Understanding The Feeling of Abandonment

I am the daughter of burn survivors. At four years old and my sister six, my parents were severely burned in the basement of a Cape Cod, Massachusetts cottage. They went down to light the hot water heater as there was no hot water for my mother to wash her face. A new propane tank had been delivered, but there was a faulty valve. Gas with no smell had been escaping for hours. My mother lit the match, and blue flames ravaged her face and hands. My father suffered severe burns as well. When I was awakened in the middle of the night and carried across the dirt road by my babysitter, the stars looked flat in the sky. My sister and I slept on old mattresses in a basement room of a friend. Both my parents were gone in an instant for nine long months. My sister and I lived with my aunt and uncle on a farm in upstate New York, folded into the family with two cousins. We went ice skating, sledded down hills, and, during the spring, ran into the woods and picked mica, small mirrors, from the rocks. I cuddled with the farm dog, Shep. But that feeling of being abandoned never truly went away.

When we returned to New York City, I pressed my face against the windowpane, waiting for my mother to return to me after one of her 37 operations, watching her walk down the winding road in our housing development in New York City. I was never sure she would come home. My sister tells me that as I got older, I would often come home from sleepovers, groggy, in the middle of the night carrying my stuffed teddy bear. I didn't want to be away from my mother. What if she disappeared again? I would often wake up at home, even as I got older, my arms grazing the walls in the dark, and walk into my parents' bedroom to ensure they were still there. "Mommy, are you alive?" I would ask her.

One summer, we rented a house in Long Island. My mother was preparing to leave for an important meeting (she was a nurse/editor). She said I cried so hard for so long that she didn't go. I was nine years old then, almost the year after her final reconstructed face.

I was privileged, my dad a doctor and my mother with a career in nursing, and I often wondered why I felt waves of sadness at odd times or moments of anxiety when things were going well. My life was filled with opportunities. I went to sleep away summer camp and at 15 went to France for the summer. I did well in school and played sports and piano. I had friends. I felt so sorry for what my parents endured and perhaps guilty, too. Why did it happen to them and not me? My sister and I were spared the burns. The fire chief said the whole house would have blown up the next morning. My mother and father took the brunt of the explosion. What could be wrong with me? I wasn't the one burned, even though I had eczema patches often on my face and neck, the same places where my mother had been burned.

At 21, I had panic attacks and felt like I was going to have a heart attack and die. My hands got sweaty, and my heart raced. I began therapy. One pivotal moment was when the therapist said, "Your parents were 42 and 44 at the time of the accident. You were just four years old. You couldn't understand why they left you." I cried for myself for the first time.

Burns Affect The Entire Family

When a family member is burned, it affects everyone in the family. Now, I believe that it wasn't the burns/scars and my mother's changed face that affected me as much as the abandonment that has followed me throughout my life.

Of course, many people experience abandonment. I had one friend who said when she had her second daughter and was in the hospital for two days, her older daughter was anxious for a whole year after her mother came home. Other people lose parents, even siblings, to early death. Relationships end, married couples get divorced, and sometimes children are neglected.

But burn survivors often must go in and out of the hospital for years. Each leave-taking can trigger earlier fears for those left at home, such as losing my parents for nine months. The focus, naturally, is on the person who is burned and struggling with multiple surgeries. It is also important to make sure that others in the family can express their feelings and fears and that the community embraces everyone in the family. If someone had said to me, "It wasn't your fault," or "Your mother never wanted to leave you," perhaps it would have been easier for me to heal. Part of me always felt like an orphan.

As I entered adulthood and began forming romantic relationships, I would get anxious when I got too close. Everything could blow up again. I didn't realize what I was feeling at the time, only that I broke off relationships, sometimes abruptly. In my mid-twenties, I set off for California from New York City alone in a car without air conditioning or radio. I had received a graduate degree in poetry, and writing poems saved me as I wrote about my deepest fears. Poems spun through my mind on that trip out West. I was also trying to prove that I needed no one, not even my parents. Only when I got to California did I allow myself to feel the terror that had been living inside me.

After years of peer counseling, therapy, and even hypnotism, I found a man who could hold both my joy and my terror. We have two daughters. I began to write the story of the accident, Burned: A Memoir, when they were four and six, the same age my sister and I were when my parents were burned. Panic attacks began and would overtake my body even when I was at the playground watching my daughters in the sandbox. I continued to get help, and we had a wonderful family life, though I know my anxiety was passed down. As hard as it was, writing the story helped me to the other side.

Even though I am now in my seventies, I continue to see a therapist and do peer counseling. I still play the tape the hypnotist made for me, which tells me to hug my four-year-old self and tell her, "You are safe. You are healthy."

I don't think that early abandonment will ever truly go away. If my husband goes away for a few days, at first, I feel a slight panic, even terror, and make sure to make dates with friends. Exercise always helps, and I've had a pet for most of my adult life. Pets provide constant comfort. I snuggle up with my little Bichon, Ella. Writing has always saved my soul. After writing my first memoir, I never thought I would write another one. But a trip to Morocco at 19 led to a book. "Write me," it kept saying. My new memoir, Narrow Escapes, is about my life from 19-30, still grappling with the accident and, like everyone at that age, trying to find my path in life. I was fortunate to know I wanted to write and to teach.

Being the daughter of burn survivors has had its challenges, and the fears of abandonment will never completely disappear. However, I believe I am more compassionate because of the accident and embrace differences of all kinds, especially as my mother was facially disfigured. I was amazed by her ability to face the world after her burns, return to work, and make a great contribution to nursing. I hope I continue to make the world more loving and compassionate by my writing and teaching. I also want to let families of burn survivors know that everyone needs help to live their best and most fulfilling lives.