The poetry and prose on this page are not in my photobook. They deal more explicitly with the mental illness I experienced in my early thirties than anything there. This illness affected me profoundly and was in fact the defining episode in my life.
Chalice
The topic for this poem, given us overnight at a residential 'Poetry and Prayer' workshop in 2014,
was about the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah watching a potter mar and then remould the clay.
was about the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah watching a potter mar and then remould the clay.
Was the clay, Lord, really so malleable in your hands? Were you able to reshape Israel as the potter reshaped the clay?*
It wasn't like that when you reshaped me. I was more like the clay pot that you later told Jeremiah to break in pieces, to shatter at the feet of the elders and priests of the people.* It could never be remade, you said. But broken as I was, you did remake me, piece by piece. Perhaps you need to remake me again, Lord. And keep on remaking me. But mould me as the potter first remoulded the clay, gently, reshaping and realigning me. Until you lift my chalice to your lips. * Jeremiah Ch.18, vs 4-6 and Ch.19, vs 1 and vs 10-11 |
A Grey Day's Story
'The fire and the rose are one'- T.S. Eliot (Little Gidding)
Her age in the 1901 census form completed by her husband, who was 6 years older, was given as 24 - a young woman with two small daughters aged 3 and 1. By the time of the 1911 census two more children had come along, another girl then aged 9 and a boy of 8 - and a unnamed dead child of uncertain age. Her husband's name was on the form but not her own. Her name was elsewhere - in the admissions record of the city's asylum.
The dead child did have a name. She was called Lottie and she was the first burial in a family grave that had no headstone and nothing to mark her death. She died in April 1907 of cerebrospinal meningitis at the age of seven months. Her mother entered the asylum 21 months later after recurring manic episodes. Her eldest daughter visited her near the beginning but stopped because she found the experience too distressing. It would have been difficult for an eleven year old girl to cope with. The second daughter must also have visited and then continued to do so. Years later both her own daughters recall being taken at different times to see their grandmother. The eldest remembers being told not to say she had been. Many years later another granddaughter on vacation from America where her father and mother had settled visited her grandmother and spoke of her as "a nice little lady". In April 1958 a woman of her name died in the asylum and was buried with three others in an unmarked common grave paid for out of the public purse. It is difficult to be sure because the asylum records are incomplete but it seems likely that this was her final resting place. She was buried as she had lived, unacknowledged by her own. In 1972 a moderately young man of around the same age as his grandmother had been was admitted to the same institution. He did not know this at the time for unlike his two older sisters he had grown up thinking she was dead. Unlike his grandmother he had gone voluntarily to consult a psychiatrist and been admitted the same day. Psychiatry had moved on in the intervening years and his relatives were told that the prognosis was good. He too had young children whose ages were not so different from his grandmother's had been, but unlike her the person he had married was a constant rock of support*. He told the psychiatrist that he thought he had a psychosis but his illness was diagnosed as manic-depression, similar to his grandmother's. Was there a genetic link? Quite possibly. Some eight years earlier as an engineering postgraduate one of his lecturers had read his palm, insisting that serious studies had verified its validity. He examined the palm and looked troubled but did not continue with the reading. What had he seen? The young man had not paid much attention at the time but now he began to wonder. He had less reason than his grandmother for being there. Her concern was for her dead child whereas his, although it also involved the death of a child** was for strangers with no ties. But the deeper reason was that he had been living in self-denial of who he really was. |
He had jokingly said to a colleague that he could not remember when he had last read any book other than a technical one, although by the age of fourteen or even earlier he had read many of the classics and developed a love of poetry. All that had been laid aside.
He had gone to the psychiatrist because he was hallucinating, seeing certain words apparently illuminated in a page of text and unsuccessfully trying to made sense of the illuminated words. He felt disconnected from his family and his surroundings. He read out some lines from the poetess Sylvia Plath's poem 'Lady Lazarus' written after her third attempt at suicide (she succeeded on her forth attempt). 'I am the same identical woman', she had written. But she was not, he insisted. "No one goes through an experience like that and remains unchanged". "She thought she had a calling and it destroyed her", he said, "I thought I had a call and it preserved me." He had a belief that the hand of God had been upon him and even after acknowledging his mental illness there was still the conviction that something profound had touched him. Strange things had happened during that time for which he could find no rational explanation. Once he had written a letter that with hindsight he knew should never have been written. He took the sealed envelope, left his house and started to walk the few yards to a nearby postbox. At that point the postman turned the corner and offered to take the letter - something that had never happened to him before and nor has it since. He looked at the envelope he had addressed and saw that it had no stamp on it. Taking that as a sign he declined the postman's offer and did not post the letter. He went through a day during this period with the sense that time had stood still. Trees and grass and flowers stood out in vivid colours. The boundary between himself and his surroundings seemed almost to have dissolved and he felt in a strange way as if he was flowing out into the natural world around him. After a few weeks of treatment in the hospital he returned to his family and soon afterwards to his job. His work was close to a central library and in lunch breaks he used to take out books to read at home. For three years he read voraciously before taking up outside activities again. Previously all the things he had done had been connected with young children - Sunday School teacher, Junior Boys' Brigade leader, Cub Scout Akela. Now he became involved with adults - often those in some way disadvantaged. For what had happened to him had profoundly changed him and reorientated his life. So should the story be called grey? Certainly it should for his grandmother who was deprived of all that was dear to her. But she seems to have coped. She worked in the laundry of the institution and when her granddaughter from America visited her she found her at peace with herself. And her grandson? Should he call grey events that have shaped his life and had a major role in making him the person he is today? That he will leave for others who know him to judge. |
* It cannot have been easy for his grandfather, bringing up the young family alone.
** See my poem 'On the Death of Angela Gallagher'.
** See my poem 'On the Death of Angela Gallagher'.
Addendum to A Grey Day's Story
I wrote this in response to people who asked me questions about what I had previously written.
Recently I learned from a cousin things about my grandmother that my family had kept from me. I knew from her admission record to the asylum* that she had suffered several episodes of manic attack. In such episodes, as I know from experience, one's behaviour can be quite bizarre (and in my case my thoughts even more so). In my grandmother's case her behaviour was such that her husband could not have coped with her at home. My mother seems to have been the only one who kept up visits to my grandmother, and she had to do it in secret. Mental illness** is still a stigma but it was much worse then. I know that my grandfather moved house with his young family several times in those early years; presumably it was easier to live where you were little known.
As for myself, did I have a recurrence of my mental illness or any sign of it? More than forty years later I can say, definitely not; not even when I went through a period of stress at work severe enough to leave me with Ménière's disease and a resulting permanent hearing impairment. As for the illuminated words and the unposted letter, my memory of the detail is too vague to say more. I received ECT treatment for my illness when in hospital which can affect short-term memory - but otherwise is much more benign than its reputation. * It did not deserve the name hospital in those days ** I have been involved for the past two years in arranging a poster exhibition in our church for Mental Health Awareness Week to confront the problem of stigma. |