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.
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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. " Doesn't that stuff ever wash off ? " I asked. Lester shrugged his shoulders.
( 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. He 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 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:
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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 '91 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 : 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.
Next week: part 3 of 3,
Dying to One's Self… "In my 20 years
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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