RORY WAS BORN INTO SADNESS.
Her arrival was still four months away when the state troopers showed up at her mother’s office—there to perform a terrible duty that no one signs up for. They informed a young, pregnant wife that her husband, a long-haul driver for a propane company, had taken an on-ramp too fast. That his truck hit the guardrail and death was instant. No one else was hurt, so at least there was that. But it was small comfort for Rory’s mother, Linda. And she was still grieving when Rory was born.
Rory wonders sometimes if Linda’s emotional state strained their relationship in those early years, if her mother’s lingering pain hampered the natural bonding between parent and child. What she doesn’t wonder about, however, is her mother’s love.
“She did everything she could to raise me well,” Rory says. “I was her world.”
Growing up fatherless prompted an identity crisis of sorts. Rory struggled to make sense of her intense longing for someone she’d never met. Someone whose face she saw whenever she looked in the mirror.
Rory could tell that her mother didn’t like reliving those memories, but she was gracious and shared pieces of Dad’s story. Rory learned that he was a bit rough around the edges, yet a kind man who loved his wife and Jesus more than anything. She also learned that her mother’s heartache never quite healed.
Maybe that’s why everyone missed the signs., or maybe they initially misinterpreted the mental miscues as loneliness or depression. Maybe they didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility that it was something more. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Whether they noticed or not, Linda’s descent had begun.
Adventure
Rory was just 9 months old when her mother took her on a road trip from Washington state to Colorado. Rory has no memory of visiting the Whit’s End Soda Shoppe at Focus on the Family headquarters in Colorado Springs, but she likes to believe it was the start of her lifelong love of Adventures in Odyssey.
More likely it began about six years later, when a promotional cassette for the children’s audio drama came in the mail. Rory’s boombox powered her imagination, and every penny of birthday and Christmas money went to purchase new Odyssey CDs. Car trips were measured not in minutes or miles, but how many audio drama episodes until they reached their destination. Adventures in Odyssey was even the subject of Rory’s sixth grade report on “my favorite thing.” (She got an A-.)
“My love for Adventures in Odyssey ran deep,” Rory says. “It made sense of things I could not understand.”
She took comfort from the audio drama’s stories and characters: Kirk McGinty, for example, also lost his father before he was born. When Donna Barclay’s childhood friend died of cancer, Rory could relate. Rory’s grandmother suffered from dementia, so the Agnes Riley storyline assured her that others understood. And when Rory was later diagnosed with dyslexia, the memory of Oscar Peterson’s journey helped her cope.
Adventures in Odyssey, Rory says, was solace for her soul—a 25-minute escape from a home life she could barely fathom. By age 10 Rory found her mother’s mental decline was noticeable. By 15 she saw it was inevitable. Rory scoured the fridge to make sure Linda didn’t consume—or serve—expired foods. She posted sticky notes to remind her mother how to answer the phone or use the microwave.
“I was honestly afraid she’d drive her car off a bridge because a voice told her to,” Rory says.
Decline
Rory dropped out of high school during her sophomore year. She didn’t want to, but who else was going to care for Linda? It was just the two of them at home; no one else saw what Rory saw. No one else understood.
“I ended up ‘home-schooling’ myself for a year and a half,” she says. “It was a very dark time for me mentally, but I fully believe [my mother] would have declined even faster if I hadn’t been around.”
Rory ran the household all day, and at night she retreated to Odyssey. This girl who grew up faster than she should have, who faced uncertainty and fear almost every day, took a few minutes before bed to be a kid again. Adventures in Odyssey reminded Rory that she wasn’t alone in her struggles, and the fictional Whit’s End was her safe place.
She held it together as long as she could, but her resolve couldn’t forestall Linda’s eventual psychotic breakdown. Rory was 17 when her mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s and was convinced that their church was giving them $4 billion. Rory says her mother would sit in the bank parking lot for hours, just waiting for a signal from above that the money had been transferred.
Linda was temporarily hospitalized, and Rory moved in with family friends. For the first time in forever, Rory didn’t have to be the adult. She returned to high school for her senior year, graduating third in her class.
Rory recovered, but her mother’s descent continued.
Alone
Rory was attending college in Oregon when the coronavirus hit. The 22-year-old watched her friends and roommates phone their parents for comfort, advice or simply someone to talk to. For Rory, however, the pandemic was a reminder that she didn’t have anyone to call.
“It was a loneliness I didn’t know existed,” she says.
Rory was tired, but she couldn’t sleep. Alone on the couch at 3 a.m., her prayers were equal parts desperation and tears. That’s when it resurfaced—something she hadn’t thought about in years: Adventures in Odyssey. A quick search revealed a free trial membership to the Adventures in Odyssey Club, with access to all her favorite episodes.
Hannah, Rory’s college roommate, says Rory put in her earbuds and listened for hours. “She described different episodes to me and reminisced about listening to them as a child,” Hannah says. “She seemed more at peace.”
Rory’s prayers in the present were answered with a reminder of her past. “Odyssey was incredibly soothing to me growing up,” Rory says. “When I was overwhelmed, tired or needed a break, I listened. Years later, when I was overwhelmed and needed peace, it still had the same effect.” Today, Linda still has no clue that she’s mentally ill—but at least she seems happy. And Rory is a college graduate. Her goal is to one day run a nonprofit for children in foster care. After all, she knows what it’s like for kids who feel they have no one to call when life overwhelms.
