Catching My Breath After My Mother’s Suicide

Dear Friends,

My mother, Dr. Sandra Reines, committed suicide this past November, after two decades of struggle with schizophrenia and homelessness.

The daughter of Holocaust survivors, my mom was once a vibrant and brilliant woman— an M.D., an accomplished pianist, talented artist, and devoted parent. Over the years she alienated everyone close to her. She became my brother David’s and my sole responsibility when we were teenagers.

I was adamant that I would not fundraise following her death, even though anyone who has ever buried a family member knows that death, aside from being death, is also forbiddingly expensive.

I had fundraised—fundrose?— for her multiple times while she was alive, in desperate bids to house her, in addition to giving her two of my own apartments and thousands of dollars over the years. The thought of putting myself in the position of one on behalf of whom funds might, even should be raised— was a thought I found intolerably humiliating and painful.

I am lucky to have constant and soul-nourishing remunerative work. I am deeply grateful to have the good problem of continually being offered more work than I can physically take on. Having filed my taxes last month I’m proud to have done well— what with two cross-country moves, two visiting poet positions, a 25-hour piece of endurance theatre, two bouts of Covid— oh yeah, and my mother’s death.

Just before the pandemic I enrolled in Divinity school. My hope was to square some of the mystical experiences I’ve had with intense personal suffering over my failure either to improve my mother’s circumstances or to reconcile myself to them.

When the pandemic hit I found myself studying Rilke’s Duino Elegies on IGLive— and that led to the formation an unusual arts and spiritual community that came to be known as Invisible College. That project is dormant for the moment, while I work to build its next incarnation— but the social and spiritual bonds that forged it are very much alive. Through working with this world of people I learned what a treasure it is to have a community to be accountable to— especially when you’re estranged from most of your family and the person you love most has been abandoned in every possible way.

My mother’s death has been an opportunity to begin to heal severed family bonds. People were afraid of her. My brother and I were seen as damaged because of her. Her bottomless need for money. Her tyrannical rages— these put people off. They put my brother and me off too. But it turns out that no matter how dangerous she is to you, there is absolutely no turning away from your mother. I have heard and tried all the psycho babble in the world, and believe me when I tell you: it is a law of nature. There is no abandoning your own mother.

The writing people pay me to do is not the writing I do in my books. People pay me to help them with the art they are making and with their lives, and to teach poetry and literature, and to write about things that they want me to write about — art usually, or books by and about insane or impossible women.

I just got confirmation three days ago that my mother’s gravestone will cost $3000. Potentially a bargain, as these things go— and I still owe money to the charity that provided her with a dignified Jewish burial for perpetual care of the grave. My computer broke last month. Because I’m the superstitious type I took it as a warning that I was exhausting my body and squandering my gifts — but I’m told the new MacBooks are junk, breaking down on people left and right.

Because I am often in a teaching role, whether in university positions or otherwise, and because I cherish that work, it makes me very uncomfortable to say: I need a break from teaching. I need a break from private mentorship work.

I have never expected the world to pay me to write, and I have always been proud of my ability to write -no matter what. So I have struggled for weeks against the bodily need to say:

I want your help paying for my mother’s gravestone. I want your help so that I can do a bit less of the kind of work that earns money, these next few months. I want your help so that I can write without having to go so far away from society (in order to afford it) that to to use my talents I must sacrifice: coming to your birthday party, seeing your art show, accepting invitations to speak and perform, being a person in society.

I already went to a cabin in the woods. I am well acquainted with the asceticm all artists know it takes, for periods of time, to get our work done. Over the years my mother’s illness, and the anguish it caused me, created patterns of nomadic workaholism that dogged me for more than a decade. I am ready to breathe now. I don’t want to go away again. I am ready to stop running. I want you to help me.

My brother took on even more of the burden of our mother than I was able to because of my career— and his life reflects the many sacrifices he made. He works in homelessness outreach. He has serious mental health diagnoses of his own. He’s a marvelous, creative person — and also deeply loyal, hardworking— and grossly underpaid. This fundraiser is for him too.

My mother’s suicide — and her long mental illness— and her abandonment by family and friends— is as much a function of inherited Holocaust trauma, a few particularly messed-up dynamics in my family, the utter failure of the medical and psychiatric industries — at least when it comes to schizophrenia— as it is a damming symptom of social decay.

I learned that it is statistically common for people to commit suicide after first receiving treatment for psychosis. This reality knocked me sideways. I will address it one day, when I have more fully integrated all that it implies.

I have health insurance, but it is very basic, and does not cover the kinds of therapy and healing modalities I feel this time demands. I feel— spiritually and intellectually— very alive. But my body is battered. Undoubtedly there is more to this reality than I can even feel just now. Coping with overwork has always been my way of numbing.

My nearest and dearest know I have been wrestling with this letter for more than a month.

It’s been so hard for me to say this, even to myself— but yes, I do, I want your help finishing my book, and taking care of my body, and marking my mother’s grave, and for the price of being real to this extraordinarily painful— yet gorgeous, illuminating time— for the price of being real to all this not to be that I should leave society, move to the wilderness, write in a monk’s cell, forswear everything good that life has to offer. I want your help being near you, creating alongside you. Making things with and for you.

Thank you.

Love,

Ariana

please note:

No raffles, sweepstakes, giveaways, or returns on investment are offered in exchange for any donations made to this GoFundMe.

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