TheBanyanTree: A Five Year Anniversary

[Pam Lawley]

I have learned so very much from Monique and Stew - about mental illness,
and so much more.  But when I try to put into words what happens when I
read her writing - well, words seem to fail me.  Thank you Jim for climbing
into my head and finding those words!!  You put it so exactly!

Every word Monique writes moves me.

And this was a beautiful tribute from an amazing person!


On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 5:24 PM, Jim Miller <jim at maze.cc> wrote:

> I wrote Monique privately; we're still doing taxes, but I must say this for
> you who are listening:
>
> Every word Monique writes moves me. This tribute was at least a times 3. It
> was a most beautiful and poignant remembrance.
>
> Jim
>
>
> On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Theta Brentnall <tybrent at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Thank you, Monique.  You said it just right.
> >
> > Theta
> >
> >
> > On 5/31/2013 12:24 PM, Monique Colver wrote:
> >
> >> Five years ago today I stood at the bedside of Stew Young and held his
> >> head
> >> while he died.
> >>
> >> That sounds overly dramatic and sad, when I say it like that. How about
> >> this:
> >>
> >> Five years ago today I had a very bad day. For Stew, it was the last
> very
> >> bad day in a long line of them.
> >>
> >> After years of living with mental illness, it was cancer that got him.
> I’m
> >> never sure if I should be participating in cancer walks or mental
> illness
> >> walks. Stew would find that amusing.
> >>
> >> But Stew should not be remembered as the guy with a mental illness, or
> the
> >> guy with cancer. Those were not his primary traits, those were things
> that
> >> happened to him, and those things don’t tell us anything about him. None
> >> of
> >> us are defined by the things that happen to us, by the illnesses and
> >> accidents and events that distract us as we go from here to there. We
> are
> >> not those things.
> >>
> >> Stew was a writer. He co-authored the book we wrote, though it wasn’t
> >> published until several years after his death. The delay was my fault,
> not
> >> his. He was a good writer, but not, as he would happily concede, as good
> >> as
> >> me. I’m not sure that’s grammatically correct, but I said I was a good
> >> writer, not an excellent one. We would argue about comma placement,
> >> punctuation being one of the ways we kept the rules of the world
> straight.
> >>
> >> He made me laugh. Even when things were at their worst and I didn’t know
> >> how I was going to pay both the rent and utilities, not to mention his
> >> meds, he would make me laugh. It helped me get through the times he
> wasn’t
> >> all there with me, when his mind would be in such chaos that he couldn’t
> >> function at all, when he could only think of harming himself, or when
> >> there
> >> was no expression at all. I always had hope that the person he was would
> >> come back out and he would make me laugh again, and he always did.
> >>
> >> The laughter was often in relief, but still, we take what we can get.
> >>
> >> He had an amazing relationship with his parents. When they couldn’t
> >> understand his illness, because they had no experience of it, they
> learned
> >> everything they could. They were always supportive of him, of me too,
> and
> >> all they wanted was the son they knew to come back from wherever he’d
> >> gone.
> >> And Stew just wanted to make them proud. He did, of course, because they
> >> loved him no matter what – it wasn’t conditional upon anything.
> >>
> >> Stew was intelligent, so very intelligent. His dream job was to analyze
> >> data and make it into something meaningful. Or being a screenwriter. One
> >> or
> >> the other. Something other than the crazy guy on disability. He was
> >> politically conservative (to my dismay), loved corporations and big
> pharma
> >> (who he credited with keeping him from complete destruction), and loved
> to
> >> debate online.
> >>
> >> He loved our dog, Honey, though when she first moved in he thought,
> >> because
> >> of her inherent Chowness and love of me, that it wouldn’t work out. But
> of
> >> course it did, and when she stayed with him she slept on his bed, and he
> >> would do anything for her. She gave him a sense of responsibility, and
> she
> >> gave him a reason to go out when he mostly wanted to hide from the
> world.
> >> But the dog had to be walked, and though he’d often come back and tell
> me
> >> of the things he’d seen that didn’t really exist, it was good for him.
> >>
> >> He’d learned to live with the hallucinations, and later on they
> subsided.
> >> The voices were worse because they told him things no one should have to
> >> hear, and fighting voices coming from inside one’s head is so much
> harder
> >> than those coming from another person. It’s hard when you can’t tell if
> >> it’s you or them, when they’re telling you that you deserve to die and
> you
> >> know it’s not you, but the voices are inside of you, and they’re demons.
> >>
> >> I can’t imagine it. The voices telling me I’m unworthy were implanted
> long
> >> ago, and I know, mostly, that while they’re a part of me, they’re not
> >> necessarily accurate.
> >>
> >> Sometimes he forgot that life wasn’t all bad, and so I’d watch, and
> wait,
> >> and when he laughed or smiled or was having a good moment I’d turn on
> him
> >> and say, “Hah! Look at that!” It was so easy for him to forget that in a
> >> life filled with pain, there were still plenty of shiny happy moments.
> >> There was still the light bouncing off the Sound, the dog who would let
> >> you
> >> cuddle with her, books to read, pizza, watching me eat crab (which he
> >> always found amusing), and even the dark clouds of a Seattle day, heavy
> >> with rain and the promise of a good cleansing. He loved the dark grey
> >> days.
> >>
> >>   He loved his family, his friends, his dogs, and me. Later, he loved my
> >> new
> >> husband. That’s how he was –he wanted me to be happy. He always wanted
> >> that, no matter what happened between us. When people rejected him
> because
> >> of his illness he would react with anger, because it made him sad. Stew
> >> was
> >> always willing to help people, always seeing the good side of people. He
> >> fought his battles the best he could, and he had plenty of battles to
> >> fight.
> >>
> >> A day or so before he died he told me he was afraid of doing it wrong.
> Of
> >> dying, that is, as if there’s a right way and a wrong way, as if the
> >> process should come with some sort of instruction manual. That’s how he
> >> was, he wanted to do things the right way, the proper way. I told him
> that
> >> he was going do it just fine, that there was no wrong way to go about
> it,
> >> and that so far, he’d done everything just right.
> >>
> >> Sometimes just doing things the only way we know how is the only right
> >> way.
> >>
> >> No one with mental illness is just that person with mental illness. It’s
> >> just something that happened to them.
> >>
> >> It’s what we do with what happens to us that matters.
> >>
> >> Stew wrote because he wanted people with mental illness to know they
> >> weren’t alone, and he wanted people without mental illness to know what
> it
> >> was like. He wanted to increase our awareness, and he wanted others to
> not
> >> have to go through some of the things he did.
> >>
> >> But mostly he liked people to be happy, and he liked to laugh and get
> >> others to laugh. He loved his family and his friends. That was his
> thing.
> >> On this day I remember him for his life, not his death. It was his life
> >> that mattered, and death was just something that happened to him.
> >>
> >> Laugh. Be happy. Look for the rays of light.
> >> *
> >> *
> >> *We appreciate your referrals!*
> >>
> >> Monique Colver
> >> Colver Business Solutions
> >> www.colverbusinesssolutions.**com<
> http://www.colverbusinesssolutions.com>
> >> monique.colver at gmail.com
> >> (425) 772-6218
> >> .
> >>
> >>
> >
>