In her youth, my elder sister was a dead ringer for Grace Kelly. Big
blue eyes, soft blond hair, wide forehead and full lips, and a body
that left strong men weak in the knees.
But under all that loveliness was a very sick young woman. The first
shrink said she just had some "social problems" and she would outgrow
them. After time passed and she had five young children to neglect
and abuse, and three ex-husbands and a couple of live-ins, who were
not kindly father figures, our family finally had her committed. This
was possible after she took her children to her first ex-husband's
home and ordered
the children to go and destroy his new family's belongings. He put up
a hand to stop them, and she chomped down on a finger, nearly severing
it. The cab driver, whom she had asked to wait at the curb ,
witnessed the entire event. So she was placed under observation. She
was found to be schizophrenic. Paranoid schizophrenic was their term
at the time.
Hoping to protect the children, as well as an effort to find help for
my sister, my parents petitioned the court to have her committed to
Northern State Hospital. The first attempt was foiled by the
testimony of her Social Worker. I think his name was Mister Sleazy.
He had been bedding down with my sister, and did not want to see his
extra curricular activity ended. But following several hair raising
events, a judge finally committed my sister. My parents believed they
were doing the right thing, and traveled back and forth to the
hospital in Sedro Wooley, to stay in contact, and to speak with the
psychiatrist, a very no nonsense woman who acted as if everyone was
suspect. What my parents did not know until later, was that
everything they told the doctor, was repeated to my sister. This went
a long way toward creating a hatred of her parents that never left my
sister. In fact, even after years beyond their deaths, she brings out
all of her hatred and wallows in it. She hates my younger sister,
too. And I suspect that despite her protests, she probably hates me,
as well.
This is a short, sanitized version of many years of heartbreak,
trauma, upheavals and family gatherings gone bad.
The system that my parents turned to, believing they might get help
for their daughter, turned out to be incompetent. And in that, it did
more damage than if my parents had simply stood by and let Nature take
its course.
It's been 19 years since mother died, and 14 years since dad's death.
But whenever my sister calls me, it is for the purpose of working the
conversation around to our evil parents. And when I assure her that
we have differing views of these two people, I am accused of having
been brain washed by our parents, and I am against her.
If I could sneak into my sister's head and do a little house keeping,
I'd do it in a flash. But ever since she turned 15, she has locked in
a world of her own.
Once upon a time I felt responsible to do something for her. Today I
have become an observer. That works best for both of us.
Carl Jarvis
On 10/8/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From my professional and personal experience, I would like to point out
that
if a member of your family is an adult and is clearly mentally ill, even if
there are an array of available treatment services, it may be difficult or
impossible to help that individual go for treatment. All of this emphasis
on
improving mental health services doesn't solve the problem. There's no
legal
or practical way of forcing an adult to accept or utilize psychiatric
treatment. That is a tragedy with which many families live. It is probably
the reason for the reports about all of those killers whom people
described,
in retrospect, as troubled, loners, obviously mentetally ill, etc. People
may have known that there was something terribly wrong, but they were
powerless to do anything. The only thing that can be done is to make guns
as
unavailable as possible.
Miriam