Finding Michael

My brother is off the wall today. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic many, many years ago when we were all still quite young. The years have wrought many changes in Mike but no cure yet for the demons that plague his mind. It is difficult to express the time warp I always feel as though I exist in whenever it comes to my brother. It's as if, while the rest of the world grew older, Mike just sort of stayed the same, somehow stuck back at the moment the mental illness took over his mind. It is not that Mike appears not to have aged, and he has matured in certain ways and is very much a troubled middle-aged man and no longer a boy; it is just his imagination that has persistently refused to mature and is what reminds me strongly of my brother while we were in our teens. It is hard to convince people who did not know Mike before what a really great and intelligent guy he is because little of that still shows through the rotting teeth, the tobacco stained fingers and nails, the clothes used liberally as napkin or handkerchief, the sinking eyes, the fetid breath, the stubbled chin and skin infections, the discussions with unseen people who Mike is conversant with, and so on. Sometimes, when I take him out to lunch and he has one of these conversations, he will laugh as if at some terribly witty and erudite joke. I have taken to interrupting "them" and asking Mike what the joke is because I could really use a good laugh right then.

When he is not too out of it, Mike will repeat the joke, prefaced with the phrase, "I was just thinking about..." which says to me that he is at least aware on some level that these conversations are taking place only in his head and not in "real time." When he is very out of it he may choose to ignore my inquiry or become volatile and hostile and tell me to mind my own business. At these times it can be very difficult to placate Mike and get him back into some semblence of reality, but all of this does not concern me as much as the times he describes what could be the physical precursors or symptoms of a serious medical problem, like a heart attack or stroke. That is where we are today. Mike just told me about some pain he experienced in his chest area and then went on to say how crummy he's been feeling for days; how unusually exhausted. When I asked him when was the last time he had an EKG, he flipped. Time for me to call in the back up team and retire to the sidelines. Hopefully Dad or some of the other people on Mike's support team will be able to get him into the appropriate doctors, etc., because it's a sure bet he will not let me get him there. Such is life with schizophrenia - it eats the soul and destroys the mind trapping its victims in another dimension where the alternate reality is more frightening than this one, just better disguised.

I feel like crying right now. No matter how old and crabby we get, he will always be my younger brother and I will always love him. It is amazing how much heartbreak one human cardiac muscle can contend with during a lifetime, and a little frightening, too.

For Mike -

Dear "Little" Brother,

Your older sister is worried about you today.
You have mentioned such things that
Her heart is on fire with concern and pain,
But doing a rather slow burn.
We have been down this road before.
Almost every turn and rut,
Each stone in place along the way,
Is familiar to me.
I know where I tripped the last thousand times
We walked this path.
I have learned when to slow down to stay a curve
And, sometimes, when to get off of the road altogether.

Do you remember the games we played
When we were little
And it rained after school?
We would make an entire world out of an
Enormous can of blue Playdough;
Houses and cars, trees and flowers,
And people them with characters that had their
Naissance in our fingers; little men and women
(we even gave the little women "breasts"!),
Cats and dogs, horses and birds.
We gave them all names
And played and played for hours!
There were so many rainy days
And so many worlds!
But, it never occurred to me
You might get lost in one of those worlds
And would not be able to get out,
Even when the sun decided to shine again.

The sun is shining in my window right now.
I am hoping Dad has convinced you to
Take care of yourself; to see a doctor.

The sun is out, Mikey, and the rain is gone.
It is time to put the Playdough world away.

Love, Liz.