Witness to Withness

In an out of jail, visiting my brother

I love the word rehabilitation, because it infers that there is reason to believe that I will live again. I think that the extent to which it happens varies widely from completed healing to adapting and doing the best one can with the circumstance/opportunity. I am reminded of Joseph, who was sold into slavery and in his own process of rehabilitation was able to save many nations. Who knows? Unbeknownst to us all, the rehabilitation of a person we loved may have in it's own way raised us up from the dead

         I think one of free floating signs that reveal that there may be a way out is that you care about someone besides oneself. My brother Kurt and I had quite a history together. I went to all his ball games an rooted him on He was known for his ability to pitch and play shortstop for a team known as Jouberts. I was awful in sports. In some ways I was jealous and in other ways envious. I could have easily beaten him up over and over to show him who was boss. I chose to watch and try to make sense out of what seemed to make him so much better than me. He could swim, sprint, play football and even relate to others more effectively(including girls) than I could. It made absolutely no sense that this brother less than one year younger than me could be diagnosed with schizophrenia. In those days I knew very little about what it was. I knew only that it is something I did not want to have and hated to see my brother, who I idolized have to deal with something that seemed so treacherous. I recall vividly his catatonia and the revelations about what it was like for him in school prior to the illness. He was bullied in all kinds of ways, thrown into trash cans, taken advantage of sexually, humiliated. One example was a battle he had with a boy who was considered a drug addict and troublemaker. He was put in a position where he had to fight this kid to save face. Kurt got the worst of it. One day the kid would look at me in the library. I admit that I was scared as I looked at this kid. As the oldest brother I saw my role as protecting my siblings. I cowered. I knew that this would be a battle I could not win.
         Kurt was put in a correctional institutional in Bridgewater, when I was dealing with my demons. I visited with my mother religiously. It was the best I knew to do in my numb state. I was only going because I was supposed to according to those who knew me better than I knew myself. In a strange way in looking back, it had a healing component. It was kind of like looking at myself in the light of Kurt's own confinement. It could have just as easily have been him as me and yet in reality it was me. I had no way of knowing in those days if the depression would end. I just watched as if from the sidelines. I went through the process of making sure that as a visitor was screened, I was "safe". I was brought into my brother's presence. He had his orange correctional uniform on. He talked and I may have forced out a few words to prove to myself I was even in the room. In a strange way I hung on to whatever words that came, even if at the time they meant very little.

         For example there was discussion about how the chief of Police in the town in which the crime of assault was committed showed empathy for my brother. He had a son with Down's syndrome who everyone in town knew about. He saw Kurt in this frame. He made sure that Kurt got some home made apple pie before he was sent to Bridgewater. He was treated "right". Once in Bridgewater it was duly noted that his behavior of assaulting a policeman was in large part because of his mental illness. He was given a special place and looked after, rather than have him be put in with more hardened criminals. He was given medicines and spent a lot of his time trying to get stabilized and humanized. Make no mistake he did his time! It was painful to watch. At the same time there was a measure of compassion in the delivering of the sentence. I watched again from a far off depressive state that he was given opportunity to rehabilitate himself with crafting projects which my mom admired. I can never be sure how this affected me at the time. At this moment my spirits are buoyed by looking back. In that moment I was afraid. After all I was a prisoner to my depression and at the time there seemed to be no way out.