Brandeis - The art of misdiagnosis: a memoir

Riveting, insightful, and beautifully written, this memoir kept me up all night.

CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE,
New York Times best-selling author of Orphan Train

Gayle Brandeis dances on the edge of memorys razor: both candid and eloquent, The Art of Misdiagnosis never fails to cut down to the truth. I was both moved and enlightened by this unflinching memoir.

LINDA GRAY SEXTON,
best-selling author of Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton, and Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide

Gayle Brandeis is one of the smartest and most compassionate voices in nonfiction today. Her insights about how we live as women, as mothers and daughters, and as human beings cut straight to the heart. Everyone needs to read her.

HOPE EDELMAN,
internationally best-selling author of Motherless Daughters

Deeply compassionate, and breathtakingly brave, Brandeiss memoir is a raw, unflinching trip down a rabbit hole, unspooling both the chaotic life of her mentally unbalanced mother and how her mothers obsession with physical illness crash-landed Brandeiss own lifeand healthfrom girlhood to marriage and motherhood. About the stories we desperately need to make of our lives in order to survive, and how the body sometimes speaks what the mind dares not, this is also an extraordinarily moving portrait of a troubled mother and of the daughter who fearlessly, poetically, writes her way into discovering her truest self. Truthfully, I am in awe.

CAROLINE LEAVITT,
New York Times best-selling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You

The Art of Misdiagnosis is Gayle Brandeiss masterpiece, and it reads with the urgency of a literary thriller. Here Brandeis delves into the liminal placebetween life and death, between psychosis and sanity, between love and guiltwith a poets heart and a detectives courage. If youve ever watched someone you love unravel, or if youve asked the echoing why? of suicide, youll find home in these pages.

ARIEL GORE,
author of The End of Eve

In loving memory of Arlene June Baylen Brandeis, 19392009

Joint pain

Gum disease

Detached retina, in early or midlife

Mitral valve prolapse

Family history of sudden cardiac death

Crohns disease

Irritable bowel syndrome

Constipation

Hypermobile joints

Skin hyperextensibility

Unexplained regurgitation or vomiting

Sensitive to sunlight

Nervous when dieting

Bingeing on carbohydrates

Intermittent psychotic episodes

Severe abdominal pains

Rashes

WE ALL NEED AND DESERVE A CORRECT DIAGNOSIS

From The Art of Misdiagnosis:
An Art Tour into the Genetic History of the Artist
(DVD, back cover; Arlene Baylen Brandeis, executive producer)

After my mom hangs herself, I become Nancy Drew. I am looking for clues, for evidence. Answers. I put on a detective hat so I wont have to wear my daughter hat, so I can bear combing through her house. I wrap my new baby to my chest with a bolt of green fabricmy baby born exactly one week before my moms deathand recommence the dig.

When my sister and I first ventured into our moms bedroom the day of her memorial, Elizabeth said the space was a perfect metaphor for our momlovely and elegant on the surface, total chaos underneath. In the end, our mom couldnt hide the disarray; everything had spilled out, spilled over. Papers were strewn on every surface, leaking out from under her brocade-swathed bed. I bent down that day and found an old Mothers Day card I had written as a teenager, one that gushed about how she was forever doing things to make me well. I cringe to see it now.

My sister has just flown home to Toronto; its harder to sift through everything without her here. In the first folder I open after she leaves, I discover notes our mom had taken during a workshop on the seasons of grief. A surprised little laugh kicks in my throat; shes left a guidebook of sorts. The first season, according to her notes, is the Season of Grieving. Her notes say Shockshipwreck of our soul. DisbeliefLost. Didnt know the world anymore.

You just dont fit anyplace. The true you is not present. Okay, I can relate. The baby on my chest is a life vest; without him, I would be sinking.

I read on to see what I have to look forward to. The second season, her notes tell me, is Season of the Death of the Soul: Enter into a landscape for which there are no maps. Walk into the long dark night with no guarantee to find your way out. We must learn to wait without hope. We may hope for the wrong things. Great. Cant wait.

Next comes Third season of mourningWe grieve because we have dared to love and we grieve because we dare to love again. Love is the most difficult task of all, but all is a preparation for love. Fear of loss makes loving so difficult. Death is the bride of love. Death doesnt seem like a bride to me. Death seems more like a gangster, a gangster of love, and not the Steve Miller, space cowboy kindthis is the ruthless, brutal, kind, the kind with complete disregard for decorum. A bride leaves pastel, sugar-coated almonds on the table; a gangster leaves blood.

In the fourth season, we are supposed to Open to the larger story that grief can interrupt. Creation of a compassionate heart, her notes say. Our wounds open us up to others, not only to other people, but to all of creation. Maybe someday Ill get there.

I keep digging.

I find a picture of my mom and Eli, the love of her life, her sister Rochelles psychiatrist, the married man she loved from the time she was sixteen until he died of cancer ten years later. Ive never seen him before; she had always described him as dashing, magnetic, but he looks like a bulbous old lech. His arm is around her in the little black and white snapshot tucked into an old address bookshe is radiant, so happy; he looks so happy, too, his arm around a beautiful teenage girl, claiming her when she couldnt claim him, although her oldest sister Sylvia told me she knew about the relationship; she said there was an energy around the two of them when the family went to visit Rochelle in the psychiatric ward.

My mom had told me Eli was the brother of a Supreme Court justice, but when I look up the judge in Wikipedia, I cant find any mention of a brother named Eli. I do find an article about Eli in the archives of the Chicago Tribune, howeveran article that says he had been kidnapped and held for a sizable ransom, that says he had escaped. It appears to have happened the year they met. Is that what made my mom fall in love with him? Is that what led to her obsession with large sums of cash? I find a note about an independent-study high school she briefly attended on Michigan Avenue. I follow a hunch and look up Elis old office address. Michigan Avenue, too. Had he arranged for her to go there? Did they sneak off together during lunch breaks?

Nancy Drew, Nancy Drew, Nancy Drew.

Asher has fallen asleep. I unknot the wrap from my body, lay him gently on my moms bed. He stirs a moment; I let him nurse for a few sips until he nods off again. The pale green fabric unfurled next to him is super longat least four yards. It could easily be used as a noose. Asher has never rolled over in his life, but I imagine him rolling across the bed, looping the heavy cotton around his neck. I gather up the wrap and set it on the end table. When I stand, my shirt is plastered to my chest with sweat and milk. I stretch it forward, let the air touch my skin, let the sudden chill push me back to work.