In the spring of 1962, my father, along with the help of a Cook County circuit court judge, had my mother committed to the Chicago State hospital for the mentally ill, where she remained for a period of 18 months and was diagnosed with and treated for paranoid schizophrenia. Of course, when this all took place, I had no idea of what was going on. Fact of the matter is that I have no memory of her being put into the nut house! Most of what I discovered about all of this came from documents I came across following my mother’s death, relatives I spoke with before their passing, and from my mother herself. No one I asked, could tell me as to what brought about my mother’s commitment to the nut house, the truth behind it in any case. What I got from my mother was that it had been my father which had pushed her “over the edge,” while my aunt and uncle would say only that they’d suspected for some time that she’d been “crazy.” And on those rare occasions in which I heard it brought up and talked about by my mother to others, she would call it “a nervous breakdown.”
Now, following my father’s death in 1964, you must understand that my mother became my primary care provider. There was no question asked as to if she were sane enough to be a single parent, no thought of my living with any of my more stable relatives. It was what it was! Being the mid-nineteen sixties, it was nowhere near like it is today. Although I’m sure that there had been agencies and procedures in existence for the protection and safety of children, it’s perhaps very possible that because no one really gave a damn who knew my mother, that things were like they were. As far as anyone in the family knew, even with the limited contact that they had with my mother and myself they had, nothing was wrong enough for anyone to step in and remove me from her care. Nowadays, a kid goes to school and tells someone his mother spanked him and all of a sudden the whole family is falling under the eye of the major crime unit of the police department and their names are placed on a register! Back then, when a kid told someone that they’d been spanked, they were usually asked what they did to deserve it.
My mother was of course, on medication for her insanity and a lot of other things I’m sure of as the top of her bedroom dresser was a small island of amber colored pill bottles containing a variety of pills, capsules and liquids. I do know that for her paranoid schizophrenia the major medication which had been prescribed for her had been Chlorpromazine, better known to most people as Thorazine. When my mother took it, her personality was a 180 degree turn around than what it was without her on it. I will say that I think my mother knew of her illness and knew the importance of taking her meds, but she often complained that she didn’t like the way it made her feel. When taking it, her days were mostly spent in her bedroom, in bed either sleeping or as she would describe, feeling too weak to do anything. Most often than not, she kept the window shades pulled down and the only light in the room would be a small bed side lamp which she would use to read her Bible and Horoscope magazines. Her color always seemed drained from her face and she cared little for herself, never bathing, eating very little, brushing out her hair or any other basic normal act of hygiene which most of us do every day. And it was at these times that I was basically on my own. There were times that she did seem more energetic, more alive than dead so to speak. But I attribute those times to being the “in-between” times, the times when she was either at the half-way point to being off her meds or the half-way point of getting back on her meds.
I can remember that my mother would often complain of feeling tired and weak, and I know that she suffered from a chronic case of constipation as there was often laxatives in the house which my mother seemed to take on an almost daily basis. Also when she was on her medication, she dealt with facial tics which seemed to be annoying to her and complained of stiffness in her arms and legs. And more than once, I recall her saying that she often felt distant, as though she were viewing the world from outside of her body. But then there were those times when my mother would stop taking her medication, either by choice or because she ran out and could not get it refilled, and it was during those times when her personality did a total 180. I fully believe now that when she went without her medication, it was by choice more often than not.
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