After the final turn — Sweet Drive, the road at the entrance of the facility — I saw a rectangular transformer, a steel box flanked by knots of coiled wire. I passed a police cruiser before turning into the parking lot.
I let my eyes travel the rest of the room, scan the plaques commemorating distinguished employees, a glass case housing a ceramic Virgin Mary, a series of nesting dolls, a miniature Buddha. I noticed a metal detector, a machine standing like a sentry before a wall-size door. I fixated on these details, let the contours of this broad metal door distract me from the questions I had for Tim.
He was in gray sweats, not the standard jumpsuit I’d seen him wear in the news clips. He had dressed this way at home, sweats draped over bulging muscles.After a few steps, I felt his arms wrap around my torso. We hugged, and I remembered how in high school, when he was just starting to realize his strength, he would squeeze me harder and harder until my laughs turned to gasps. Now I felt little pressure, only the weight of his massive hands spread across my back.
But sitting across f rom him in the visiting room, I saw that he had the same olive skin, the same black hair, a shade darker than that of everyone else in our family. He still had the same cauliflower ear, a mass of crushed cartilage above his right ear canal, a common marker among many competitive wrestlers.
“Not bad,” Tim said. “I don’t move so much in here.” He minimized his pain as he had after high school wrestling matches, bags of ice strapped to his shoulders, his badges of honor. This had been an easy conversation for years, the discussion of his physical aches, the bruises sustained as an athlete. The physical was always easier, easier than when he would tell me that he spent all his time in his room because he was afraid to meet new people.
This last question was different. It involved our mother. Mentioning her to Tim, bringing her between us, terrified me. We had been speaking for thirty minutes, and she had yet to enter, my warm-up questions a strategy purposefully employed, one that would help move us gradually to her, to fraught ground.
We cut MH support & treat schizoaffective like animals & throw them on the streets exposed to a violence /drugs or families who have no idea how to support them which adds to their paranoid narrative. Why? We don’t do this to those Dementia or Alzheimer’s.
My schizophrenic brother almost killed a cop,and beat the crap out of my sister in law.He's too old to do any damage now,but in his prime he was a very dangerous man.
It would be great if you used person-first language. “Brother living with schizophrenia,” rather than “schizophrenic brother.”
Your article had me researching this case. How very sad & tragic.
WOW! This broke my heart. ❤️🙏🏿❤️ Mental illness is such a bad disease. And the effect it has on families is heartbreaking, but to lose another loved one by a sibling and still loving that sibling is powerful. 🙏🏿❤️🙏🏿❤️
Phew. Wow.
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