He took a shot at the old barn, and it shot back in perfect pinging ricochet. He then aimed at a swirling flock of tiny chickadees.
“I hit a tiny little bird, and instantly began to cry,” he said. “But my mom saw how badly I felt, and helped me nurse it.”
In response to the tears of her boy, she fitted a box with a blanket she had fetched from the old farmhouse where she’d grown up, then added birdseed and water.
And then mother and son began to try to nurse the small bird back to health.
“It died, of course, the but the fact that my mom cared so much ... .” His voice trailed off. “These days I don’t remember much about life with her, but that’s something I remember.”
For Michael, many of the details of life with his mother are blocked. Paralyzed by the pain of her loss, he often struggles to remember the good times.
He does recall basic things: That she was the kind of mom who packed a lunch for her two sons each morning before school, who drove them to class each day, showed up for each after-school basketball game and accepted friends who were a little “rough around the edges,” he said.
Photographs usually help resurrect memories. The one of him with his mom at Flathead Lake - each of them holding monster mackinaws they’d patiently waited to hook and then fought to land - never fails to draw a smile.
It is emblematic of a better time, in the years before Julie Huguet was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a relatively late assessment at the age of 47. The photo was taken in the years before her divorce, before a series of family tragedies and the deaths of her parents, and before daily living became ferocious and challenging.
“My mom was a very good mom, and we’re very connected,” he said. “But she was overwhelmed by how vast this world is, and we thought of life differently.”
For Rhonda Huguet, Christmas is an especially difficult season since the death of her sister-in-law. That’s because Decembers routinely include a pre-holiday season trip to Spokane for Huguet wives, to shop, dine and laugh.
The tradition began 16 years ago, according to the family, and for the past two holidays, hasn’t included Julie.
“We called it a shopping trip, but it is about all of us being together and having a great time,” Rhonda said. “For the last two years, we’ve just toasted her at dinner and talked about her a lot.”
They talked about Julie’s love of the great outdoors, family trips to her Noxon Reservoir cabin, her personal faith in the Mormon church and the way she lived for her children.
“That’s one thing - she would immediately drop what she was doing to do whatever the kids needed,” she said. That often included big adventures to ski resorts and trips cross-country with the kids when their father worked long hours, she said.
Rhonda said she feels sadness recalling the last two years of her sister-in-law’s life: The way she struggled to find someone to understand her symptoms, the time she spent in various facilities, and the helplessness felt by a large, loving family as they watched her downward spiral.
What happened with Julie Huguet, and why she developed bipolar disorder late in life, is anyone’s guess. No one could pinpoint symptoms early on, she said, but most knew something was happening.
“There’s a lot of guilt associated with those initial stages if someone has not yet been diagnosed. You start thinking, 'What’s wrong with her?’ before you realize it’s serious,” Rhonda said.
Rhonda, Michael and many within this large extended family say they believe that Julie Huguet didn’t get the help she needed with her mental illness, and that she was released too soon from a local facility treating her shortly before her death.
“It was unbelievably frustrating to try to get an adult some help and feel like there is nothing there,” said Rhonda. “For someone in the depths of despair to be released and (the family) told, 'There’s nothing else we can do. Take her home and take care of her,’ is difficult.”
Julie Huguet took her own life with an overdose of medication on Aug. 21.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, approximately 25 percent to 50 percent of people with bipolar disorder attempt suicide at least once - among the highest rates for any psychiatric disorder.
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