Madness on a mountain: for 15 years, my mom was trapped in a mutual psychosis

"My 77-year-old mother wanted sympathy, the kind Mark believed was for the weak: offers of a cup of a tea, a hug. Long ago, decades even, she had learned not to seek it from him. With him, she was a trooper. At 62 she had retired and followed him up to a high desert mountain, 6,500ft (1,981 metres) in north-east California."

"For 15 years, they lived with no power or plumbing in a 150-sq-ft cabin they had bought off Craigsist 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. She took pride in her resilience, but her deeper comfort was this: he would never leave her."

"For days before her last hospital visit, Mom's texts worried me. She sent them from the one-room mountain cabin she shared with my stepfather, Mark. They pinged each day on my phone like tiny arrows: two dozen or more, with random all-caps. Mom: Making mark red velvet CAKE. we have the gang of coyotes eating and harassing down below on the flats. Going to rest and take it easy and go TOMORROW FOR FOOD and water AGAIN."

For days before her final hospital visit, the woman's texts from a one-room mountain cabin showed frequent worry and practical concerns, including coyotes and food trips. She and her stepfather, Mark, lived off-grid at 6,500ft on 20 acres of dry desert, two and a half hours from the nearest town. For 15 years they had no power or plumbing in a 150-sq-ft cabin, eating on the bed and using a chamber pot or outhouse. She took pride in resilience and relied on the comfort that Mark would not leave. Aging brought joint pain, UTIs, tooth loss, and recent falls prompting a five-hour trip to hospital care.

Read at www.theguardian.com