Last One Standing

Cubby

     When I was young, my nightmares always ended with my escaping the creepy old haunted house but I could never manage to save my sister or brothers.  I remember one time I thought I had rescued my sister, only to have her head pop off like a porcelain doll.
     While I knew that these dreams were inspired by the B rated scary matinees I had watched that day, the feeling of being the last one standing haunted me.  I can still remember the guilt I felt at surviving when I couldn't save my brothers and sister.
     Then when they fell into the bottomless pit of mental illnesses and addictions one after the other, I struggled to understand why I had been spared.  Sure I had learned to avoid the obvious triggers of drugs and alcohol, but I had balanced upon the precipice myself quite a few times. 
     Now I can clearly see how I justified such bizarre actions as befriending cocaine addicts and holding onto mentally abusive relationships way too long, but back then my false sense of bravado carried me though from one crisis to the next.  When I look back on my days of going into risky clubs and waiting outside strange apartment buildings late at night while my friend scored his latest fix, I'm amazed I didn't end up on a missing poster.
     Yet somehow, no matter how much debt I put myself in trying to bail my friends out of the problems they constantly created, I always managed to bounce back.  At support groups, I was always the cautionary tale that made others feel their lives weren't so bad after all.
     Today I am battered but still standing.  Every day I visit my brother in the nursing home, bribing him with strawberry shakes to change his shirt and pants or to cooperate with his physical therapist.  Then I go to the hospital to visit my mother, who is recuperating from a TIA from all the stress of worrying about my brother.  Finally I come home to feed the cat and change his kitty litter, wondering how this became my life.  I really prefer dogs.

Privacy or Dignity?

Our family in happier times

Question:  Is it right to post details of my brother's recovery from brain surgery and about his mental illness on Facebook?  Am I invading his privacy and dignity?  Recently I did some soul searching to see if I was exploiting my brother's condition to gain sympathy or poking fun at his mental illness.
     Actually I admire my brother's wit.  Who else could come up with the term Congoleum juice for Cherry Coke or give himself the title of Pope President?  Finding humor in tragic situations has always been my family's coping mechanism. 
     Is it my place to tell his story, even if he has no idea what Facebook or the Internet is for that matter?  Maybe not, but I know my brother could care less what other people think of him.  He is much more concerned with his internal critics than the opinions of people in what we call the real world.  
     Nor is privacy a big concern for him.  He lives in a facility with more than 300 people, with only a thin curtain separating his bed from the next guy's.  He's oblivious to the disparaging looks of other people in restaurants or on the street.  Embarrassment is not in his emotional repertoire.  Sometimes I envy his ability to just be himself without worrying about the reactions of others.
     While my brother has the protective cloak of his own private world, my sister was all too aware of the indignity of being a mental patient.  The first time I took her to the psych hospital at her request, she packed all her best dresses in a suitcase, saying she wanted to go with dignity.  Of course we ended up taking the suitcase home with us as she traded her best dress for a hospital gown.
     The next time I saw my sister she had succumbed to the patient shuffle.  It was as if she had aged 20 years overnight and had lost all muscle tone in her arms.  Within two months, on April 27, 1989, my sister was gone.  There is no dignity in having a mental illness.

The Witness

      We all want to feel like we're the main characters in our own lives but in truth some of us are always relegated to the role of a supporting character.  The one who is all too aware of the train wreck ahead but unable to stop it.  If we're honest with ourselves, we must admit that we are jealous of the sick brother or sister who garners all the attention and of the addicts who are oblivious to the carnage they leave in their wake.
     We resent always being stuck picking up the pieces, afraid we will freeze when called upon to rise to the challenge of the inevitable next crisis.  We know we're being petty when we demand recognition for our own little victories while our mothers, fathers, brothers or sisters are falling apart so dramatically.  So we relegate our own needs and desires to the back story, wishing we had the courage to explode in such a spectacular fashion, wondering if anyone would be there to clean up our mess or would even notice.  Witnesses to the grand ironies of life, survivors of the emotional tsunamis of others, we are desperate to play the leading role for just once in our own lives, but afraid to risk jumping without a safety net.
     I have told these stories about my sibling's mental illnesses so many times, trying to keep alive the memories of lives cut short, to find some meaning in senseless self-sacrifice.  I once asked my version of the Higher Power why I was spared the mental illnesses that have ravaged my brothers and sister's lives.  I was told that I needed to understand how the mind disintegrates.  I forgot to ask why this was so important.  What is the point of understanding something you are powerless to change?
          

Code of Silence

Grandfather Guilfoyle

In my grandfather's day, people used to shut away their mentally ill relatives and never speak of them again.  It was considered shameful.  Families were afraid of being judged and shunned if anyone found out.  That's why my no one ever spoke about my Great-Uncle Martin's nervous breakdown in Ireland.   
     At first when my older brother became mentally ill, my mother wanted us all to keep the code of silence.  As if anyone looking at him couldn't immediately tell something was wrong.  Eventually I grew used to people staring at us in public places.  We only took him to certain restaurants where they knew him and tolerated his odd behavior.  We learned to eat quickly so we could leave if he became agitated, sometimes spending the entire meal in complete silence for fear of setting him off on one of his tirades.  Happier childhood memories were soon replaced with images of him throwing his plate across the room on Christmas day and punching a hole in the wall on Easter morning.
     Although I didn't buy into the family secrecy, my sister did and it warped her sense of identity.  Soon she was lying about everything--why she lived with family friends and inventing summer homes and vacations to fit in.  Numbing her pain with alcohol and bulimia, she had more and more to hide until her secrets ruled her life.
     The day before my sister died she spoke to me about being unable to speak up at her AA meetings.  She said if she tried to talk about everything that had happened she would explode.  She was so afraid of ending up schizophrenic like our brother she chose to leave this world rather than take that risk.

     My brother was unable to attend her funeral or the funerals of our younger brother or our father.  We told him about them, of course, but he had retreated so much into his own private world by then that he barely reacted.  After years of living in a long-term care facility, my brother had become isolated from his family and former friends.  He hadn't seen our nephew since he was a little boy and now he has four children of his own. 
     Wanting my brother to have a connection with his family, I arranged a meeting with his great-nieces and nephews a few years ago at a fast food restaurant.  Their ready acceptance of him just as he is gives me hope that the code of silence has finally been broken.

  

Congoleum Juice

Dad with Jackie, John, me and Michael

Congoleum juice is all Michael asks for in the hospital but Congoleum is a type of floor tile.  Eventually he admits that it's really Cherry Coke.  How the two are related you would need to be schizophrenic to comprehend.
     When my older brother Michael was first diagnosed at the age of 19, it was with chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia because of his profound thought disorder.  While it's true that Michael has the classic symptoms of hearing voices, delusional thinking and paranoia, these are common in most acute psychoses.  It was only after my younger brother John was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, then called manic depression, that the psychiatrists added lithium to Michael's drug regimen.  He was reclassified as having schizoaffective disorder.  
     At first the lithium caused a massive weight loss.  While most anti-psychotic drugs make you gain weight, lithium made Michael's weight plunge so dramatically that he had to be hospitalized for starvation and put on a  feeding tube.  Even with extra portions and liquid supplements, Michael still has difficulty maintaining the proper weight for his six foot frame.  
     I have enviously watched him shovel into his mouth a quarter-pound double cheeseburger, chili cheese dogs, and fries, knowing that he will go right back to his nursing home for dinner and never gain an ounce.  Still I don't envy his having to live in a facility with more than 400 people bouncing off each others' delusions, pestering him for money and cigarettes.  
     Perhaps living with so many other people doesn't bother him since he is used to sharing his mind with so many alter egos.  Sometimes he's Christopher Reeves, AKA Superman, AKA Clark Kent.  Then he's Jesus Christ on the cross, holding out his upturned palms as if we can see the stigmata.  Unfortunately his latest incarnation as Rocky Balboa has left him with black eyes and multiple bruises.  
     At least he no longer believes he's married to our mother and I'm his daughter!  Now he proudly announces to anyone who will listen that he's the Pope President so you need to do what he says.  Who could argue with the Pope President?
 

What If?

Dad helps Michael learn to walk

     What if it wasn't a Wednesday and the neighborhood kid who was supposed to walk Michael home from the bus didn't stay after school for CCD classes?
     What if my anemic mother had dragged me at four-years-old and my three-year-old brother down to meet him at the bus stop that day?
     What if the pregnant bus driver had stopped at the regular bus stop right next to to the crossing guard instead of letting him off across the street?
     What if the impatient driver had not zoomed around the bus and hit my six-year-old brother?
     If just one of those circumstances had changed, then perhaps my brother would have a different life today.  
     Perhaps he wouldn't have flown up into the air and landed on his head on the unforgiving pavement.  Perhaps he wouldn't have been in a coma for four days and almost died.  Perhaps he wouldn't have been taunted by Catholic school officials for his parents filing a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Chicago to pay for his medical bills.  
     Perhaps he wouldn't have had those blackouts when he was 12 or developed schizophrenia at 19.  Perhaps he wouldn't have had that grand mal seizure and brain tumor years ago and almost died.  Perhaps he wouldn't be in the hospital right now recovering from yet another surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain.
     Maybe if he hadn't become mentally ill, my younger brother and sister wouldn't have turned to drugs and alcohol themselves, developing their own mental illnesses, and ending their lives way too soon.  Maybe Michael would have been able to complete his accounting program at DePaul University and become a CPA.  Maybe he would have continued playing Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" on the piano or joined a rock band.  Maybe he would have gotten married and had children.  Maybe I wouldn't have to visit my family in a hospital or a nursing home or a cemetery.
     Who knows what could have been?  Right after my brother's accident, they enacted legislation requiring drivers to wait for stopped school buses.  What if they had passed this law sooner?  We'll never know.
   

Ghosts in the Ghettos of Poland

I spent a lot of time searching for traces of the millions of Jews and Poles who were murdered during World War II, but they aren't easy to find.  The ghetto walls have been torn down.  The blood has been scrubbed off the cobblestones and the walls of former Gestapo buildings.  The burned out synagogues have been turned into Catholic museums.  The cemeteries have only a few gravestones left to mark the millions of people whose bodies were dumped there.  Even the concentration camps and Schindler's factory have been sanitized.  

In Krakow you can still find a few Jewish museums, synagogues, hotels, restaurants, and cafes that represent this once vibrant community.  I saw the photos and sat on the new pews gazing at the reconstructed Bimah, but I couldn't feel their presence.  The closest I came was sitting on the steps, my tears masked by the pouring rain, as I looked at the parking lot across the street from the old synagogue in Nowy Sacz.

I could visualize the 400 young people being arrested at five in the morning on April 28, 1942, for being members of the Max Rosenfeld Library.  Branded as Communists, they were locked up in prison and forced to dance all night in the prison court, accompanied by an orchestra, while the SS wives and their children watched from the gallery.  All the while, Hamman, the chief of the Gestapo, shouted, "This is your dance of death!" 

The next day they were handcuffed and led by armed guards to the cemetery, where a large grave had been prepared for them.  They were told to undress, fold their clothing neatly, and lie on the ground face down.

The silence was shattered when Rabbi Yossef Moshe Zehman, a religious judge, stood up and said, "Have faith.  We suffer for all the sins of Israel.  The day of deliverance is not far away."  Then he addressed the Germans, saying, "Your day will come."

Then 24-year-old Ratzke Goldberg-Shpiro collected all her strength and spoke to the Nazis, "Don't think because you murder and bleed those who are not guilty, that you will win the war.  In any case, you have already lost, for those Jews that live through this war will take revenge upon you."

No one was surprised that she would speak out against the murderers, for she had always sought out those who were abused by fate.  The daughter of well-to-do Jewish parents, she studied in Vienna at university.  At 15, she joined the Borochov Circle, which taught both Zionism and Yiddish culture.  A talented actress, she performed eloquently in the best Yiddish and national repertory dramas.  

Her speech was cut short by a bullet.  Then more bullets rained down on the best and the brightest youth of Nowy Sacz.  Their bodies were dumped into open graves, along with the hearts of their people.

I wish I could say that I felt their presence sitting on the steps of the synagogue 71 years later, but at least I can bear witness to their bravery here and now on All Souls Day.