I could barely understand her fifth husband, a schizophrenic, through his weeping when he called to tell me my mother died. “She fell…the ambulance came…they didn’t use the defibrulator! I kept yelling, use the defibrulator!”

I’m at my desk, writhing and wringing the beanbag wrist rest, waiting for either my mother or H5 or neither of them to call me back.

On October 15, 2009, I took my mother to her local hospital to get her an MRI test. The MRI was ordered by her neurologist to confirm the brain damage from the untreated multiple sclerosis.

The Emergency Medical Technicians who responded to Husband Five’s 911 call would not enter the house without hazmat suits.

1. A song, at age 12, called “I Never See You Anymore.”

I never see you anymore You’re always halfway out the door On the way to your brand-new life

Fifteen years ago, while she was still alive, I submitted to my agent a partial manuscript about my mentally ill mother. It was called MY MOTHER IS CRAZY.

At my mother’s hasty memorial, her fifth husband, a schizophrenic, told me that her favorite TV show was the CBS sitcom “Two Broke Girls.”

It’s grim. Why would I subject anybody to this gruesome story?Nobody would want to read it. I mean, I’d want to read it. I wouldn’t enjoy it, though.

There I am again, weeping in the bathroom.

The gift box was small and square, and my face flushed as my boyfriend handed it to me. How perfect, that he would get me a ring for my twenty-seventh birthday; how excited he looked, handing it to me first thing that morning, as I propped myself up on my elbow in bed.