She took pride in her resilience, but her deeper comfort was this: he would never leave her<\/p>\n
For 15 years, they lived with no power or plumbing in a 150-sq-ft cabin they had bought off Craigsist \u2013 a shack, really, so small there was no room for a couch or dining table so they ate on the bed. She bathed with a basin of warm vinegar water and chose each night whether to squat over a chamber pot or trudge up the hill to the outhouse.<\/p>\n
She took pride in her resilience, but her deeper comfort was this: he would never leave her.<\/p>\n
But life was getting harder. She was five years older than Mark, and off-grid living was taking more of a toll on her. Her joints ached in the icy mornings, UTIs plagued her. She was losing her teeth.<\/p>\n
![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/600.jpg\")
Photograph: Courtesy of Joelle Fraser<\/p>\n
By the next week, she wrote that she had fallen twice, which persuaded Mark they needed to go to the hospital in Susanville, a five-hour round trip.<\/p>\n
Underneath my genuine concern was a deeper fear \u2013 that this could be another one of her veiled cries for help. She had had a mystery illness years before, and I had a familiar feeling that there was nothing actually wrong, not physically. Instead, I suspected she had hit the wall again with their grueling life on the mountain.<\/p>\n
To declare her existence untenable \u2013 to her husband, to me, to anyone \u2013 was not an option. Like a house of cards, her entire persona as his ride-or-die partner would collapse. Worst of all, he might tell her to leave, that he would be better off alone. That, for my mother, was unthinkable.<\/p>\n
After hours of tests, of blood draws, a CT scan, an EEG, the doctors could not find anything wrong. But she felt dizzy, she insisted. She showed them, taking slow, stumbling steps, leaning on the nurse\u2019s arm like a tipsy dance partner. Maybe she\u2019d had a small stroke? They couldn\u2019t rule it out.<\/p>\n
Tossing and turning until after midnight, I finally got a text at 12.20am.<\/p>\n
Mom: In AMBULANCE TO RENO<\/p>\n
I read the text again, feeling cold, then flushed. I pictured the ambulance reeling across the dark desert night, then across the state line from California to Nevada. Headed to Reno, headed for me.<\/p>\n
The next morning, after a stop at Trader Joe\u2019s for a smoothie and a bouquet of flowers, I found Mom in the neurology ward in a room bigger than their cabin. Beside her, the attending nurse typed notes into the standing computer, a giant rolling cart like a mini-office on wheels.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh you\u2019re here! That\u2019s my daughter,\u201d my mother said, clasping her hands to her chest.<\/p>\n
She looked shrunken but happy in the imposing hospital bed. She yelped with joy at the flowers and smoothie.<\/p>\n
I tried to be honest with the nurse.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have no power, no generator, no water. They haul it up in 200-gallon jugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nurse raised her eyebrows and typed that in. Then she looked at me. \u201cSo for showering \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOutside in the summer, with a hanging solar-powered bag,\u201d I said, and added – not sure if it would help: \u201cFive gallons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mom and Mark. Photograph: Courtesy of Joelle Fraser<\/p>\n
\u201cHmm, and in the winter?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mom and I exchanged a glance. \u201cSponge baths, with vinegar.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nurse typed silently as I noted Mom\u2019s hands, wondering if this nurse had seen how dirty they were. How could she not? Later, I would need two washcloths to clean the dug-in dust and dirt. Under her wedding ring, the skin was a darker brown that needed extra scrubbing.<\/p>\n
The nurse then asked about the bathroom layout.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, actually, there\u2019s an outhouse.\u201d<\/p>\n
A frown appeared briefly. \u201cHow far outside?\u201d<\/p>\n
About 75ft, Mom told her, then described the narrow path up the slope. I pulled out my laptop at this point, brought in case there was downtime to work, and clicked on a picture. It looked like an upright coffin on the hill.<\/p>\n
\u201cSee?\u201d<\/p>\n
I showed her another one of the inside. Mom craned to look, too, and I noticed how smudgy her glasses were. I dug a lens wipe out of my purse and unwrapped it while the nurse peered at the genuine toilet seat on top of the wooden bench, the coffee can full of lime to sprinkle into the hole, a roll of toilet paper. Mark had made a small shelf that held reading material: a US army survival guide, tattered copies of Better Homes and Gardens and Pioneer Magazine.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo there\u2019s no handrail \u2026\u201d Her frown was permanent now.<\/p>\n
Mom piped up, eager to shift the mood. \u201cMark can make one. He\u2019ll nail up a branch.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nurse nodded as if that was a normal workaround. I would feel the familiar weight of her and others\u2019 judgment over the coming week.<\/p>\n
During those hospital visits, I remembered being fascinated about feigned illnesses during war time. In the civil war, since most soldiers had little medical knowledge, they usually faked something familiar, like rheumatism. The war department caught on and ended that by year two. Other common pretended ailments were heart disease, vision problems and hemorrhoids.<\/p>\n
For fake paralysis, doctors would attach electrodes to the legs and flip the switch, or press tubes of radium to the skin until it burned. I was impressed by the ingenuity of one soldier who stuffed the heart of a turkey in his rectum to resemble piles. Others swallowed tobacco, causing nausea and vomiting, or coated their tongues with soap or chalk.<\/p>\n
To combat these ruses, doctors would give them awful duties such as cleaning vomit and feces so they would think their lot would be better back with their regiment. Another tactic would be to make the treatment worse than the illness, by, for example, applying fly blisters to the spine or dosing them with castor oil.<\/p>\n
She had made a pact with the man she loved decades before, one that had since hardened and encircled her<\/p>\n
I had a hunch Mom was doing the same. All the previous week, she had made her own symptoms by drinking just enough to keep herself alive and eating the barest portions. That made her dizzy and caused her falls.<\/p>\n
One afternoon after another hospital visit, I tried to figure out why I had been so quiet when it came to Mom and Mark. I could sense the nurses, friends and family members wanting me to confront my mother. I had heard comments like: \u201cGet power of attorney. Call the sheriff. This is elder abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
By defending Mom\u2019s choices, I suppose I was defending myself too. I understood why she and Mark loved the wild. The city jangled my nerves, and I missed small-time life from my youth, so when she wanted to return to their cabin, I understood. Like her, I had sacrificed monetary success for my writing, living a life with few if any luxuries. But I could no longer ignore that there was a cost to the quiet.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1757764688_51_480.jpg\")
Photograph: Courtesy of Joelle Fraser<\/p>\n
Sure enough, the problem with Mom turned out to be hyponatremia, a sodium deficiency due to dehydration. They recommended Gatorade and eight glasses of water every day. This felt more than anticlimactic, and my mother looked chagrined. Then she announced she wanted to be discharged immediately and go to my house. But because the nurses had reported some unsteadiness when they walked her around, she needed to go to the rehab hospital for seven to 10 days.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?!\u201d Mom yelled. She shifted on the bed and the alarm blasted, then stopped. \u201cDamn it! I don\u2019t need any more \u2018care\u2019. I can fall anytime, anywhere. At my daughter\u2019s, for starters!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you\u2019re weaker now,\u201d one of the nurses pointed out.<\/p>\n
Then, to everyone\u2019s astonishment, she got up and danced a jig. The alarm shrieked again.<\/p>\n
\u201cSee?!\u201d she shouted. \u201cI\u2019m just FINE.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease sit down,\u201d the nurse said, arms out, as the intercom chimed in like the voice of God.<\/p>\n
With furious defeat in her eyes, Mom glared at everyone in turn, then folded her arms across her chest. She knew she had to play along, but her patience was cracking like a thin sheet of ice. Below that layer was anger, even rage. That anger was directed at the staff, at the rules, and maybe somewhere deeper, also at herself. She had made a pact with the man she loved decades before, one that had since hardened and encircled her.<\/p>\n
When I got home, I made an appointment for my mother with a psychologist who had helped me get through my divorce. It was a long shot, but I hoped when this crying wolf episode was over and Mom was out of rehab, I could convince her to go.<\/p>\n
To my surprise, Mom agreed to see Dianna, the psychologist, on her next visit with me in Reno. On the night before the appointment, she took an hour-long hot bath, slipped into the fleece pyjamas I had laid out for her, and snuggled under the red, electric blanket. As always, what she wanted to do was join an Alcoholics Anonymous phone meeting. She loved to spend an hour listening to other people and how they pushed through the challenges of their lives. She put it on speaker, so I could hear the shares from the kitchen, and after a while I could figure out the topic: forgiveness. Fear. Self-pity.<\/p>\n
When it was her turn, I listened in the hallway and her tone was off, forced, as if trying to reassure everyone that she was OK up on the mountain. Very fine actually and it\u2019s such an adventure! And yes, of course sometimes she feels sorry for herself, very sorry actually, especially when her fingers are as cold as frozen carrot sticks so she can\u2019t even text her daughter. And yes it gets crazy lonely with no neighbors or visitors. But she has it better than a lot of folks.<\/p>\n
\u201cGratitude,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s what the topic should be next time! Or how about grit!? Now that\u2019s a topic I could get behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
These meetings were impossible on the mountain, the signal too sketchy unless you were 200 yards up the road. Mark, though, could get the news he wanted on his cell phone, where he learned how the weather system was being manipulated and wars were brewing and evil people were plotting in windowless rooms in places like the mountains of Switzerland. The banking system was also about to fail, so they needed to get their money from the bank and he would wear it in a money belt around his waist.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe says it\u2019s going to be like Y2K,\u201d Mom told me. I pointed out that that was a nothing burger.<\/p>\n
She cracked up at the phrase, delighted.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should tell him that when you get home,\u201d I said. \u201cHey Mark \u2013 chill out! It\u2019s all just a big, fat, juicy nothing burger!\u201d<\/p>\n
We laughed so hard Mom spat out her tea.<\/p>\n
I was sucked into a twilight world of deadly codependency that leads to insanity, suicide, murder<\/p>\n
During Mom\u2019s therapy appointment, I waited at a nearby Starbucks, but having seen Dianna myself, I could imagine it well. I was sure Mom was immediately soothed by the serene decor of the office, the low-bubbling tank with its gently swaying fish, the lavender palette and soft couch pillows. Dianna, a statuesque blonde in her early 60s, was always dressed in flowy silk outfits in muted colors like dusty rose and light gold. Her large eyes brimmed with wise compassion, yet to me she had dispensed firm, sometimes uncomfortable insights. They were just what I needed.<\/p>\n
Later at home, I asked Mom how it went.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, she was really dramatic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow so?\u201d<\/p>\n