Almost a Lifetime as a Prisoner of Schizophrenia, then a Divine Miracle of a Mind Coming Very Much Alive with Freedom for My Brother

  

Part 1 of 3: Hard confessions to Mom

                               However often a man may sin..., if he returns 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. (Attributed to Saint

                                    Bridget from her vision of Mary, the mother of

                               Jesus)

A Memoir by Robert R. Schwarz

                                    

           

          My  brother woke up with confusion more distressing than any past hallucination from his paranoid schizophrenia. This morning, he felt something painfully shrouding him from which he could not free himself. It was the flashing anguish of self-condemnation for his years of perverse, uncontrollable behavior. Other memories of his life before age 25 were vague:  teaching grade school after graduating from college, then marrying and fathering two children. Then, like a thief in the night , came the paranoid schizophrenia, and a divorce followed by officer's training in the U.S. Air Force... A few months after that he wore lieutenant bars but soon was given a general discharge. After several hospitalizations, he moved into a   retirement home and   barely stayed off the streets. 

***

              On this particular morning in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights ,  Lester  was, perhaps for the first time, truly  desperate to free himself from that  omnipotent dark force which had tortured him for three decades.   Hallucinations and strange voices he could survive --

but not this.

        My brother  got into his old Buick ( inherited  from our  deceased father  ) and drove to a nearby nursing home to see the  only human he knew who was not afraid to confront his  dark side with  more empathy than could the bevy of counselors and psychiatrists whom he had seen in the last 29 years. It was our mother, Mr. Dorothy Schwarz . 

             I met her  and Lester when  I stepped into our mother's nursing home room , intruding on a whisper-quiet conversation the two were having. Lester had a sheepish look.

           

           

Mom, Lester ( behind her )  and  me.

Mom  was  in her early eighties then , with a full head of curled white hair and an unwrinkled face with a modest touch of rouge . She was wearing a flower-patterned  dress and a warm smile. (Neither she nor my father had ever seen          a day of dementia.) 

     Lester , now now,52, was months overdue for a haircut; he  wore a red shirt with food stains; his eyes were unfocused   and his skin darkened by years of strong medication. Family and boyhood friends  had nicknamed him "The Lamb"—it was never meant to have any religious significance oither herr but to fit  his  gentle and compliant behavior.

            " Bring in a chair for your brother,"  Mom said.          

            Lester got the chair and then  went for the door. " See you later, Robert ,  " he said.

            "Don't go ,  son, "  Mom said. "You know how I love to see you two together."

            Lester  left   to smoke . He was addicted to nicotine and would soon  pay heavily for it. 

            Mom's  room was small but  made homey with family photographs , two vases of artificial flowers,  and a few  oil paintings on the wall  done by my late artist  wife, Judith .  My mother had  television on  to watch her favorite  Ted Turner  movies, like  The Wizard of Oz.  On her night table was the Holy Bible, a book on theosophy,  and   autobiographies of  movie stars like  Betty Davis and Clark Gable. 

            I had brought  Mom  a bottle of  Chantilly Lace ,  her favorite cologne .  "Put it on  my dresser," she said. I also showed her the jar pf cinnamon she had requested to spice up the  usual bland nursing home meals. Mom had been an excellent, indefatigable  home cook and baker,  and she sorely missed her gourmet-like food.  It had been  a sad day for her  when she lost her dentures by leaving them on a food tray and now had to eat pureed food because her jaw could no longer support dentures. 

            When I asked her  what she and Lester  had been talking about , she  lowered her head and said,  " I shouldn't tell you."

              "Yes, Mom, you should.  I need to know. "

            " He does things he shouldn't," she said. 

            " Please tell me."

            She did: There had been her son's  late night drives  to a  porno shop , and , again  alarming to me,   his recent skipping of his anti-psychotic meds whenever he could fake  swallowing them in front of the nurse who knocked daily on his retirement  home door. 

            Mom looked away. Her face  showed the regret  of a loyal  mother  now helpless to stop her son   from  further damning himself .

            "How often does he do this ? " I asked, hating to sound   like a  prosecuting attorney .

             " He visits me sometimes twice a  week. "  

            Mom  held back tears. 

We all stayed silent for a long moment.  She broke the silence with,  " I wish my family had stayed at the ranch." 

      Lester reentered to  the room where Mom and I  the three of us had been talking and quickly left again.  I left a few minutes later . with Mom advising me , " Remember, Robert,  that  as you  sow, so shall you reap . "    I hugged and kissed  Mom and left . As  I did , two cheerful  nursing assistants entered and began a tea-party-like  conversation with my mother.  I eavesdropped outside the door, and when another cheerful staff  member brushed by me to join her colleagues in their   light-hearted conversation with my mother,  I asked  her, " What in the world is  going on in there ?" She  quickly replied,  " Really nothing. I guess we go in there now and then to get  cheered up by Mrs. Schwarz. " 

                 My thoughts flew back to many years ago  to a run-down  barn and a small house on  a remote 207 acres in far western Arkansas . Dad had  purchased  all this at a bargain price upon his retirement as a truck salesman for the International Harvester Company in Chicago .  For years, we kids and Mom had been hearing Dad  say ( while reading his  Strout farm catalogue),   "I wish we had  a little piece of land ."

       ***

        Mom often wished for those few precious months when  her entire family had been together on

 those  farm- land acres when Lester was quite healthy with his wife and toddler son and I , having just 

completed my two years of U.S. Army draft.     Those months on the "ranch" were filled with  

Mom's dinner roasts and baked pies ( inspired by her Swedish ancestry)  and our   family  strolls with 

 laughter through fields of Lespedeza and Bermuda grass. We all enjoyed sharing odd memories  of  

our  head-strong  bull named Rollo and our  dozen polled Herefords , each named by my mother

and fed by her every morning.

      Every  night Lester would drag out the telescope he had constructed at the Adler Planetarium  in

Chicago , and  we'd sit on the front law  making up silly  names for star constellations. .  

  Teenage Lester in Canada with  a Northern Pike
he just caught.

            A few hundred feet down the rocky sandy road in front of our house  and concealed  by pine and oak trees was a  small abandoned church which a farm neighbor had pried  opened for Mom  to teach Sunday school.  I was  surprised and pleased to learn that my mother's teaching was an in line with  her now  seemingly  past  Christian  orthodoxy---in spite of her library of pre-New Age books about Theosophy, astrology , Buddhism , karma and reincarnation . Dad, raised Catholic, had been unable to dissuade her from her study of the occult, and  Lester and I had absorbed some of her occult beliefs, especially karma and reincarnation. Nevertheless, Mom and Dad  had done their best to raise Lester and I to genuinely care for our neighbors and that Lester and I remain "good, moral children." Les and  I were both confirmed in a Lutheran church and later attended a Christian Science church , where Mom taught Sunday school in those early years. 

      A few years before my father died of congestive heart failure, I asked him about his faith .  Tapping his pipe on his rocking chair, Dad replied , " I just ask myself what would Jesus do, and then try to  do it. " He loved to read Plato and  for years kept a Bible on his bedroom night table, often reading the book of Romans . 

         ***

       

            Driving home,   the tenderness of my mother's  feelings saddened me and, oddly, stirred a few  scenes of what she had once told me of her childhood. There was that old Schindler vaudeville theater near Bucktown in Chicago, where she was raised by her Swedish  mother and Russian immigrant father . Her mother was the ticket cashier and her father, Victor Rossnagel,   managed the theater which, with its silent movies,  often was a substitute for my mother's  babysitter .  Mom , then, only  20 ,was  playing classical piano for a Chicago radio station and also singing in her church choir. 

            At the dinner table in my home that night, my wife  asked why I was so silent. "  I can't reconcile my mother's  occult beliefs  with what she told me about Jesus," I said.  Neither could my wife.  Later,  I spent an hour rummaging  through old family documents and  came across a   poem Mom  had written at  age 18 , a few days after  Lester was born.  I believe it was her first and  only  poem she  ever wrote.

                        Where did you come from, Baby Dear?

                                Out of the Everywhere into here…

                                Where did you get those eyes so blue?

                                Out of the sky as I came through.

                                What makes the light in them sparkle and spin ?

                                Some of the starry spikes were let in.

                                What makes your cheek like a warm white rose?

                                I saw something better than anyone knows.

                                Where did you get this pearly ear ?

                                God spoke, and it was made to hear.

                                Where did you get those arms and hands?

                                Love itself made those arms and hands.

                                But how did you come to us, you dear ?

                                God thought about you, and so I am here.

                  In re-reading Where Did You Come   from Baby Dear?  before writing this report, I was struck by these words written about the Baby Jesus   by Caryll Houselander , a British mystic and poet:   It would have been unbearable to hold that infant Son in her arms , knowing that He must go away to a life of suffering and a cruel death, were it not for her faith in His heavenly Father , were it not for the certainty that the hands of God would  always be holding Him, and that God's hands, incredible thought it seemed, would hold Him even more tenderly, even more securely, than hers. 

         

   Mom's  poem also made me think of those later years when my father's steadfast love for

Lester and the many apologies he had  given  to friends and a few   complete strangers for  his son's  

demented behavior.

My brother in his last weeks  with his favorite nurse    

            As for  my sometime  anger with Mom for  repeatedly forgiving Lester's loathsome acts and her  absence of any tough  love , A few years later I was to   painfully realized how stingy I  had been    with my   gratefulness  for all the forgiving love she had given me through the years.     

***

            During the week of Dec. 4, 2001, my brother sat in his room sipping whiskey to  sooth  the discomforting  side effects or  Zyprexa, Haldol,  and Depakote , which  for more than   three decades had  tormented him with clinging drowsiness  and  a rapid,   frightening heartbeat .    "  One night, Robert," he would later tell me in a rare moment of  introspection, " I  wanted to get a sense of power I never had. "

            Though Lester , I believe, had stuck to his regimen of psychotropic drugs  with a self-discipline unusual for paranoid schizophrenics , one night he rebelled. Four days later,  his mind and body now dangerously weaned from the meds which shielded him from hallucinations and other disordered thinking,  my brother walked into a gun shop and, with a gun permit he had falsified, purchased a .45 caliber automatic pistol and a .38 caliber handgun.  Over the next  two days, he fired his weapons at two inanimate objects outside his retirement home and then, while driving his car down a toll way, fired at a passing car. ( Lester, according to police reports , never did fire at a person nor intended to . ) 

Part 2 of 3: 

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 ")     

                                

           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, Lester's attorney and I pressed hard that he not be  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 .

    My brother 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 to give to her son. As I wheeled her out to the nursing home's  gift shop  where she loved to pick out a candy bar to eat, 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, now in deep sad thought,  glanced quickly at it and rowed back to shore.

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 prisoner's   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   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 family 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 approached our table with a grin I  disliked  (for  I never knew what, if anything , what  prompted his grins ).   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. " Doesn't that stuff ever wash off ? " I asked hm. Lester shrugged his shoulders          

            From conversations with guards and an inmate friend of Lester's  I had concluded that  Dixon  harbored its own culture  of  perverted sexual behaviors.  When I 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.  ( I was to later learn that  at least fifty per cent  of  released  convicts are eventually  imprisoned  again for many felonies 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 my wife Judith had  died a year ago. Lester always  asked  this question first.

              We talked . My brother's speech had become slower  and more disjointed than usual . It now was peppered with prison slang  and  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 taught him decades ago 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 looked 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 pitifully   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

Robert, I pray lots of prayers for  him [ Lester ] 'cause of the condition he is in. It hurts me to  see him struggle to breathe and get tired out from a slight  walk. I  pray by testifying to him and through prayer that some way God will redeem him and open his heart, mind, and  soul and spirit to the one who died so we can live  through him. Your brother is safe though, happier, less worried and gets plenty of peaceful rest. I help him out by taking care of him—hygiene-wise—and making sure his clothes and linens are cleaned. [  Schizophrenics commonly ignore personal hygiene ] I expect nothing   in return  because it's my duty as a Christian to offer my services to those who need help. I've been in the prison system since '99 on and off , in and out. I've made plenty of mistakes and bad choices but when I knelt down and surrendered my life to Jesus for dying for our sins, life has been truly wonderful… Sincerely , Freddie .

            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 :  Robert,  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 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 to him 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 his  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 --   was  engaged  in some bizarre  spiritual combat or that his schizophrenia had acquired  an  undiagnosed and more horrific dimension . I was sure there was a ferocious  war  going on inside my brother.  

Part 3 of 3 parts  

Dying to One's Self...

"In my 20 years as chaplain   

I've only seen this twice "

                                   

                                    Though I sleep, my heart is

                                    awake (Song of Solomon 5:2)

                        Lester did his five years in prison,  and  for the next six years  was either  a resident or patient in  two  Veteran Administration hospitals and four of their  nursing homes . My brother  was forced out of two of these homes for unacceptable behavior ; the two other shelters   I found unacceptable after my two visits to each of them.
     One of the  hospitals discharged  Lester when   his mental and physical health "improved" , particularly  his  emphysema which twice required emergency  treatment. ( Lester dreaded to have his throat  sucked out,  but still did not quit  daily smoking two to three packs of  cigarettes .  ) Then there were two hernia  operations  and a fall on ice that broke an arm , which  never regained   full mobility.            

       Though nowadays  I believe that in all things God work for the good of those who love Him, who have been  called to His Purpose  (Romans 8:28 ) ,  back then I felt nothing good could ever  come from my brother's  unceasing suffering . I often  fretted over not seeing  any redemptive consequence to it. But when Lester later became bed-ridden , I began  to discern something wonderful was happening during the interactions between Lester and  his visitors, who numbered perhaps  25 and  who  took the one-hour or more  drives from their homes to the V.A. hospital in North Chicago.  Some I  suspect had never been at the bedside of a psychotic  person, let alone  an ex-felon ,  nor had said a prayer in "public", as several of them did for Lester. I was also pleased to see at least one busy nurse and two physicians take time to engage my brother in casual conversation.  Two  V.A. nurses, Kim   and Kali ,  were  Christians , causing me to hope that the challenge of them helping Lester would   uniquely  benefit them  and other veterans in their care. As for Lester's other visitors, they included :

            Spencer… Lester's   son, a handsome , unassuming family man who played football as a tackle, for his college  and who  later  did missionary  work for a  year in Taiwan.  Spencer flew in from Dallas to see his father ,  whom he had refrained from seeing for 14 years. 

            We were standing outside Lester's intensive care unit room when Spencer told me, "I'd like to be with my father alone . "  I closed the door and , looking through   the room's glass window,  I saw my nephew kneel at his father's bedside and pray.  He then  stood uprose , pulled a nail clipper from his pocket and  began trimming his father's  finger nails.  I it was a son -father relationship reborn.

            Lisa and Tim…my brother's daughter and her husband. They  flew in from Montreal. Lester hadn't seen Lisa in 20 years, and she had come to reconcile with her father . At dinner that night  with my wife, Mary Alice, and me,  Lisa disclosed why she had refrained from all communication with her father for two decades . With tears , she said ,   " I was afraid that I might have inherited my father's illness." She did not.

            I asked her if she still held any ill feelings about her father, who had divorced her mother  when the first symptoms of his  illness appeared, causing years of hardship for the  mother,   "No," Lisa said. "And "I'm grateful for what Lester's father did to get that Social Security check to us every month  and for my grandparents  faithfully  sending me $100  each month from my father's VA disability pay." 

     Lisa  and Tim visited  Lester twice more before departing after our  much needed family reconciliation.

My two "coffee" friends , the Rev. Richter (left) and Karl

           Karl…my 55-year-old  morning coffee buddy , a gentle , people-loving man who  often gushed forth  so much cheer to my brother that Lester once  had to tell him, " Shut up, Karl."   Karl , whose many health issues  disabled him from any employment,  was a walking miracle  whose diagnosis by any physician would likely be,  "death in a year." 

      Several months after his first visit with Lester, Karl's life was transformed  . He began  volunteering  alongside a  pastor , helping  physically and mentally  handicapped adults. Soon after that,  Karl became successfully active with Alcoholics Anonymous.

Aji with my brother

    Aji…a 38-year-old Iranian immigrant  taking English lessons from me  to elevate  himself  from the  tedious work of   cleaning grease traps at a Burger King.  In Iran,  he had been  educated up to the sixth grade. I never heard  Aji  express discontent. " I like to work," he would tell you. "No prejudice  here. I stay if it what God wants. "

            During each of his visits with Lester,  he'd go to the window   and , with arms raised, he'd pray  for Lester in Farsi.   The occasional nurse who entered the room took a moment to stare quizzically at Aji ,  but never asking  a   question that  obviously  nagged her and other  nurses.    

            Philip…a boyhood friend of Lester and mine who never married—nor, likely,  dated anyone—and whose only passion was selling clothes at a large  department store.   Philip's  meekness, he once told me, made him too uncomfortable  to ever worship in the midst of a church congregation ; but   for years he had kept a portrait of Jesus on his night table. "It reminds me to pray for people with problems who need cheering up," he told  me. 

            Susan…was a devout , middle-age Catholic  wife and mother from the school of street-corner  evangelism .  She once flew to California,  then hitchhiked a pilgrimage  to a remote Mexican village ; there she appeared unannounced one day at a church rectory, asking  the priest if she could help maintain his small, run-down church .

            On  her first  visit  with  Lester, she went immediately to Lester's bed, took his hand and leaned over and kissed   him on the cheek. Lester glowed and, with some struggle, rose from his pillow and returned the kiss.  ( I   loved seeing this ! ) Susan  remained a prayer warrior for my brother.

            Patricia…a cheerful, steady-minded African-American nurse in the hospitals' mental health unit who became Lester's " girl friend". Lester  wanted to marry her  but instead was persuaded to give her a friendship ring .  She was to become a frequent visitor, sometimes staying an hour, holding Lester's  hand . She, like  most of my brother's visitors,  became a nurturing  person in Lester's room.  At dinner one night, Mary Alice and I told Patricia of our gratitude  

            Don…my good church friend and early mentor in the faith who  had  given Lester a  crucifix to hang on his room wall. Don remains  an indefatigable , on-fire prayer warrior and a leader in the international Opus Dei  prelature.   

***

                          The dragon waits at the side of  the road,

                          waiting to devour us. We go to the father

                          of souls, but first it is necessary  to pass 

                         by the dragon.  (St. Cyril of Jerusalem ) 

            Upon recollecting  these visits,  I fretted no more about my brother's suffering  not bearing good fruit.  My new fretting was about that invisible and relentless    enemy so patiently waiting for my brother to drop his guard  and cave in .  

  
    The wooden crucifix which now was nailed to the wall facing my brother's hospital bed showed Jesus , not crucified but with arms raised in victory nor, as some might wish see to Him,  in eternal freedom. When two years ago in a veteran's retirement home in Kenosha, Wisconsin, I had asked Lester  where in his room he wanted me to fasten this same crucifix.    "  Put it where I  can see it when I wake up in the morning." , he said. I saw that he was  as pleased with the presence of the sacramental as I was.

             But, a week later, when  I walked into his room,  the crucifix was missing. I was alarmed. I went  to the wall where it had been screwed in . "Oh, no ," I mumbled , feeling sick. Obviously , the crucifix had been crudely yanked away.

            Though I expected no good explanation from Lester, my tone pleaded for one. I looked down at my brother and demanded , "Lester, Where is it?!  What happened to it ?"

             " I don't know. Maybe somebody stole it,"   Lester replied. Neither his voice nor face  had emotion.

            I was too agitated to deal with his lie and left the room . 

            I sensed a full-court press by the enemy and   took   the elevator down to consult with  the chaplains,  Fr.  VanderHey .  We talked for  an hour . " I've seen your brother only twice,  " he said.   " I prayed once over him and asked if he wanted me to turn his  television channel to the in-house chapel services.  He said no."

            "You told me you were to  ask him if he wanted to join the church , " I said.            " I didn't .No. Like you, I  want him to make a decision that is one-hundred per cent his.  But I did explain a few things about the faith."

            " Did he have any questions?"

            " I'm afraid not," the Chaplin said. "He just kept saying  ' I see what you mean . '  "

            I brought up the topic of Satanic influence.  I  recalled this Chaplin once quoting from the Bible, two quotes, one from Bible:  Your adversary the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.  He smiled knowingly  when I then quoted  from Milton's poem ,   "Paradise Lost"—Lucifer's words of rebellious hatred when God  cast him from heaven:  Better to reign in hell than serve   in heaven.                                   

            I charged back into my brother's  room, grabbed his hand,  and in a loud  but pleading tone,  asked him, " Les, is there anything  you  feel sorry about?  ANYTHING ?

            My brother replied  amazingly quick , as if  prepared for my question.

            " You asked me that once before. Like I told you, Robert: I'm sorry for

or all the bad stuff  I've done."  But then he laughed as if he had suddenly changed his mind. 

***

            At my  home  that same day  (May 27, 2011 ) came  a  hospital call reporting that  Lester's blood pressure was dangerously low and that he had been returned to an intensive care unit.  Mary Alice and I  rushed back to the hospital  , me driving while  praying  hard.   I took  Fr. VanderHey away from a conference,  and  the three of us a  few seconds later  were at Lester's  bed .  I called in a nurse and  asked if my brother's oxygen mask could be removed for ten minutes. She said " for five minutes" and asked me why. When I told her, she said " no more than ten. "

            I leaned over my brother and said, " Les, do you , right now,  want to become   a Christian Catholic ? It's  hundred per cent up to you, kid .  "

He nodded yes.

            The   scene turned  melodramatic. With the nurse keeping an eye on Lester's monitors for pulse rate and oxygen level, Fr. VanderHey  read my  brother's  solemn profession of faith,  and Lester in a gurgling, soft but audible voice, repeated it.   Next came  the Nicene Creed. Whatever lung strength remained in Lester he now was using to  blast out words as if  through  an  exhaust pipe.

Lester, now in this moment,  victorious--and free-- after  53 years of  an intense spiritual battle and what was thought to be an  intractable  mental   illness . Fr. VanderHey , a V.A. hospital chaplain ,   is on right, flanked by Lester's brother,  Bob Schwarz and  his wife Mary Alice.

            My brother  affirmed the professions  with  an  " I  do "  , remaining wide-eyed and attentive  with a new face  suggesting  sanity, something I hadn't seen in decades.  For a moment I was startled, then choked out a few words I can't remember today.   A glance at Lester from the nurse  told me that she too knew that this event was sacred and the most important  event in this patient's   life.

            Fr. VanderHey remained silent before asking us , " Can your brother swallow."

            " Barely," the nurse said.

             " Please  do it NOW,  " I urged the chaplain. 

            " Give him half a host," Mary Alice advised.  The priest placed the Eucharist ( a wafer-like  piece) on my brother's tongue.   

            Fr. VanderHey then   pressed  his thumb into a small compact of holy ashes and made the sign of the cross on Lester's forehead.  Then he   sprinkled holy water over my brother to administer  the Anointing of the Sick and the Apostolic Pardon.  Looking  at all of us , Fr. VanderHey procaimed : " Lester Schwarz  gets a clean slate, receives forgiveness of all his sins up to this point in his life." 

            Lester  looked  serene.  So did the nurse as she quickly fitted my brother's oxygen mask back on.  I placed on Lester's chest the blue-colored   rosary  which had been  hand-made by my  friend Don Knorr. My brother grasped it...

          ...  In the hallway, Fr. VanderHey  reflected out loud  on my brother's background ,  his spiritual combat and the intractability of paranoid  schizophrenia . "In my twenty years as chaplain, I've  only seen  this  twice !"  

***

            Lester lived  several months more !  I had him  moved to a hospice  when his lungs began filling with fluid , giving him the  pain of  drowning.  Morphine was administered but only in doses that  allowed him  some mental alertness. Visiting him one night in a nursing home, I waited awhile until a nurse  flushed his throat and then removed Lester's   respirator for a few minutes. My brother motioned me to come close. He  pulled my arm towards him . " I love you,"  he whispered. Then , pointing at a wall ,  said,  "I  broke it [ that  crucifx with Jesus ] that time and threw it in  the waste basket. Robert, I'm sorry  "

            I was suddenly compelled to ask my brother, " If a doctor could heal you today and return you to the outside world, would you go ? " 

           My brother shook his head  no-- and meant it. 

            Was Lester  saying he was in the world but not of it anymore—and actually  preferred it this way, even it he were young and healthy ?   Was he--as some mystics  have said--DYING TO  SELF  yet fully and truly  alive  and at peace ?    Did he now crave--as all of us do all our lives-- for that  infinite Something to satisfy  our  deepest longings ?  Yes, yes, yes. 

                                                      Going Home ! 

            Lester's  body  systems  began to  shut down ; they no longer could  assimilate  his  intravenously-fed   nutrients . At 7:45 one evening, I whispered the 23rd Psalm into his ear as I had for my dying mother, then kissed my brother on the forehead  and asked God to make all that was good about my brother remain alive in me.  In that moment I experienced a joy of a great truth blossoming in me:  My brother was now truly alive--in eternity .  

***

    Over  his grave at All Saints Cemetery in Des Plaines ,Illinois  , I began to imagine my  brother  in  heaven  and being led to Mom and Dad and then to Jesus, who tells Lester,  now, Lester, Behold Me with you and your  mother and father and Me. 

Mrs. Dorothy Schwarz and sons Robert (left ) and Lester

The End

All comments are welcome at

rrschwarz777@gmail.com

© 2017-18 , 2023, 2024  Robert R. Schwarz

exodustrekkers.blogspot.com