“I could take you away,” she’d told me, smugly, after the first time I’d tried to run away. “Take you to the airport and fly you anywhere I want to; somewhere no one will ever find you. And I am your mother and there is nothing that anyone could do to stop me.” She’d smiled complacently, humming cheerfully under her breath. Pleased with her cleverness, the infallibility of her plan, her power...I was sixteen when my mother became mentally ill. I experienced first-hand the terror of watching someone I loved transform into a monster, the terror of discovering that I was to be her primary victim. For years I’ve lived with the sadness of knowing that she, too, was a helpless victim – a victim of a terrible disease that consumed and destroyed the woman I had called Mom.She died in 2007. No one will ever know her side of the story now. But perhaps, at last, it’s time for me to tell mine.A self-contained excerpt from my forthcoming memoir On Hearing of My Mother's Death Six Years After It Happened.