Monthly Archives: February 2007

BOB WOODRUFF, TBI AND HUMANITY

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I am with all my heart glad you are alive Bob Woodruff. I say that here first because when a friend of mine hugged me after I returned from the hospital after sustaining my brain injury, he said, “I’m glad you’re alive, I’m so glad you’re alive, I don’t know what to say” I realized I’m glad you’re alive is just about the most beautiful thing anyone can say. And so I say it to Mr. Woodruff now and I am grateful my friend said it to me just weeks after I was shot in the head, leaving the bullet lodged in my brain.

The ABC special last night about Bob Woodruff and so much more brought the harsh realities that come with traumatic brain injury (TBI) to the public’s attention like never before. He and his wife Lee (and their families) have, by allowing so many to see Mr. Woodward’s journey thus far, helped drive home the reality that those of us with TBIs are human beings, not remnants of human beings, not piecemeal human beings, not human beings to be used by greed-driven medical providers or greed-driven attorneys in order to fill their wallets and puff their egos. Those of us with brain injuries or with any disability for that matter, are still people.

While a disability might change or take away one’s ability to walk, see, remember, hear, talk, eat, or manage emotion or movement, it never takes away one’s humanity. Only humans do that.

PASTOR BILL DAMROW

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Billy Damrow would be my first real childhood friend. But I didn’t know this when I was a little boy and me and my friends were playing football in my yard and we noticed the new kid next door in his yard. He was playing with his dog, another new member of the neighborhood, who was tied with a long lead to a dog house. Bill and his family were my new next door neighbors

It bothered me he was by himself and I didn’t want to put him on the spot by shouting out an invitation to play with us so when he wasn’t looking, I tossed the football near him in his yard and ran over to get it. When he looked at me I said, “Wanna play?” And he did!

I liked Billy right away. Taller than me, he had a nice face and a smile so kind and warm if you couldn’t tell the source of his kindness and warmth was his heart, you weren’t paying attention. Billy lived with his mother and father. His father was a quiet, solitary man who was in the Navy and was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed by the Japanese. I figured this was why Mr. Damrow had the ability to calmly eat hot Chinese mustard by the spoonful when he was reading. I mean, if you consider that the man lived through the horror of being bombed, it’s no wonder eating hot Chinese mustard by the spoonful didn’t make him bat an eye. Mrs. Damrow had the most beautiful face I’d ever seen. Her smile too was warm and kind.

Our modest back yards in Pearl River abutted a large tract of untamed woods. Together and separately, Billy and I each had our solitary side; we sought and found delicious refuge there. A wide and fast moving stream was a comfortable walk into the woods. It seemed to go on forever. Billy loved the woods like me. His dog was named Crockett after Davy Crockett from Tennessee who died at the Alamo.

We were joined in another way. We loved to read books and were able to safely confess this to each other. Billy told me about the Doc Savage books and I read them and really liked Doc’s sidekick, Monk. Billy’s second-floor room faced our house and at night we would send signals to each other with our flashlights.

While I have no doubt he is a wonderful pastor, years ago I visited him at his church and behind his desk hung a picture of Albert Schweitzer, who, like Robert F. Kennedy, was a childhood hero of his, Billy could have been a comedian. He could get me and my family laughing so hard tears would flow. My parents loved him. One day Billy was up in the tree house me and my Dad built and I was standing on the ground. I don’t remember what he said but he had me laughing so hard my ability to control my bladder vanished and I flat went ahead and peed my pants which, of course, made us laugh even harder.

We were friends from the beginning but our lives moved on. We moved and Billy and I lost touch. We reconnected in late 1988, four years after I was badly wounded in a hold-up in Brooklyn. I was living in Ellenville, New York. We were both still avid readers and the beautiful Steinbeck biography by Jackson Benson that Billy gave me that year sits on a shelf not far from where I write these words. Steinbeck is my favorite American writer.

One day that year we went back to our stream in Pearl River and wandered the paths we had traveled as boys. I took lots of pictures but the camera with the pictures in it was later stolen.

In 1991, Billy performed the ceremony for my second marriage. But it was in 1992 that I received a gift from Billy that I will treasure for the rest of my life. He gave it to me not long after my mother committed suicide on August 12, 1992. Her suicide shredded my soul and decimated my heart. While the sun still gave my days light, it no longer gave them warmth and comfort. I functioned, but barely. I notified people, including Billy, of her death. I carried the blood stained mattress she died from her house alone. I had never felt more alone. Not even when I was homeless.

Weeks after her death a memorial service was held at her church, the Palisades Presbyterian Church. I sat in the first pew on one side with my wife and daughter and my sister sat in the first pew on the other side with her children. The church was filled with mourners. The words good people said to me that day were like cold stones in the air.

The service ended and protocol called for all to remain seated while my sister and I, joined by those seated with us, rose and left the church first. As I turned to walk down the aisle it happened. It was glowing. It was the kindness and warmth of Billy’s smile. He was there, sitting right there in the church, looking right at me. His beautiful face lit by a gentle smile. I swear the air around him glowed and I think I said Billy! out loud. For the first time since my mother died I felt warm and a little bit alive again.

The gift of that smile and the loving warmth in Billy’s face is the one and only distinct memory I have of that day. It is a gift more valuable than priceless. And so, while it will never be sold, I thought it should be shared. I think Billy would agree. In fact, I think it would make him smile.

BUILDING 18: AN AMERICAN DISGRACE

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I don’t know one American who will not be outraged when they learn that badly wounded American Veterans are living in a government-owned, mold-infested outpatient building that is home to an ample supply of rats, mice and cockroaches.

But wait, I’m wrong. There are some Americans who simply don’t give a damn. And there are others, like the White House, members of Congress and the military’s top brass, who are so oblivious to the plight of our wounded warriors they’ve never visited them at Building 18, the building in question that sits right across the street from Walter Reed Hospital which is in the nation’s capitol of all places.

Lt. General Kevin Kiley, Surgeon General, U.S. Army on the Jim Leher Newshour on PBS last night. Kiley blamed the presence of rats, mice and cockroaches on guess who? The wounded veterans who live in Building 18! They had food in their rooms, Kiley said. I’m sorry, but there is no way a human being can give a damn about our wounded warriors and say something like that. Kiley should be fired, jailed, or, better yet, forced to live in a rat infested dwelling for awhile.

God bless Dana Priest and Anne Hull from the Washington Post for bringing the tragedy of Building 18 to the American people. And then there is White House Press Secretary Tony Snow with his large smile and must-be whitened teeth who said no one should question the president’s commitment to the American soldier.

Many of these wounded warriors have lived in Building 18 for as long as a year. This means one or both of the following two statements are true. No one from congress or the White House has visited or some did visit and simply don’t give a damn. As “General George Patton” said on the Don Imus radio show yesterday morning, The 535 members of Congress ought to be duck-walked over to Building 18 and made to live there. In two days that building would look like something Trump built.

People like Bush, Cheney, Snow and Kiley should simply be jailed.

GOODBYE SUNDAY: A MOTHER’S SUICIDE

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: AS I WORK ON MY MEMOIR I WILL, FROM TIME TO TIME, PUT SOME IF IT, IN-PROGRESS, ON THE BLOG. THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ IT.

My mother called me shortly after 9 a.m. that Sunday morning to tell me she would end her life within the week. She was 68.

My mother said she suffered from arthritis and a mysterious condition, never fully identified, that gave her leg pain. She said no one in the medical, homeopathic and psychotherapy communities had been able to help with either condition.

The result of her pain (or the cause, I’ll never know) was a well-developed addiction to painkillers.

That Sunday morning she told me she could bear the pain no longer and the time for her death was at hand.

“I’m looking forward to the next scenery,” she said.

“Can I come see you?” I asked. My hands were trembling.

“No, Peter, that would be too much for me.”

“When?”

“I don’t know, but soon. Within a week.”

“Mom, I need to get myself together, can I call you back today, please?”

“Yes,” she said. “But not for too long, I want to make it brief. I can’t deal with other people’s emotions now.”

Over the last three years of her life my mother had developed an ever-increasing reliance on the possibility of suicide. Something she could control. And in my view, her fear of losing control played a major role in her decision to leave this world.

She seemed unable to understand – or simply could not believe – that all emotions, including anger and sadness, were a normal part of the human experience. Months before her death, this disabled understanding of the human experience made a wrenching appearance when she told me she did not believe anyone loved her.

One year before her death, when her damaged self-image led her to cliff’s edge, I intervened by reaching out to her psychotherapist, Fred Drobin, and her minister, Laurie Ferguson, a remarkable and loving woman. While our intervention was successful, it was met with displays of rage and puffed-up indignation. For weeks she would rocket the phone back into its cradle the moment she heard my voice on the line. When she finally did talk to me again, she accused me of betraying her by bringing about the intervention.

When I called her back that Sunday, I asked if she was going to tell Fred Drobin about her decision at their Monday session. I felt if she intended on telling a mental health professional, a trained mind, committed to her well-being, would come onto the scene. She said yes, she would tell him.

I asked her what her happiest memory was. “When the two of us went on tour with Joffrey in Tacoma and Seattle,” she said, without hesitating.

I began to weep. Inside I knew she was going. And then, thinking of the others in the family who had died, I said, “Mom, would you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“If you see Daddy, you know, if people are discernible, and you see him and Mommom and Poppop and Grandma and Grandpa, would you please tell them that I love them and I’m really trying to do the best I can?”

“Of course I will, Peter.”

“I’ve tried to be a good son to you these last years, Mom.”

“And you have been, Peter.”

“Mom, do you have any advise for me in life?”

And she paused, thinking, and said, “Yes. Be kind.”

“Okay.”

She then told me she had a Wednesday afternoon appointment with her minister, Laurie Ferguson. To me, this meant she was going to tell Laurie of her decision. She was making her goodbye rounds. I believed this gave me until Wednesday to decide whether or not intervention was the best choice. The Sunday afternoon conversation, our last, ended this way:

“I love you, Mom.”

“Thank you, Peter.”

“Good-bye, Mom.”

“Good-bye, Peter.”

I hung up and fell to the floor, sobbed, and tried and failed to remember the last time she told me she loved me.

That evening I placed a call to her psychotherapist, Fred Drobin, and left a message asking him to call me. He returned my call Monday afternoon and told me my mother had again threatened suicide.

I asked if he thought we should let her go. He said he didn’t know and suggested I call him at home that evening. I did. We spoke for 10 minutes or so before he ended the conversation.

“My dinner’s getting cold,” he explained.

On Tuesday I placed a called to Ray Liberati, a detective in the Orangetown Police Department. The Orangetown PD covered the area where my mother lived and I had known Ray since I was a boy. Ray Liberati was a good cop and a good man. I left a message for him. He knew my mother and had helped her out on more than one occasion.

The following day, Wednesday, August 12, Ray Liberati called me. It was sometime after 2 p.m. and I was so relieved to hear his voice.

“It’s good to hear from you,” I said. “My mother is talking about ending her life again and it feels like everyone is standing around waiting for it to happen.”

There was a brief pause.

“Peter, it did,” he said. “I was just at the house. I heard the call over the radio and went right over. You didn’t know?”

“It did what?”

“She’s gone, Peter. She died. Her minister found her, that’s the way she had it set up. Peter, I’m so sorry.”

The Wednesday appointment my mother said would be used to tell her minister of her decision had, in fact, been her the way she wanted her death discovered.

I arrived at my mother’s home less than an hour after her body had been removed. The police were gone. Laurie and some family members were there. Faces were pale, sweaty. The air did not move. At one point I wanted to throw everyone out and fling myself onto the bed where her life had ended and allow the little boy inside me to dream of holding my mother one last time.

My mother designed her suicide with great thought and care. She was found in bed with the suicide manual “Final Exit” tucked under one arm. She wore a nightgown and her Timex watch. She had surrounded herself with pictures of family and friends. I suppose she wanted to gaze at us while the drugs slowly sucked the life from her eyes.

Above her bed hung a large collage of Ballet pictures. Ballet was the greatest love of her life. Her definition of heaven, to dance throughout eternity with Fred Astaire, was a well-known piece of family lore. When I was a boy one of the only times she would let me stay up past my bed was to watch Fred Astaire’s movies over and over again. We both loved the dance and we both lived Fred Astaire moves. When I was in my early teens, I danced a lead role for the Joffrey Ballet Company.

Dance was the one arena in which the two of us could connect safely with each other when I was a child. It was there that she could allow herself to experience me and not be threatened by my intensity. And it was there, in the world of dance, that I was able to safely experience her, without have to her usual onslaught of Peter you’re-too-intense messages and because of this are mentally ill messages. Throughout my childhood I learned to believe that the words intense or melodramatic described horrible emotional deformities that were to be, if not avoided, hidden. The intense drama of her thoroughly choreographed death scene seems tragically ironic to me now.

Weeks later I would be the one to remove the last box of belongings from her home. Before I left that day, I went into the bedroom and sat on the floor and wrote in my journal – and wept.
There was, as I wrote, the bizarre belief in a mother’s omnipotence that perhaps rests in all sons, perceiving her, mother, as the strongest of them all, somehow believing that if she could choose to leave the world, then maybe, just maybe, she could choose to come back.

The movements of the mind in the wake of a mother’s suicide are movements to be allowed, not judged.

Recently I was going through her old record collection. There were the many albums of classical music we listened to as a family.

And then I saw it. An album cover I’d never seen before. It was a collection of songs sung by Fred Astaire. And there, at the bottom, in a handwritten script with a movement as exquisite as his dancing, it read, “For Virginia Kahrmann, Fred Astaire.”

I am sure she is a wonderful partner.

MY NOVA SCOTIA LOVE

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It is 1961 and I am seven years old and we are in Nova Scotia. I am dazzled by the beauty of the land and the warmth of the people. They’re playing bagpipes in the streets; bagpipes are the sound of the human soul.

We took a plane and boat to get to Nova Scotia. We had a cabin on the boat and I can’t think of a more delicious experience than a cabin on a boat and watching the ocean. Our days in Nova Scotia are filled with walks and good food and, as always, I love to wander about in nature. On one of my solo excursions I meet a Nova Scotia girl around my age. She has soft brown hair and her eyes are warm chocolate brown and I am smitten to my trembling little-boy knees. We spend hours walking and talking and soon find ourselves sitting on top of a very large rock in the middle of a field. All the world is alive with color and beauty and the sun warms and comforts us, and I think secretly we both know we are getting a taste of what heaven must be like.

I don’t know how it happened but one minute we are on top of a very large rock in a field and the next minute we are on top of a very small rock that is surrounded by a herd of shoulder to shoulder cows, wild cows. There are so many you can’t even see the ground anymore. My Nova Scotia love and I have seen enough movies to know we will start a stampede if we do anything to upset these huge, mean, snorting beasts. We are trapped and we know we are in grave danger. I mean these big beasts don’t seem to notice us yet, huddled together on top of a very small rock, but I know it is just a matter of time. I know I must protect my Nova Scotia love, with my life if necessary. I also know I am trembling with terror inside and I can’t let her know this. She would panic if she knew, and I must prevent this from happening. I know too that if I step off our very small rock I will be stomped to death by these wild, mean cows. It is clear to me that any animals this big can’t be very nice.

She says, “We’ve got to find help.”

I say, “We will, we will,” and hold her hand.

She says, “Maybe you should leave me here and find help, Peter. It will be dark soon.” She was right, it had to be 12 noon.

Knowing I do not have the courage to step off the very small rock and knowing there is no way I’m going to admit this, I say, “I would, but I can’t leave you alone. If they decide to charge us someone has to protect you. I won’t leave you alone in all this danger.”

She says, “Oh, Peter, what will we do?”

I say, “We’ll be okay.” I know I’ve just lied to my Nova Scotia love because I know once these wild cow beasts see us they will charge us and kill us.

Suddenly she leaps to her feet, points and shouts, “Peter, look!”

I do and there is my father and another man (the farmer we learn later) running through the cows toward us, smiling and laughing! As soon as we see them our mutual facades dissolve and we are both in tears screaming to be rescued and, of course, we are.

My family and I leave Nova Scotia a few days later. I’ve never seen my Nova Scotia love again, and the years have taken her name from my memory. But she will always be a part of my heart and I will always love Nova Scotia, and the bagpipes. The jury is still out on the cows.