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Kokomo Kootsie
4/05/2002
Nibbles- Bits & Pieces
The Asylum
My angst is cranked up to ten, as I write this!
He grew up without respect, and possibly without love. But now, he had people he called friends! They all had a common bond. All locked away from the world that was beyond the high iron fences surrounding where they all lived now.
Lee was a tall man, big boned, the typical artist’ drawing of a Hillbilly! Even to the big old black hat he always seemed to wear. He wore blue work shirts, so popular to farmers in those days, and baggy loose pants, held up by gallowses, (suspenders, today!)
He was long of chin, and had sad watery eyes, that never blinked as he stared at anyone. He saw the world through a deep gray fog, which once in a while seemed to lift unexpectedly, perhaps triggered by some spark; a word; a turn of someone’s head; a mystery to all, who try to understand the trickery and unpredictability of the mind or brain.
When I went to see him, he always called me by my mother’s name, never my own, not even when I’d tell him who I was. I surely looked enough like my mother, remembered from his childhood, as he grew up with her, his mother being her grandmother.
Yet, when I took my father to see him, he instantly called him by his name, and shook hands with him; he had not see my father for over thirty years!
We always took gifts to him; he would take them, open each one very slowly, fold up the papers carefully, wind up any string or ribbons, and place them in neat piles beside his chair.
Somehow, all that brought tears to my eyes. I found it heart breaking that men could be reduced to that level, where he was taught to be so neat and careful, that it became the most important thing in his day, his life- and at such an advanced age.
Poor Lee. I felt so very sorry for him. To be locked up in a damaged brain, forever outside the pale of normal human contact; now he was an old man, sent away from all those he had known and loved all his life, locked up in a mental home. In there to find his first and only friends, those like him.
This poor fellow was born and raised on his parents big farm, lived in a columned, southern mansion, and had the whole countryside to roam over and love, and rarely, if ever, was away from there.
Then his mother was gone, and finally her sister and brother, who cared for him, were gone too, and Lee was alone. No other relative wanted to have him around. They moved into his home and he was sent to Lexington to the Asylum! Never again to see his home, his beloved fields, woods and the ‘Sugar Creek’ that ran just below his house.
A gentle man, that no younger relative would look after. He didn’t go quietly! the day he was to leave ‘they’-helped get him ready-and when he had a chance, he would slip away-and get in his bed, cover up to his chin, and soil himself! This happened several times.
I don’t know what was done the final time to get him in the car and transport him to Lexington, to the Asylum. The one responsible for it all, told me about it, and thought is so funny, she laughed and smiled. It was easy for her, he was only an in-law, not a relative!
I disliked her for that, and later for her treatment of my dear grandmother’s sister, who lived with her for a while. But that’s another memory.
The last I heard of Mandy, she was living in town, down the street from my brother-in-law, with her son and his wife-an old lady then.
What goes around comes around-unfortunately!
Matthew 5:8
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
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