The locked wards
It was a long hallway. They all were. Our trek seemed endless as we moved from one locked ward of the mental hospital to another.
I was vaguely aware of the noise of the institution drifting in — voices…clangs from gurneys and carts being moved. The narrow walkway was framed on either side with sterile tiled walls and locked doors.
But our eyes stayed focused on that one locked door at the end of the hall. I remember someone on the other side of it peering through the small window as we approached. Words were exchanged. Then there was the clunk of locks being opened.
Closing the door behind us, the aide immediately re-locked it, then pointed us to the left. Three or four empty beds lined the wall. But in the last one, right next to the nurse’s station, was the person we’d come to see– my grandmother…
The impending crisis
The weeks after my grandfather’s death were difficult for my grandmother. They had been married for 46 years. Four children — one killed in a car accident, way too young. A lifetime of joys and disappointments. So it was understandable that the grief ran deep.
Oddly, though, she never spoke about my grandfather again after the funeral. Ever. That upset my mother, who tried to speak to her mom several times about both of their feelings about losing him. But Grandma went silent, as if he’d never existed.
However, she was struggling and scared. She was hearing voices and said there were ghosts. To help calm her, I would take my turn a few nights a week, sleeping upstairs. That seemed to improve things a bit.
However, summer approached, my mother told Grandma she’d have to get used to being by herself. That we couldn’t sleep upstairs with her forever.
On the one hand, Mom was right. On the other hand, I’d grown to like the routine. I’d take my homework upstairs and work at her big dining room table. And she seemed to enjoy the company. And even the nights I wasn’t up there, our home was generally quiet since Dad was away all week.
After my grandfather’s death, he was trying to get his job changed so he could be home again. Supposedly, so he could be around to “help.” I hoped he would have to stay away all week, but there was talk that in a few more months, they might shift his job to accommodate his request.
Attempt number one
In the meantime, though, Grandma’s shift to being alone was not going well. Her anxiety levels were rising, so Mom took her to the doctor. He had prescribed some medicine to help Grandma relax. Initially, it might have done that, but she didn’t like how it made her feel. And more and more, she resisted the medicine or angrily accused my mother of trying to poison her
In June, my uncle came home from Puerto Rico for his month-long vacation. We were hoping that would help her. But in the middle of one night, not long after he came home, we heard a bunch of noise upstairs. Remembering that middle-of-the-night crash when Grandpa had had his stroke, we ran upstairs to see what was wrong.
Apparently, Grandma had tried to jump off her second-floor back porch in an attempt to commit suicide. My uncle had to struggle with her quite a bit to stop her and pull her back off the railing.
Try again
The doctor put her in the hospital for a few days. All through it, she kept expressing her wish to die. My mother kept telling the doctor things were not improving, but after a couple more days, the doctor said they were going to discharge Grandma. My mother argued. My grandmother was distraught.
The next day, before they could discharge her, she somehow managed to push out the screen on the open window in her room, climb up on a chair, and jump out the window. Even though she had jumped from a 3rd-story window, when she fell, she bounced off the bushes below and landed on the ground, alive. She had broken her shoulder and was not coherent, but she survived her second suicide attempt.
Fairfield Hills
From there, the hospital transferred her to Fairfield Hills, a state-run mental hospital about an hour away. And that is where I would spend most of my summer vacation.
My pharmacy job had given me a lot of driving experience and confidence. In contrast, my mother was not comfortable driving on the highways to get there. So when I wasn’t working, I was driving Mom every day down to the hospital. I was the oldest. And I stood by my mother as her support. I never questioned my role in that.
The visits were eerie. Aside from the cold, sterile environment of the place, seeing my formerly happy grandmother tied to a bed was disturbing. Even more, though, she was unresponsive. She just stared blankly at the walls, not answering us or looking at us. I imagine she was medicated. For sure, she didn’t seem to know we were there, or care.
I found it upsetting to see the woman I’d grown up with, went to church with, and spent hours playing games with, so…gone. And to see her just tied to the bed… That whole environment was a whole introduction to a side of life I didn’t know existed.
A different Grandma
She eventually started to re-connect with reality…or they might have reduced some medications. Either way, she started to respond. After several weeks, we could occasionally bring her home for a few hours on a Sunday for dinner. But she was always anxious about getting back so that they didn’t “move her bed.” We tried to reassure her that they would keep her bed for her. Apparently, though, we learned they did move her to different rooms, so that no doubt was the origin of her fears.
It took some weeks after that, but my mother and her brothers would finally get Grandma moved to a convalescent care facility in Torrington. She would never be able to come home again, and the next several years would involve a lawsuit to cover expenses. But for her, the stability of the care facility calmed her. She roomed with two other women, so she was not alone anymore. And so for the remaining 17 years of her life, she would live there. But she was never again the “Grandma” she had been.
And for my Mom, I guess she became an orphan. Her father was gone, and her mother became an extra child. Mom would spend the rest of Grandma’s life managing her bills, clothes, and needs. I know Mom hated having to deal with the bills, especially, but I think she was resentful of the whole fact that Grandma had abdicated her own power and will to live. Her mother was still alive, but she was never her “Mom” again.
The dissolved cocoon
In the meantime, the whole aura of our house changed. No longer were there loving grandparents to welcome us upstairs. By the end of the summer, Dad was back living at home again, and within a year, we would be moving to a house my parents were building on their country property. That would leave my great aunt upstairs all alone, and new tenants — strangers to her, living in our old apartment.
Even as there had always been those “bad moments” in our house, there had also always been the other things — neighborhood friends, extended family, the cocoon of our family house — that provided support, comfort, and stability. Now, with all of life’s changes, any remaining semblance of that stability was dissolving.
What next?
And, by the end of the coming year, I would be done with high school – my treasured world away from home. So what would come next?
Soul Mosaic 
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