Annie's Ghosts

Annie's Ghosts is a non-fiction memoir published in 2009 by the American author and journalist Steve Luxenberg. It tells the story of how Luxenberg discovered that his mother had a sister he never even knew about until around the time of her death. Throughout the book, Luxenberg brings his journalistic skills to bear on investigating the identity of this long-lost aunt.

The book begins with a prologue in which Steve, on a Spring afternoon in 1995, receives a call from his sister, Sashie. "You're never going to believe this," Sashie says. "Did you know that Mom had a sister?" Naturally, this comes as a huge shock to Steve who believed his whole life that his mother was an only child. In fact, he strangely recalls how his mother would often say, "I'm an only child," within minutes of meeting someone new. For example, Steve remembers the first time his mother, Beth, got to know his future wife, Mary Jo. The year was 1976, and Beth and Mary Jo were holed up in a motel room while Steve was in the hospital having an emergency appendectomy. The couple had been on a camping trip. Beth said she felt a special kinship with Mary Jo because they were both only children. "I understand what it's like," she said. "I know how it is to grow up without brothers and sisters." So while it would be strange enough for anybody to discover that their mother had a sister they never mentioned, it is especially strange when Steve learns this is true of his own mother, whose status as an only child was something she almost bragged about to strangers and friends alike.

But this wasn't something Steve felt he could confront his mom about at this time. At the age of 78, her health was beginning to fail. She suffered from emphysema, having smoked over a pack a day since she was a teenager. It seemed like she was always in and out of the hospital. She eventually had to stop driving, which shocked Steve and his siblings because Beth loved her car. To drive her to doctor appointments, she usually relied on Rozanne Sedler, a counselor at Jewish Family Service. It is Rozanne who first tells Sashie that Beth has a sister. All the information they know is that when Beth was four years old, her sister was two years old but was sent away to an institution. Much of this doesn't make sense to Steve. What sort of institution would have existed in 1921? And are children that young institutionalized?



Because Beth is so sick, neither Steve nor Sashie confront her about it. Eventually, she starts to recover. They hope she decides to reveal the secret on her own, but she never does. Beth finally succumbs to emphysema and complications surrounding a broken hip in August of 1999. She never did talk about the sister to Steve or Sashie. But then six months after her funeral, Steve receives a letter from a cemetery, sort of an annual reminder about planting flowers on their grandparents' graves. But instead of two graves, there are three. And the third one belongs to a woman named Annie. This, it would turn out, was the long-lost aunt.

Now that he has a name, it is easier for Steve to research the aunt. He calls the Michigan Department of Health and discovers that his problem is not uncommon. The case worker he speaks to says there are about 5,000 other families she's helped research long-lost relatives with mental disabilities. In time, Steve learns that, in fact, Annie was 21 years old when she was institutionalized, while his mother Beth was 23 years old. He also learns that Annie remained in the institution for another 31 years and that Beth never visited her.
This revelation reminds Steve of when his mother was briefly institutionalized for depression some time after her emphysema diagnosis. She had a great fear in her eyes and talked about how they couldn't keep her there. She was only slated to be there for two weeks, so Steve couldn't understand at the time his mother's extreme anxiety over being in this institution. But the revelation of his aunt's institutionalization, and the fact that Beth never visited her, makes him realize that it was guilt as much as anything else that caused Beth to be so uneasy about being kept in a psych ward, no matter how brief the duration.