To Find A Robin on a Lighted Path...July 11, 1999
Earlier this week, I sent email to my friend Colm. It had been quite some time since I had heard from him. This was a bit unusual, as Colm is the kind of person who expects and anticipates regular email communication. I am usually the one who is not able to keep my end of the vein flowing steadily. It was so much easier when Colm and Katrine lived here. I would often be in their neighbourhood working, and seemed to have coffee with them almost daily either in between or after clients. They would even sometimes play host and hostess to Baby Reekie, as Reekie's anxiety disorder prevented me from leaving him alone safely.
Colm and Katrine are humble but proud people. Their relationship with me is a reminder to experience joy in even the simplest things in life. We developed a very strong friendship in our commonalities (being from military families, my being foster father to their oldest son), and an even stronger one in debating our differences (the effects of military life, the evils of capitalism). Their departure from the Atlantic Region left quite a void in my everyday life, and I was thrilled when they got an internet connection.
After sending Colm said email, I received no expeditious reply, being humorously chastised for never writing, and updating me on the goings on in his and Katrine's life. I became disconcerted. I have learned to trust my intuition. I was going to call him until I finally received a reply this weekend. My feelings were not wrong.
I knew that after Colm retired from the military, he was struggling with depression. Anyone in his situation would. The isolation of military life was the only reality he ever knew, from birth until he was old enough to enlist himself. He had difficulty finding a job, and has a family to support. There are other serious conditions adversely affecting his mental well being, but I cannot divulge them here. I was optimistic that things were going to be okay for Colm when he informed me that he landed a full time job with reasonably good wages. It was not enough. I was not aware the extent to which Colm was sinking deeper and deeper into depression.
In his reply, Colm informed me that he attempted suicide two weekends ago. He did not merely attempt suicide, he went into a blind rage first, verbally and physically losing control in front of Katrine and his young son. He then attempted to overdose. I thanked the spirits repeatedly that he did not succeed. I fear that he will try again.
The state of our mental health care system can be epitomized in Colm. In the ambulance on his way to the hospital, the attendant told him that they would not admit him if he did not mention he was trying to kill himself. In the emergency room, he was examined by a doctor who resents people with mental illnesses, and refused to provide adequate care. Colm was sent home after being treated. He was in crisis, and at risk, and pumped through the system in an hour and a half.
Since this incident, it sounds as though Colm, Katrine, and thier family are trying to heal, and make sense of what is happening. Without professional help, I fear that it is a matter of time before another attempt happens, especially in light of the fact that Colm has now lost his job, and has a lot of time on his hands. I wish I was there. I know that my physical presence would be more of a comfort to him than an invisible one behind a 'net connection.
I have been in the place he is, isolated, angry, profusely sorrowful, desperate to have these feelings end but not know how to and stay alive. In addressing my depression, I wrote in lyric recently:
yet often at my face.The gusts so strong I fear my soul
cannot escape this place.
The Autumn of my life began
as a child years ago.Since then I've prayed to see in flight
A robin with the crows.
No longer can I tolerate
the consequence I reap.That age and time could not exhume
the dark descending deep.
I grieve for purpose buried in
this death considered life.I'm pleading for a lighted path
straight to the other side.-High_lands, 1998, 1999
I have since found that robin. She exists in the people I love,cherish, and thank the spirits every day for that they are in my life. My lighted path has become the joy I can find in merely waking up every morning to Reekie and Moo slurps, or becoming drunk with a single breath of dawn's moist air.
I say a prayer to the spirits every day until Colm finds his own robin, and crosses his own lighted path, too.
...Blessed Be
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