Lily - Alaina Brown
Wrapped in Comfort
-Tracey Owensby
I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.
~Vincent van Gogh
When I was a child, my grandmother, "Mudder" used to wrap me in blankets, put me in a wheel barrow, and take me with her and my "Papa" out to the garden to plant onions and carrots or up in the woods to saw logs. And every Saturday night, the adults in my family would play "books and runs," pinochle, or the rousing "shit on your neighbor" around the kitchen table. By then, my cousins were too old to care and were off usually at a sleepover with friends. But I was the baby of the family and so I was left with the grown-ups. I, in my infinite nosiness, would lay in the adjacent hallway listening to their banter. I would wrap up in an old red white and blue quilt that had big 70's style flowers on it and fall asleep right there in the middle of it all. Why I was allowed to do this in my grandmother's museum of a house instead of being tucked neatly in bed, I'll never know. Later, when my parents and I moved to Kentucky, my grandmother gave me the quilt to keep me warm on the trip. She always thought it was ugly anyway. It kept me warm while I was studying on the couch during middle school. I was very careful not to wash it so that the smell didn't wear off. A mixture of wood smoke, Pledge, and baked bread, it was the smell of my grandparents' house. It was the smell of love.
Later, when my mother couldn't stand it anymore, while I was at school one day, she washed it. It was so old by then that it washed apart. Heartsick, I picked the stuffing out of the washing machine. But miraculously, it still smelled of the nights spent listening to my family tease my grandfather for having too many cards in his hands. So, I packaged it up in a plastic bag and tucked it away in my hope chest, sealing that familiar smell in. Mudder made me many beautiful afghans over the years, but none meant as much. So she made another quilt for me one Christmas when I was in high school. I bawled like a baby when I opened it. Complete with its gaudy red, blue, white, and this one yellow colors, it was as soft as the original. She had even slept with it for a week so that it would smell like their house. I never told her that although it meant so much to me that she made a new one and I love it very much, I still secretly dive back into my hope chest for precious sniffs when really needed.
Little did I know that years later this familiarity of blankets would come back to me in the form one of my psychiatry patients. In opposition to many medical students, I actually didn't like crazy, schizophrenic patients. In fact, it was the depressed and suicidal patients, who often become "lost causes," with whom I found the most success. Even with the histrionic borderline patients, I was able to help make some sense of their chaotic existence. This was not the case with schizophrenic patients. Contrary to my colleagues, I didn't see any hope for these patients, couldn't see them as real people, and found it too sad to be entertained by them. She was different.
She came to us from New Orleans just after Hurricane Katrina and Rita. Someone said she had family back there somewhere. They didn't want her. I have no idea how she made it all the way to Virginia, but she had been living in a group home for the month prior to finding us. They didn't want her either. There was some story about cigarettes, stealing them from other tenants, smoking at the wrong time, not obeying "the rules." Someone please explain to me how you expect a disorganized schizophrenic to obey the rules!
Actually, I think it was that she ran away. She didn't trust them. But now, they didn't want her because she had run away too many times. And definitely, she didn't trust us. Indeed, she had to be TDO'ed (temporary detaining order) to us. It was my job to explain to her that she couldn't leave until we found her a place to go. I didn't know how.
As she sat there with her afghans she was crocheting all around her and her only other possessions in grocery sacks, I tried to explain her options. "Do you have a cigarette?" "No," I said. I don't smoke. I wish I did. Probably one of her few pleasures in life. It is well-known that most schizophrenics smoke and it is widely accepted to have some positive effects on their disease. "I'll give you one of my afghans for a cigarette." "Oh no," I said, "you shouldn't say that. They're so beautiful; you could sell them for much more."
She looked up from her crocheting. "Can't I live with you?" Yeah right, I thought. Just move right in. In the patient room at the community hospital serving as my dorm room, I'll just sleep on the floor. You can have the bed. Oh wait, they only gave me one key. "Oh, Tina, I wish you could!" was all I could say. And I did. My heart went out to her. In an instant, my reaction flooded in. I don't have the time to cook for her, what if she burned the place down trying, financially I could barely support myself, she smoked, I hate smoke, a patient living with a med student, it was unprofessional.
Old enough to be my mother, she had experienced abandonment by her family, her various group homes, the system and inescapably even now by me. I have often wished I had at least kept in touch with her and helped her sell her afghans on ebay. If I were in the same place then as I am now, I probably would have. Still, she changed the way I saw "those patients." In her innocent will to find human connection, however small it could be, she changed the way I saw the world. It will affect the way I treat patients always.
"Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too."
~William Blake
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