Bucket list 43 – functioning with mental health

July 13, 2014

If all the subjects of discussion in the world were stacked in order of understanding I firmly believe that of mental health would be right at the very bottom of our knowledge scale. My sweet wife Jean was waiting for Teresa (our daughter in law) outside a Walgreen’s store in Bothell Washington when she spotted a young man in his mid-thirties sitting on the side of the parking lot in a gravel bed, up against a fence. Ever caring she came up to him and asked if there was anything she could do to assist him. He told her that he needed to take his pills and had been out of water so another person had just given him the water he needed and an iced tea. He said that no one wanted him around – no one wanted him because he had schizophrenia. He was unkept, unwanted, and out of options. Jean called the police and asked if they would see to him but they declined saying he had to do something wrong for them to intervene. She went in to the closest store and asked if they might be able to assist him, but to her amazement they declined saying that they could do nothing because he was a “druggie”. How low have we sunk when human beings are relegated to the dung hills of society?

Should we, by some magical calculation or mental health checker determine the percentage of our society afflicted with some sort of mental defect/difference from the norm, we would find that the percentage, in all likelihood ran well into the high ninety percent range. Logically, the only people who were not so classified would be those in the category that created the study. (Ironically, the statement that those who know themselves to be sane, or crazy are the ones to be in the opposite camp with which they identify.)

My brother, Glenn, has declared for years that he was “crazy”; thus, making him sane by this normative. I, on the other hand have declared my sanity over the years – even denouncing depression as a temporary state unworthy of serious consideration; thus, making me quite nuts. My dear sister Lynda suffered through her entire life with thoughts, actions, reactions, experiences, dreams, pontifications, and general life patterns which were counter to the norms of current culture. Not until the very end of her life did she feel confident in her spirituality, her family associations, and her knowledge of life’s purposes. She died at peace with all.

Jean and I listened to a talking book about a mother who got lost in mental limbo when her mother was killed in an auto crash. She too left this earth on her knees thanking God for the understanding and calm she had received. The daughter telling this story shared her frustrations, anger, fear, social stigmas, family degradation, and torture as she lived out her young life caring for her mother and attempting to maintain her own “person” and sanity through it all. The most significant lesson from this story is that the daughter, her sister, and her father stayed true to their “calling” and remained steadfast in their assistance and loyalty to the mother until she died.

My professional teaching career lasted from 1968 to 2009 when I was officially retired. I went in for an unofficial appointment my Division Chair, Barbara and shared with her that I was having “body melts and brain farts”. I immediately became suspect and was watched carefully to ensure I was not dangerous to my students or myself. I was not well and began taking significant amounts of “sick leave”, eventually running out and then negotiating a semester in which I was essentially given an assignment to wrap up my teaching experience; then, go on disability until I reached the ripe old age of 67. This all worked out for me because age and luck ran together. I was lucky.

What about the millions where luck and age do not match? What about the millions who have no such option, no such family, no such success, and are simply rendered subhuman?

God bless each of us as we look for those who are in need of the blessings of heaven. May we ever be present and available to share what we have.

Duane Jacobs, Grandfather, father, brother, uncle, cousin, and friend