TheBanyanTree: Carrot Cake and Birthdays

[Monique Colver]

Back when Stew was alive and living in Washington, January 10th was
celebrated with all the pomp and circumstance possible, considering the
circumstances. January 10th was Stew’s birthday, another milestone achieved
under somewhat arduous conditions. Stew stopped celebrating birthdays in
2008, at least here on earth. I don’t know what goes on where he’s at now.



But I do know that here on earth, when we were together either as husband
and wife or, later, as “only” friends, we celebrated. The last few years we
couldn’t plan ahead much, never knowing which days were going to be bad, and
which days would be good. Which days might he be out of touch with reality,
and which days might he be devoid of any feelings at all, expressionless and
lost to me. Talking to him like this was like talking to a wall, except with
a wall one doesn’t except a response, or a person stuck deep inside to come
back out. Talking to a wall, in these circumstances, is more fulfilling.



Celebrating a birthday with a blank wall seems a bit pointless.



Fortunately the blank wall scenario was less often than the paranoid
schizophrenic scenario. At least there’s a real person being schizophrenic,
someone with feelings and emotions, though they might be a bit skewed.



Just a bit.



And then there were the periods of surface normality, when he could function
as sanely as anyone else, or at least as well as I could, though some may
dispute how sane that really is. As long as he wasn’t thrust into crowds of
people, or overwhelmed with a staggering array of choices, or subjected to
loud noises that might penetrate so deeply into his skull that all his
senses would be attacked. As long as his environment was calm and contained
few people, he would be fine.



On his birthday we’d usually go out to eat and then, if the situation was
holding, we’d go to Barnes and Noble and spend gift cards that one or the
other of us had gotten for Christmas. If I had gift cards I’d give them to
him, and if he had gift cards he’d buy me a book. He loved books. He loved
shopping for books. Books and electronics.



It may not sound like much of a celebration, but when one has a severe
mental illness the little joys in life become huge, and the possibility of
getting through a day without self-harm or psychosis or seeing demons sounds
like heaven.



Sometimes we’d both laugh at things he saw, that weren’t there. People on
top of buildings, that sort of thing. That was easy to laugh at. The voices
inside his head, not so much – they were internal, and there was no way to
ignore them, and they were intent on harming him, on making him harm
himself. Once they told him to go to a political rally with a knife, if you
can imagine such a thing.



I can’t. I didn’t find out about it until he came back home. He’d gone, but
he had turned around before he got all the way there, and he returned,
frightened at what the voices had asked him to do.



I’d told him that we couldn’t ignore that sort of thing, and that if we had
to send him to a hospital, we would.



He hated hospitals. Other than a few trips to the ER, one when he was
dragged in by police for being a suicide risk (and I wasn’t there, they came
to his apartment and surrounded it with police cars and scared the crap out
of him and took him away in handcuffs, all because he’d called a crisis line
and then hung up, and when I came to his apartment to check on him I
couldn’t find him, and it was locked, and he wasn’t anywhere to be found,
but his truck was parked, and I couldn’t imagine what had happened to him
and I started to panic, but then he called me, once they’d given him his
phone back), there were no other hospital stays, not until the cancer.



I apologize for that previous paragraph, most especially for the overly long
parenthetical aside.



Carrot cake was Stew’s favorite – we always got him carrot cake on his
birthday.



He got through all that. Not only did he get through it, but he started to
get better. He stabilized. He stopped hearing voices and seeing things that
weren’t there. He stopped cutting himself, at least cut back on the cutting.
He would have liked that phrasing. He would have laughed. He had a well
developed sense of humor and could laugh at anything, once he’d survived it.




He started to imagine a future again. Working, going back to school, dating,
being in the world. Recovery. As one my friends says, recovery rocks.



And then the cancer got him, and it killed him. It came from left field. The
danger was always the mental illness, and by the time the cancer became the
obvious risk it was too late.



Not to digress, but for my Mom, the danger was always her heart. And then
cancer got her too, a few months ago.



Cancer and I are no longer on speaking terms.



But today is January 10th, and it’s Stew’s birthday, and for him I say,
“Celebrate your life, enjoy what you have, whatever it is, and have some
carrot cake.”



-- 
Monique Colver