"I’m
looking forward to seeing you tomorrow in Dallas", I text my cousin Jason,
a 40 something father of two teenagers. "Do you want to get together
for dinner?"
He texts
back: "I've lost my mother! She walked out a couple of days ago and we
can't find her!!"
Oh my god. I
knew that she wasn’t well, having suffered from schizophrenia for much of her
life. Jason’s father had been taking care of her, but he passed away last year.
Like any worthy son, he moved her from Houston up to his house in Dallas,
becoming her caregiver.
"I'm so
sorry Jason." I text back.
Some months
ago, I was invited to give a talk in Dallas and planned to take my mom with me,
thinking that it would be good to have a small family get together. So the next
day comes, and my mom and I make our way (slowly) through the airport. She
prefers that I get her a wheelchair as it makes it easier to board the plane,
and indeed we get to sit in the front row, with her taking the window seat and me
taking the aisle, and a young lady joining us later in the middle seat. I take
out my computer and start working on the talk that I'm supposed to give, and the
young lady takes out her crochet needle and starts working on what I later
learn is a sweater. She asks me about the slides on my computer, and I ask her
about her crocheting, and my mom joins in, mentioning that she loves to knit. She
has brought sandwiches and gives the spare one to the young lady. I close my
computer and put it away in the pocket in front of me and spend the rest of the
flight engaged in the conversation.
As we are
landing, I text Jason and ask about his mom. He replies "I found her! The
police found her walking barefoot and took her to the hospital. She's been
there for three days as Jane Doe."
Oh thank
goodness, I tell him. We make plans to meet later that day and have dinner.
The
university has sent a driver, and he takes us to the hotel, which is only about
10 minutes away. We check in and go to the room and unpack. That's when I realize
that I can’t find my computer. “Oh my god,” I tell my mom, “I must’ve left it
on seat pocket on the plane!”
In my mind
I’m going over the possibilities. Perhaps the cleaning crew found the computer,
in which case it would be stored somewhere in the airport. But the plane was
late, and they were boarding immediately after we deplaned, which makes it more
likely that the plane and my computer are now on the other side of the country.
A million
things are going through my head. I can buy another laptop. I can give a
chalk-talk. I kick myself for not having backed things up for more than a week.
But that won’t help now as I don’t have the backup here with me. That conversation
with the crocheting lady distracted me. But honestly, I really want to blame my
mom, who is sitting with me at the hotel room calmly having a cup of tea.
Using my phone,
I search for information on what to do if you’ve done something stupid like
this and learn that if the airline finds the computer, they will take it to the
lost luggage office at the airport. There is a phone number and I call them,
only to get their answering machine. I leave a message.
The hotel has
a pool. I’m going nuts, so to reduce the stress I go for a swim. Then with
nothing to do, I collect my mom and we take a ride back to the airport. There
is a line at the lost luggage counter, I can hear the phone ringing and no one
answering it. We slowly make our way to the front and the lady says “I’m sorry,
but no one has turned in a computer.” “Please give us a call later tonight.” I
want to shout “but you don’t answer the phone!”. I turn and head back to the
car.
We go back to
the hotel and have a cup of tea. I realize that it’s really the uncertainty of
not knowing that’s hard to take, boiling up my anxiety. I’d be happy to pay
someone a few hundred dollars right now just so I would know whether the
computer is going to be found or not. It’s an illogical thing to do because
knowing about the outcome in advance will have no impact on the outcome, yet
I’m willing to pay for it just so I wouldn’t have to suffer not knowing.
Fortunately,
distraction arrives in the form of my cousin and his two beautiful kids, which
he’s been raising pretty much on his own. Remarkably, it’s not just his mom
that has schizophrenia, it’s also his wife, a brilliant physicist whom he had
to divorce a few years ago. Despite the separation, he takes care of her as
well. I can’t find words to tell him how much I admire how he takes care of his
family.
He picks us
up and we go to his house. I ask about the search for his mom. He says “I was
out driving the neighborhood each moment of my waking hours for 3 days. I
knocked on doors, put up flyers, called the police and the hospitals.” “I was
just going out of my mind.”
He continues:
“The police wanted a doctor’s note saying my mom had dementia. Apparently, they
would not look for someone with schizophrenia.” “And the hospitals said they
had no one under with that description in the emergency room.”
Then he says:
“You know who helped me the most?”
“Who?” I ask.
“The
homeless. They would give me a hug, and sometimes cry with me. They understood
what it meant to be lost.”
“So how did
you find her?” I ask.
“The city
hospital had her in their psychiatric ward. She eventually calmed down to the
point where she could tell them her name and they contacted me.”
“Oh my god.
I’m so glad she’s OK.” I reply.
“I decided
that as long as she’s in the hospital, let’s have them do some of the routine
stuff that she should’ve done years ago, you know, mammogram, etc., before I
bring her home.”
As we are
talking, his daughter, who is perhaps 12, is making tea, while his son, who is
maybe a year or two older, is cleaning the kitchen. The kids are running the
house, which perhaps is not surprising given the situation with their mom and
grandmother.
We go out to
dinner, and as we are waiting for the check, I step outside to call the
airport. Once again it’s the answering machine. On the drive back to the hotel
Jason suggests, “let’s try the airport.” We drive over and as they wait in the
no-parking zone, I go over to the lost luggage office. There is no one around,
except for the lady behind the counter. I walk over and ask if the cleaning
crew happened to have found my computer on the flight down from Baltimore. She
glances down to the counter and keeps looking down. I follow her gaze and shout
“That’s my computer!”