Part 2
of 3 parts
Spiritual Combat in the Penitentiary
Recovery from schizophrenia, almost never complete, runs the gamut from a level tolerable to society to one that may not require permanent hospitalization but in fact does not allow even the semblance of normal life. More than any symptom, the defining characteristic of the illness is the profound feeling of incomprehensibility and inaccessibility that sufferers provoke in other people. (Sylvia Nasar, from her book, " A Beautiful Mind ")
A memoir by Robert R. Schwarz
For aimlessly firing his gun at another car while passing it on the tollway, my
brother Lester was sentenced to five years in prison. He spent the first two years inside the Cook County jail in Chicago, a fortress of dim lights and steel and cement and where inmates often remained even more than two years before their final
sentencing. .At his final court hearing in 2002, his attorney and I pressed hard that is not sent to a maximum-security penitentiary such as Joliet State Prison, where his illness could eventually crush him as it had countless of
mentally ill inmates wrongly sent there instead of confinement for the mentally ill.
He eventually was transferred to
the prison at Dixon, Illinois, a
former mental health compound where guards referred to an inmate as "mister." Though consultations with the several psychiatrists and counselors who had examined
or treated Lester through the years had
not given me any reason to believe my brother could ever be cured of his illness, I remained steadfast with the hope
that both his mind and soul would be
healed. I had been encouraged by a letter he wrote to his mother in 2002 while
at the County jail. " Please understand",
he wrote, " that I'm going through a
trying time with myself. I have to keep pushing fear and frustration away…It seems like day after day goes by with me assembling with
my mind and emotions what I can do to better myself the next day. "
Three months later, on September
25, he wrote this to her: "It is hard for
me to find a way of looking forward to the future. This is what jail life
produces after a while. I don't want to seem gloomy or bored about anything.
There is still hope…Please be careful getting up and down out of your chair." And
on June 21, 2003, Mom, got this letter from him: " The only solace I can get is to go to God
and Jesus in my prayers and try to keep my mind on a spiritual level much as
possible. Robert has taught me a lot about this. "
There
also was a letter from him to me in
which he listed several things he
intended to do when released from prison: he would weekly see a psychiatrist, get a part time job, and
move in with me and smoke only in the basement . I handed this list to
Lester's attorney to present to the judge, indicating that Lester. Schwarz
was a changed man and deserved probation. It didn't help.
I also had faith in what the 14th Century Swedish saint, Bridget, wrote about the vision
she had of the
Virgin Mary saying to her , However
often a man may sin, if he return to me with true and heartfelt penitence, I am
ever ready to receive him; and I do not regard the number of his sins, but the intention and will with which he returns .
A pastor friend of mine who
had interacted with many "good and bad dudes" advised me
to confront my brother and tell him
it was " his own finger that
pulled that trigger and his own
deliberate decision that led him
to go off the meds " , adding that "Jesus is the only one who can
forgive him and wash him clean of all guilt and then give him a new life.
"(Sadly , my brother had no reply when I shared this with him. )
***
Mom painfully weathered the news of Lester's
crime and imprisonment. Though she understood her son's criminal behavior was evil, I never heard her utter a judgmental word about Lester nor
take issue with the judge's
decision. Her chronic bladder infection
kept her in a wheelchair, disabling her from visiting Lester. At one of my last
visits with her, we sat for a long time talking about our past family life and glancing now and then
out her window at a tree with spring
buds. Dad had died the year before from
congestive heart failure , and Mom that day talked about her loving a man whose
last 20 years of retirement were not spent fishing or playing golf but
doing his best as an in-home caregiver to keep his son Lester off the street. " I think, Robert, we had a wonderful
life together , " Mom stated with
pride , then handed me her letter for Lester .
As I wheeled her out to the nursing home's gift shop
where she loved to pick out a candy bar, she said, "I've never had a bad day here. I think
about Jesus and God all the time. When you think about that, you forget about
everything. "
Mom
died three weeks later while I was holding her hand and praying Psalm 23. She had requested that her body
not be embalmed and that it
be cremated . Mom had her ashes tossed upon the waters of Big
Spider Lake in northern Wisconsin . Her husband's ashes and those of her
father's had been tossed on the creek that flowed through the family's "
little piece of Arkansas land. "
From a rowboat now, I stared at the lake waters swirling my mother's ashes downward.
Near the shore a few hundred yards away was an empty, aging log cabin where, in 1933, Mom and Dad honeymooned. I glanced quickly at it and rowed back.
 |
| Mom and sons Lester (white shirt ) and Robert |
***
For our struggle is
not against flesh
and
blood, but against the rulers, against
the
powers, against the world forces
of
this darkness, against the spiritual
forces
of wickedness in the heavenly
places
. ( Ephesians 6: 12 )
In the
Dixon visitors' room , I waited for my brother to exit the
strip-search chamber (he would have to again enter this chamber upon leaving this room and have his entire body probed—especially his mouth—for any drug which
his visitor might have passed on to him with a kiss or hug . ) The
room was filled that day with at least 40 families and other loved ones of the male inmate sitting with them ; the room resounded with
chatting and occasional bursts of
laughter from children . There appeared to be no visitor time limit ; some
groups, with prisoners, remained hours playing cards or a board game and making an
occasional trip to the vending machines for snacks.
Lester
came out and approached our table with a grin I disliked (for I
never knew what, if anything , had prompted it ). I said, "You look okay, kid. "
In truth, my brother had a
week-old beard and a face etched
, I presumed, by nights of fitful sleep
. Three of his fingers were stained yellow from smoking cigarettes down to
finger- pinch size.
(
From conversations with guards and an inmate friend of Lester's over the next
several months , I was to conclude that a Dixon "culture" harbored
many of the perverted behaviors of humankind . When I then asked
Lester if he ever participated in these behaviors, he quite casually—and
without any discernible regret—told me he did, and that this was how he earned cigarette money beyond that
which I was sending him for personal items like candy or stationary. (Common knowledge and statistics tell us that
at least fifty per cent of released
convicts are eventually
imprisoned again for
felonies, many related to drug addiction and
sexual violence. But I also was
to learn that Dixon had
rehabilitated some inmates to live
outside prison walls with good coping skills for life's journey . )
"How's
Mary Alice?" , he asked about the
woman I married after Judith had died a year ago.
We talked . My brother's
speech had become slower and more
disjointed than usual . It now was peppered with prison slang and an occasional profanity. I now saw that my brother's life in this
prison was making him worse , degrading him
and corrupting those good teachings so often expressed by our mother .
I
kept putting off the news of Mom's death.
Not knowing how my brother would react to it in this room made
me nervous .
Finally I told him: "Les, I have
something very sad to tell you. It's about
Mom. " My brother look hard at me and remained
motionless. I said: " Les, she's
gone to heaven. "
Lester
cast his eyes upward , as if there was something on the ceiling he needed to
grasp or a thought to cling to. We
sat in silence for awhile. Lester was
struggling with an emotion he
wasn't used to. I felt so helpless !
I
pulled out a letter Mom had given me to give to Lester . "Please read it to me, " my brother said.
Mom had written Love is the most important
thing in life, Lester…Patience is a big thing…
There's good in everybody; just
look for it… I've learned something from everyone, and son, choose wisely between
the two opposites in life.
There came
a lot more silence, then with a solemnity I had never heard from my brother's
lips, he said, "Mom will always be
there for me to remember with love as well as Dad ."
I left Dixon this time with heightened concern for my brother's soul. I sent him a
Bible and asked him to read the book of John and to answer questions I had tailored for him. For the next year he did this with the help of an inmate friend , who , on May 5, 2005, wrote me:
 |
| Lester's daughter Lisa visiting her father in a hospital |
My
hopes for my brother's rehabilitation—or healing— soared when I read Freddie's letter and again soared while reading these words from
Lester : I've got everything
pretty much under control with myself and am first seeing the light of what I
have to do to improve myself. I know it lies in my medication, my reading, my
work and Christian Devotion. I will try to get to church this Sunday . (Dixon had a chapel . )
Though the letter's phrasing made me suspect that
Lester's inmate friend had helped my brother compose this letter , I remained cheerfully optimistic
about my Lester's future; that is, until
Lester and I hit a danger bump on his
road to recovery. One Saturday afternoon
during a visit, I pulled out my Bible
and read this verse from Romans: We live by faith and not by sight.
Noticing my brother did not have his Bible,
I asked , " Somebody swipe your Bible, Les ?"
Lester
shrugged his shoulders .
"
Well, that's okay, kid…How 'bout we now
say a little prayer, Les ? "
Expecting
his usual sincere nod of approval
he had been giving me for weeks, this time
Lester frowned and drew back his
chair and , with that simple grin ,
looked away . "I don't think
so today, " he said.
In
that moment, despite the frown and the
grin, I was pleased with what I
thought was my brother's spontaneous
honesty about the absent Bible . But in the very next second, I saw in his eyes a rebellious glare . It frightened me. I
suddenly remembered an evening years ago when Dad express disgust over Lester's
fondness for reading books about an arch
vampire named Dracula and also the demonic dictatorship of Adolph Hitler .
I left Dixon that day wondering if Lester —though I believed he had seriously taken up arms to fight for his sanity -- I still wondered if he was fatally engaged in some bizarre spiritual combat or that his schizophrenia had acquired an undiagnosed and more horrific dimension . The next day, I was sure there was a ferocious war going on inside my brother.
I left Dixon that day wondering if Lester —though I believed he had seriously taken up arms to fight for his sanity -- I still wondered if he was fatally engaged in some bizarre spiritual combat or that his schizophrenia had acquired an undiagnosed and more horrific dimension . The next day, I was sure there was a ferocious war going on inside my brother.
Next week: part 3 of 3,
Dying to One's Self… "In my
as chaplain, I've only seen this happening.
to a patient twice!"
(Fr. VanderHey ,V.A. chaplain, at the
Captain James A. Lovell
Federal Health Care Center when my
brother was battling for mind, life, and
soul. )
All
comments are welcome.
rrschwarz71@comcast.net
©
2017-18. 2023, Robert R. Schwarz
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