Upon arriving home, with my “spritely” mom, wrecked father and my aunt and uncle, I was immediately faced with figuring out WTF just happened. To get to the next 24, we must first understand the last 24 (and then some) to “make it make sense”.
The truth seeking happened in stolen conversations, thoughtful questioning of my mom, and what I call memory eruptions. Where you pause mid-sentence and it’s like an infomercial “BUT WAIT, THERES MORE”. This break from reality started the day(s) before my dad arrived home and found my mom digging around a recently installed A/C unit, searching for bags of cash to bail someone out of jail, bless my dad, because he had no idea so he went along helping her dig, snaking a water hose through a fence, and absorbing through every pore of his being that the woman he’d been married to for 50 years was ranting incoherently about 5G, Covid variants, and saving the souls of their lost neighbors. In his defense, if you can’t beat em’ join em’. He just needed whatever was happening to end.
Eventually, the digging stopped, dinner was made and the lights went out in the house. The lights did not go out in my moms brain as we would soon learn.
Dusk turned to dawn, sleep turned to panic, and she was gone. The first hand account went something like this, with half of their local sheriffs department searching for my mom throughout the neighborhood; a 911 call came in that they saw a woman in a gully — and it “looked weird”. The sherifs, my dad and uncle raced three streets over. Somehow, she managed to crawl through a hole and down a gully. Not a ditch, but a whole gully that absorbed the water runoff from the major interstate a few yards away. As six plus grown men squeezed their way through the tiny hole in the fence, slipping down the forgotten and ill-maintained retaining wall, chasing after the 4'10 inch, 110 lbs woman that could’ve, in that moment, given Usain Bolt a run for his money, it was my uncles voice — “Linda! LINda!, LINDA” he hollered, and she froze. I imagine she recognized his tone and unmistakable southern accent just enough, for just the right few seconds. They found her alive, but not well.
Slowly, the neighbors began to pass by the scene equal parts nosey and providing their own vignettes of the nights activities. My aunt learned that a little boy, saw her peering through the window in their front room, my aunt said “wow, that must’ve been scary” and his response was “nah, my grandma has brain issues too”. Another neighbor heard banging on their door in the wee hours of the morning — there she was trying to desperately explain her mission and why they needed to be saved. And yet, another neighbor responded to the violent knocks on the door, less gracious than the previous neighbor; heated words were exchanged. I know why she’s alive, but that’s another post for another day.
The ambulance eventually got her loaded in, my aunt by her side.
