Mama Cracks

Chapter 42: Blood on the Rocks from Seizure Mama and Rose by Flower Roberts on Amazon

I was sitting on the couch watching television. Rose got up from her chair to change the channel. There was a crash. She fell toward the right of the TV cabinet and hit her head on the heat shield of the woodstove, just inches behind its sharp iron corner. There was blood all over the rock hearth.
I usually rush to help, but this time I couldn’t move. Her dad appeared by her side. He cradled her head in the crook of his arm until the seizing stopped. I was frozen on the couch. I was no longer in charge of myself.
All I could do was scream. It came from somewhere deep inside of me. It was not human, it was primal, from the past, from somewhere far away. It was like something shattered and an explosion of sound came through a hole from somewhere else. I couldn’t stop this scream. I was hollow and rigid. A funnel for this noisy force passing through me. I was empty. I was gone. There was only this scream that would not stop.
I do not know what happened next. I was blind. Everything was whooshing out from me so that nothing could enter. It was like I was purging my body of all its emotion and energy. I was exploding and emptying. I was that scream and nothing more. Years of fear and sorrow had built up and this was what was left of me. My shattered soul and this scream.
The heat-shield on the woodstove was bent, but I was broken.
Rose’s daddy had to help Rose to her bed and clean up the blood. I sat on that couch drained and silent. My eyes were wide as I sat there trying to process this terrible event. All this blood on the rocks. Knowing Rose’s temple had come within inches of the solid corner of that dangerous stove. We used to keep a fence around it,but when the children got older, we took the fence down. We kept pillows on the hearth corners just in case Rose fell near the stove. But you can’t make a woodstove safe. You can’t make it soft and cold. At least it was spring, so it was not hot. She could have died, again, right here in this house. Right here in front of her ever-present, 24/7 mother.

Seizure Mama speaks to parents:
After this event, I decided I was done with everything else in this world. I was doing nothing else but being Rose’s mama. This had to stop. She was four inches from a fatal fall. Nothing else mattered. I quit my job as an eighth grade science teacher as soon as we got an Epilepsy Monitoring Unit appointment. I was SEIZURE MAMA full-time. I read everything from everywhere about seizures and epilepsy drugs. It paid off.
I was truly afraid that I was crazy and damned after this. I stayed electric for a long time. It was at this point that I knew we were both in danger. Rose needed these seizures to stop and I needed to know she was safe. This constant risk and fear had wound me up into nothing but nerves. I am still not like I was before. I am not strong enough to relax in this broken world. I am not strong enough to love someone who is constantly in danger. We have been tethered together so long that I am not sure we will ever feel like two truly separate people. I am glad that Rose is away in college, so that we have time to be individuals. Maybe, we both can finally heal up and relax around each other.