My Dad would keep track of my Mother’s behavior and her sleep patterns. It is very important to keep a log of a person’s behavior so that you can give a good accurate account to the doctors who would be treating a patient with mental illness. For those just joining us, I am giving an account of mental behavior in the series on the Mental Talk forum. My Dad would ask my Mother/his wife had she been sleeping and the routine answer would be that she was or had been or is sleeping when he asked. I wondered how Dad kept up his ability to perform all the duties he had in maintaining our family. Mom/his wife was a hand full and a slice of pie and he still maintained a functioning atmosphere for the rest of us to operate in. Things seemed normal. Mom wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating, wasn’t cooking, wasn’t washing clothes, wasn’t making school lunches, wasn’t watching television. Dad did all those things. So you ask what was our Mother doing beside not sleeping? Our Mother was constantly walking back and forth here and there. She would sit down and get up. She would lay down in the bed and get up. She would lay down on the couch and get back up. Our Mother would go and get water and most of the time not drink it. Oh and most of the time while our Mother was doing all those things, we us kids were in tow following her because she would have us do that. I didn’t mind as long as it was helping her cope. Read my book “Lunacy Sneezed on my Family.” You can find it on Amazon.com authored by Cortney Edwards. My oldest brother marched to a different tune though……………