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Sunday, March 14. 2010
Life Is Precious
At the end of the movie, The Soloist, the credits give an update on the various characters of the film and this small statistic: there are over 90,000 homeless people living on the streets of the Great Los Angeles area.The movie is about Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Lopez and his relationship with a homeless man, Nathaniel Ayers, who once was a cello student at Julliard. There’s no storybook, fairy tale ending to the film; Mr. Ayers doesn’t magically get fixed, become a great soloist and go on to live a celebrated and financially wealthy life.
Nah. The great ending for this film is that Nathaniel Ayers goes from sleeping outside to having an apartment in a place for the indigent of Los Angeles. He gets to play his cello — as well as a host of other musical instruments.
What was most interesting about this film was that I related to Nathaniel Ayers. The man is clinically schizophrenic. That’s no big surprise. Years ago, in the 1990’s, I began visiting veterans in the psychiatric lockdown ward at the V.A. Medical Center in La Jolla, on a weekly basis. It wasn’t just to bring something different into their lives once a week, but to keep my eyes focused on life itself. It’s easy to take so much for granted.
One of the residual effects of those weekly meetings with the patients was that I often related to them. The fear mostly, but the paranoid delusions, both of persecution and grandeur as well. Most, if not all, of these patients were “dual diagnosed;” they not only had (have) mental illness, but substance abuse issues. The two practically go hand in hand.
One night when my friend Dan and I were visiting, one of the patients rambled on and on about the conspiracy of the medical staff and the government to “get him” and keep him “down.” We listened in rapt attention to every word. The man had been an officer in the Air Force and could speak in very compelling tones.
The thought was running through my head about how true so much of what this man was saying; how the government, through the Veterans Administration, was controlling his life, keeping him confined in that hospital ward. He made his case pretty good.
One of the things I remember most about spending those Monday Nights with these veterans was that when we left, the nurses or orderlies would shut the big steel doors behind us and then lock them. The sound of the tumblers turning and locking the door to the door jam was clearly audible. It was always a reminder that, but for the Grace of a Power Greater Than I, that could be me on the other side of those doors when they were being locked. I always felt grateful for what I have in life after visiting those patients.
We listened to the former Air Force officer tell his story of conspiracy and subjugation, listened to the other patients and felt the very real presence of fear in their lives. They couldn’t live on the outside world — at that moment — and yet being locked inside the psychiatric ward filled them with more fears. It was their most dominant emotion and many of these patients, when consumed by this fear, acted out in ways not compatible with living in society, some of them acted out in very violent ways.
So as Dan and I left the facility that night, after hearing the doors lock behind us, I told Dan how much I related to the Air Force officer and dammit! He was right about the government. Dan stopped walking, looked at me very seriously and said, “Tim, you know he’s locked up in here for thinking that way.”
That was a sobering moment. There, but for the Grace of A Great Spirit, go I. Since then I’ve formed the opinion that all of us are a bit schizophrenic from time-to-time, some more than others. We may not relate to a schizophrenic person’s hygienic habits, may not relate to their unexplainable gestures and body twitches, but sit down and talk with one for a bit, especially if they’re lucid, and their stories become real.
The Soloist did a decent job of showing the dichotomy of the schizophrenic. We never know when the switch is flipped from the lucid, logical thinking to the schizophrenic stream of unconscious paranoid hallucination. It all blurs into one reality.
It reminds me just how life is so precious and how I need to cherish every possible moment and every relationship, from my closest family and friends to the most fleeting of acquaintances.
My heart aches today. My younger sister Elaine — Lainey — has been one of my closest, if not my closest, siblings since young childhood. We are just 21 months apart in age. Last November she was diagnosed with cancer and in December she started radiation and chemotherapy.
After completing those regimens, she had surgery this past Wednesday to remove the cancerous tumor from her esophagus. That went well and it looked like all the cancer had been cleared from her body.
Well, complications have set in. A breathing tube was just inserted Sunday Morning to help her breathe and elevate her oxygen levels.
I pray. Not the way I did when a young Catholic boy, but I pray.
Lainey was one of my chief fellow troublemakers when growing up. We did a lot of heavy drinking together. Once, when I visited her in Colorado in 1979, she and her husband at the time took me to see the Grateful Dead at Red Rocks. Awesome experience! Or so I’ve been told. I was so wasted I barely remember the concert and I swear — I SWEAR — there were at least 15 people on stage that night. Lainey insists it was only seven … sigh
Even today, nearly 1,500 miles apart, Lainey is one of my principle allies in life. If ever I need a jolt of love, I just dial her number and voila! We’re laughing and joking and singing Grateful Dead. Right at the moment I’m listening to “Chinacat Sunflower>I Know You Rider” from 100 Year Hall.
The last time we were together was in June 2007. She and her son Dan came to visit and take some of Dan’s things back to Colorado. We spent an evening at La Jolla Shores Beach. Time goes so quick. And we never know what tomorrow will bring.
Life is precious.
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