discussed the fact that when Sharon had a structured environment she did well. We voiced our fears that this move would not be in her best interest. Her boyfriend assured us that he was well off financially and he had a good job. He told us Sharon could go back to school, which was something she wanted to do, and things would be fine. The boyfriend agreed that if there were any problems at all he would notify us and arrange for Sharon to fly back to Oregon. It all sounded so good at the time. He was so convincing that we reluctantly agreed to the move. They decided to drive to Austin from Portland with their belongings and within a few days of their departure we got our first of many call from him that Sharon was acting strange and drinking. He had found her in the bar of their hotel with some new friends she had met, and they got into an argument. For two days my husband and I were anxious and concerned about this move. We were finally relieved when they got to Austin and we felt things would settle down.
Six months passed and things seemed to be going well for Sharon in Austin. She was going back to school, and it came as a surprise to me one night when I got a call from Sharon telling us her boyfriend had hit her. I asked to talk to the boyfriend, and he told me Sharon had thrown a plate of spaghetti at him. I told him that was still not a reason to hit her. The next day I got another call from a girlfriend of Sharon’s in Austin, and she was concerned about Sharon’s relationship with her boyfriend. She said Sharon’s boyfriend had a gun, and she was afraid that he might use it. Two days later, Sharon called again and said she had been locked out of the apartment by her boyfriend and was staying in the laundry room of the apartment complex. Ron and I became quite concerned about the situation and decided Ron needed to go to Austin and bring Sharon back with him along with her belongings. The next day he flew from Portland to Austin. When he got to the apartment complex, he knocked on the door, and the boyfriend answered. The boyfriend was both surprised and afraid when he opened the door to find Ron standing there. Ron was so angry, he starting pacing back and forth while he waited for Sharon to gather her belongings. He confronted the boyfriend who was now lying on the couch and asked him why he did not call and tell us about the situation and make arrangements for Sharon to fly back to Portland, which was what he had agreed to. He didn’t answer and kept looking away from Ron. Ron and Sharon left the apartment and headed for the airport. Late that evening, they arrived in Portland.
Sharon was now twenty-five years old and decided to move in with us once again. Chris was nineteen and away at college, and she moved into his room. Sharon got a job as a receptionist in a local real estate office. She went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on a regular basis and saw her psychiatrist on a weekly basis. She was now taking Lithium for her bipolar disorder and a sedative to help her sleep. On occasion she would state she didn’t feel “normal” and would mix alcohol with her pills. I told her repeatedly to see her doctor and have the medication adjusted and her reply was, “It wasn’t doing any good.” On a daily basis it felt like we were riding on a roller coaster. One day Sharon would be pleasant and happy and her relationships with friends were good. Other days she would be crying and telling her father and me that we were trying to control her by asking her to be home at a certain time during the week. Both Ron and I were working and didn’t sleep well until we knew she was home and all right.
One night, Sharon and I were sitting in the family room across from each other. She sat in the chair and was rocking back and forth and stating how she hated her life. She desperately wanted to be out on her own, but our concern was that she needed the structure to be able to function okay on a daily basis. We were doing the best we could, but it didn’t seem to be enough.
It was Christmas 1997 when Sharon and a girlfriend had dinner with us and then decided to go visit some friends. At 1 am we awoke to the shrieking sound of our house alarm going off. We jumped out of bed to find Sharon running around the house. She was frantic and screaming, “I have to get out of here.” She sat on the floor and started shaking back and forth. Ron and I knew something was terribly wrong. I tried to calm her down, but she wasn’t making any sense. She was talking and answering her own questions. She was hallucinating. We tried to convince her to get into the car so we could take her to the Crisis Center, but she refused and starting running around the house again. We panicked and called the police. Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the front door. Sharon ran and jumped into her bed. The policeman went into her room and tried to convince her that she should go with us. Sharon’s hands were under the covers on her bed, and the policeman told her to put her hands outside the covers where he could see them. At first she would not do so, and I saw him reach for his gun. My heart started bounding, and I felt scared of what might happen next. Reluctantly, Sharon did as he said and put her hands outside the covers and started to calm down. Finally, she consented to go with us, and she got into our car. Sharon kept talking all the way to the Crisis Center which was ten miles from our house. She kept moving around in the backseat of the car. I kept hoping she wouldn’t try to open the door as we headed toward the f