Impressions and Portraits

Last month, Jim and I attended the annual barbeque at DBSA-Boston (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance).

As we sat eating (my) hot dog and (Jim’s) hamburger, we watched the open mike karaoke in the front of the cafeteria. The young husband of a friend of ours went up to sing to his wife. As I glanced up at the makeshift stage, I had the distinct impression that David was standing there. Not in a miraculous way; I know full-well that David is dead. But the impression of his presence was strong. I mentioned it to Jim. I don’t think he felt it as powerfully as I did, but he saw the striking resemblance as well.

I was greatly comforted, looking upon this young man with his short haircut and lanky physique. It was as if David were in the room, untouchable, unreachable, but present as a living being.

In the prologue of my mother's memoir, she quotes Elizabeth Bennett, speaking to Mr. Darcy, "Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure." This memory gives me pleasure.

David’s birth year is receding into the past. The photo we have in our kitchen: our rogues’ gallery (as my mother called her lineup of photos of her children) is getting dated. And I will be able to update the other photos. But for David no updates are possible.

When I was a young girl, the local newspaper ran little boxes of photos on the obituary page. They were remembrances of family members, with captions like, ‘We miss you!’ and ‘your loving parents’. The hair styles and clothes were dated: these weren’t pictures of living daughters. These were long-dead daughters, oddly memorialized in the newspaper.

The photos and captions gave me an uneasy, queasy feeling. And now I feel uneasy as I realize my young guests will perceive David’s picture that same way, as my other children’s pictures are replaced with photos of aging adults. David’s will remain the portrait of a young man.

Girls' Camp 2018

Last week, Jim and I spent two days at our Church Girls’ Camp. For the Tuesday evening devotional, Jim planned to speak. That afternoon, he asked me to speak as well. The request caught me off-guard; I couldn’t think of anything I would say. But, that evening, as I sat listening to a youth leader, Jennifer, give a sweet and honest talk about failing to pass the law bar and what spiritual lessons she learned, I suddenly had a brain storm (and, yes, I took my meds that morning, so I was mostly confident (can’t ever be 100%) that my thinking was sound): pick five things to talk about briefly. I have a thing about five fingers, I’ll tell you about that in a later post. Here’s what I said:

There are five things I want you to know about me. I hope there are more than five worthwhile things about me, but I just want to share five.

First: my parents were wonderful, loving people with strong faith. They raised me in the Catholic Church. As I get older, I am more and more grateful for them and appreciate their wisdom.

Second: when I was nineteen, I learned about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I love this Church.

Third: 39 years ago I married a wonderful man. Yes, it’s the same man that is sitting right there: he’s my first and only husband. And I’ll tell you something I wish someone had told me. Even after 39 years, it’s hard. There are many things that are fun, but it can be really hard, too. I don’t know how it is for others, but it’s hard for me.

Fourth: in 1995, I had a manic episode. I have manic depression, called bipolar these days. I was hospitalized. What that means is that I was taken by ambulance to a psychiatric unit and was locked in and couldn’t get out until a doctor said I could. It was shattering. I’ve only been hospitalized one other time, and that was because I stopped taking my medication. That was in 2003. I see a therapist, I have a psychiatric nurse, and I take my medication. I hate it. I hated taking it this morning and I’ll hate taking it tomorrow, but I’ll take it.

I can’t tell the future, but it is quite likely that some of you in this room will either have emotional problems, or have loved ones with emotional problems, or maybe someone you work with will.

Fifth: three years ago, on August 12, our 27-year-old son died of leukemia. It was hard and it’s still hard. We prayed that he would get better. In fact, our Cambridge Stake had a fast that he would get better. But he died. And is it okay? Depends what you mean; it’s complicated.

You will probably have hard things happen in your life. You will have leaders and friends, in the Church and out, who can help you. Reach out to them.

If any of you ever want to talk to me, I’d love to talk. I’m quite open about my life and if I can help you, I want to.

Reach out when you are in trouble. I’ve had hard times and I’ve received a lot of help.

I love the gospel and I love my Savior. And I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.


A few girls thanked me afterwards. I was happy to talk to them. I had none of the negative feelings that followed the mental health panel last month. I felt in my element. I want girls to know about mental illness, to see it’s not a death sentence, to see it doesn’t have to be a shameful secret. Even if none of them ever asks me anything, I’m confident I’ve made a difference in someone’s life. Some girl (or adult leader), maybe years from now, will look back at that evening devotional and gain strength from the memory.

Third anniversary: August 12, 2018

On Sunday, August 12th, on my way to church, I made a voice memo about David’s death anniversary. For several months, I’ve noticed that I have to count to determine how long David’s been dead. It’s been exactly three years, but it feels like four years, or five. I calculate: it’s 2018 and he died in 2015; I’m sure of that. 18 minus 15 is three. I’ve gone through that arithmetic many times. I mentioned it to Jim. He suggested that it’s because so much has happened in our lives since then. Spoleto USA, three years in a row. The total eclipse in Idaho. A reunion in Maine last month, preparing for our own in a week. The lives of our three grandchildren: Andrew, age five, Victoria, who turned three on August 12, and Eliza. We spent Thanksgiving with my sister Maggie and her husband, and saw dear Eliza on the day of her birth.

Victoria was born 40 minutes after David died. Everything we’ve done with her has happened after David’s death. Sometime after David died, I restarted my frequent drives to the Bronx to see Andrew and Victoria. (Oh, yeah, and I see their parents, too…)

This week, I’ve had an email exchange with my friend Cort. A year ago, on August 6th, his wife, Corey, died unexpectedly in her sleep. She was exactly a month shy of 41. David had been dead just two years. Although I’ve been emailing about grief to Cort, I hadn’t made the connection that Corey died just six days before David’s anniversary. And it will always be so. Maybe I’ll remember Corey’s easier that way, knowing her death was 23 months after David’s.

Friday, we took a guided tour of Lexington’s Old Burying Ground. The earliest graves date from 1690. It’s a recurring guided tour; I chose the day that Jim was available. I didn’t realize that it would be so close to David’s death date. That’s the thing about the third anniversary: I keep being reminded that I’ve forgotten. If someone would ask me when David died, I would say, instantly, August 12th, 2015. It’s there, but somehow, emotionally, it hasn’t been in my consciousness as much, frankly, as I feel it “should be”.

Early grief feels like it’s never going to change, that gut-wrenching searing pain. Even though people told me it would change, it would be easier, I couldn’t really imagine it. That’s the cognitive distortion of powerful emotion. It’s one that I wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of. I would only say, in my experience, there has been healing of the raw wound and hope they can find comfort in that. Healing has happened, is still happening.

EIght days on

Eight days after our mental health panel, I’m still recovering. I’m not overwhelmed by the reaction, but there definitely is a reaction.

The impact on me of telling my story to a room full of people surprised me. More powerfully than ever before, I was confronted with my madness. For the first time I was speaking it aloud, not to a group of sympathetic fellow sufferers or newcomers at my support group, most of whom are reeling from their first disturbing, excruciating experience of mental illness, either of their own or of their son or daughter or husband or wife. This time I was speaking to a room full of 'normal' people, who had never dealt with psychosis. The fact of my insanity hit me square in the face. Three times in my otherwise very responsible adult life I had been completely out of control.

It didn’t help that I couldn’t see many familiar faces. Every Sunday, I teach nine and ten year olds while the other adults meet together for classes. New graduate students and professionals routinely move into our congregation while others move away. There were many unfamiliar faces.

And it wasn’t just the madness. It was my description of my physical and mental limitations, the result of psych meds. To demonstrate the tremor, I tried to spoon water into my mouth. I tossed the empty spoon away halfway to my mouth. (Jim said later that it was hard to believe I wasn’t doing it on purpose, though he did believe me; it made an effective demonstration.) I expend a good deal of effort on masking my tremor. I don't drink soup in public and I’ve become expert in controlling the tremor when eating anything else. I eat only crisp and crunchy iceberg or Romaine lettuce salads: I can’t spear baby spinach or leaf lettuce.

Speaking my experience aloud, removed me far enough to see my behavior the way ‘normal’ people would, people with no history of losing their minds and sanity. It was sobering and disturbing.

I’ve written about two of my psychotic episodes in memoir-writing classes I’ve taken online with Gotham Writers Workshop. (I love GWW! Their online classroom structure is brilliant.) The student comments have been positive, and not just because that’s part of the ground rules, to be kind and empathetic, to find the good in every piece. I believe I have the skill to convey the madness and involve people emotionally. Many readers comment that mine is an important story to tell. It's exhilarating to write about the episodes.

But the panel was emotionally exhausting. A week later, as I spoke with a good friend who attended, I was still processing the experience. At first I had thought it was because I didn’t recognize many faces in the audience, that I was afraid of being dismissed as a human being by so many strangers. But, I soon realized that I’m afraid of being dismissed by myself. Can I trust myself to know the difference between mental health and mental illness? A therapist, back in 1996, when the ‘diagnosis’ was still a fresh, raw wound to my psyche, said there was a fine but  definite line between sanity and mania. He was trying to calm me, to assure me that I could trust myself and that I could function in the real world. And in most ways, I can. I don’t second-guess myself about everything; I just live life. But how do I balance the desire for creativity with the need for sanity?