The Land Before...

"So, I'll call you tomorrow after I am coherent," she says.

 "Are you ever coherent?" I retort.

"Not most of ever..."  She was already losing coherence, due to the Valium she'd been given to be able to sleep.

My daughter goes to the doctor's office for her sterilization procedure today. She is days shy of 24 years old.

We spent some time on the phone last night in our usual nonsensical ramblings, then she remembered she needed to call a friend. She called back just before falling asleep, needing a living voice to quell her thoughts.

She asked about movies to watch in her time off work and I read off the titles that have made it here from storage. She picked an eclectic mix of favorites, The Full Monty, Sliding Doors, Being John Malkovich, and some maybes, Sideways, Twelfth Night and Adam's Rib.

"I won't be able to pay attention at first though, so I need something really light," she mused. She will be taking another tranquilizer before leaving for her procedure, then will be given a muscle relaxant at the doctor's office. Her stepmom will drive her back home after.

"What can I watch when I first come home? I know, The Land Before Time!" She coos softly in remembrance of the days when she first watched the movie, naming characters and reciting their taglines. It was the time before the voices started whispering at her, the time before she could go without sleep for days on end and often hid in corners to avoid the demons sketched by overactive and faulty mental wiring.

My daughter has chosen not to take the chance of ever passing along the inheritable genes that can cause bipolar and other mood disorders. She has experienced the damage those illnesses cause, and has also seen that they can be maintained, in many cases, by medication. She has studied enough to know how often patients go off their meds and that cycles change and need different medications. She will never be "normal". She does not wish this life on anyone.

She just called, the procedure is done. Some sort of metal coil has been inserted in her fallopian tubes. Over the course of three months or so, scarring will develop and block off her tubes, rendering her permanently sterile.

And so I sit and cry again as I type. I felt guilty in the first article, thinking my tears were from knowing she will never pass along the good things we share. She won't know the joy of hearing her daughter sing with my grandmother's voice, the same voice shared by my mother, my daughter and me. She won't get to watch her baby's hair come in and watch for signs of the Pankratz curse, the coarse, unruly curls resulting from the Pankratz frizz marrying the straight, black Lavigne Sioux locks.

I thought some of the tears were selfish, the grandma in me longing to break free of her dream stage and knowing the joy of the next generation in her arms.

The realization came last night as I heard my little girl slipping back into the Land Before Bipolar. I cry for that child and the horrors she has known, the darkness that has ensnared her and stolen her peace. I cry that she has lived something so terrifying that she has come to a non-reversible decision to never see a child of her own share her nightmare.

As she and I approach our birthdays I will swallow my tears and try to be the grown-up. I will do my best to be as strong as she, and be the shoulder she has counted on. When I blow out my candles I will have one wish: that one day before I pass into the next world I will feel even a small portion of the wisdom she has shown in her 24 years.

You can read Andi's side of the story here.