Welcome Home, Tom!
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A STRANGE GIFT FROM NURSE RATCHED
As I was putting the finishing touches on a caregiving memoir of my mother, I received, quite out of the blue, a letter from a complete stranger—a genealogist-- informing me that a state hospital on the West Coast had been in possession of a copper canister of my great uncle’s ashes for fifty-nine years and was now reaching out to me to reclaim them.
This was the first I or any sibling had ever heard of this poor man--my great uncle and brother of my suicidal grandmother—who spent the last 15 years of his life holed up in the place where they filmed ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ and who had spent his afterlife along with 3800 shelved residents in a locked storage facility dubbed the ‘room of forgotten souls.”
Truth is, you have to be remembered in order to be forgotten. And nobody ever came for him.
Yesterday the doorbell rang. The dogs went nuts. Placing a large package on the steps, the postal lady reaches up for my signature.
“Don’t want to be disrespectful, ma’am. So very sorry for your loss.”
“Oh no, don’t be.” I try to assure her. “He went through so much…a lot worse.”
Chateau-Thierry (WWI) with a bullet in his brain, Leavenworth, homesteading in the Pacific Northwest and then, well, the Cuckoo’s Nest. (I’d read the medical record.)
I wish I could tell my mother how Tom finally got sprung from the asylum. She would not just laugh but roar at how the dark side of the family --that side-- managed to spook us through the ages. She would also urge me, I’m sure, to change my address.
Closing the door, I announce to the dogs “Tom’s home, at long last.” Jumping up, dog eyes register that quizzical look of ‘I don’t see anybody. I’m a good dog.’
No longer #4524, Tom, who would have been 127 years old in July, will now have a name and bookend dates at long last. The ceramic urn of his ashes will be interred snug next to his sister almost a century after her death. What a ride, I think. What a strange gift from Nurse Ratched.
The copper canister where Tom spent the last half-century in a darkened room, now sits on my windowsill--empty with its lid popped open and copper glimmering, stray dust floating almost effervescent in the sunlight.
And the haunting words of a child analyst: “It’s a joy to be hidden and a disaster never to be found…” An epitaph for Tom, perhaps for all of us. (10.4.19 --from the memoir)
As I was putting the finishing touches on a caregiving memoir of my mother, I received, quite out of the blue, a letter from a complete stranger—a genealogist-- informing me that a state hospital on the West Coast had been in possession of a copper canister of my great uncle’s ashes for fifty-nine years and was now reaching out to me to reclaim them.
This was the first I or any sibling had ever heard of this poor man--my great uncle and brother of my suicidal grandmother—who spent the last 15 years of his life holed up in the place where they filmed ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ and who had spent his afterlife along with 3800 shelved residents in a locked storage facility dubbed the ‘room of forgotten souls.”
Truth is, you have to be remembered in order to be forgotten. And nobody ever came for him.
Yesterday the doorbell rang. The dogs went nuts. Placing a large package on the steps, the postal lady reaches up for my signature.
“Don’t want to be disrespectful, ma’am. So very sorry for your loss.”
“Oh no, don’t be.” I try to assure her. “He went through so much…a lot worse.”
Chateau-Thierry (WWI) with a bullet in his brain, Leavenworth, homesteading in the Pacific Northwest and then, well, the Cuckoo’s Nest. (I’d read the medical record.)
I wish I could tell my mother how Tom finally got sprung from the asylum. She would not just laugh but roar at how the dark side of the family --that side-- managed to spook us through the ages. She would also urge me, I’m sure, to change my address.
Closing the door, I announce to the dogs “Tom’s home, at long last.” Jumping up, dog eyes register that quizzical look of ‘I don’t see anybody. I’m a good dog.’
No longer #4524, Tom, who would have been 127 years old in July, will now have a name and bookend dates at long last. The ceramic urn of his ashes will be interred snug next to his sister almost a century after her death. What a ride, I think. What a strange gift from Nurse Ratched.
The copper canister where Tom spent the last half-century in a darkened room, now sits on my windowsill--empty with its lid popped open and copper glimmering, stray dust floating almost effervescent in the sunlight.
And the haunting words of a child analyst: “It’s a joy to be hidden and a disaster never to be found…” An epitaph for Tom, perhaps for all of us. (10.4.19 --from the memoir)
