Yesterday was March 11

Yesterday was March 11, and here it was not raining, not until late evening at least, but ten years ago on this day it was. March 11, 1999 was a big day in our lives, and not because of the rain. It was the day that we took our second son in the early morning to the Emergency Department of the New Halifax Infirmary because he was in severe psychic distress and we didn’t know how else we could help him. You can read his account of the events and subsequent importance of that day in his life in the post he put up yesterday, and you may be able to guess from reading it the profound impact that day had on all of our lives. Yesterday, the 10th anniversary, was also a big day, a day to celebrate many things, not the least of which is the life of our son, lived and living with mental illness.

I sent that link to my friend R. who is a practising psychiatrist in the US. When we were together in Vancouver back in the late 60’s, she was in medical school, heading for her M.D. and not yet decided on psychiatry, and I was a graduate student in English, not yet knowing where my life was going to go. She read the post and wrote to me about it and about the job she had recently started at a Veterans’ Clinic there. When she mentioned that the ages of her patients ranged from 23 to 87, I had to recognize that no longer does the word "veteran" mean someone older than me, in the US or here. She described them as “all more or less mortally wounded (mentally, that is, and often physically too)” and wrote that one of them had told her the day before, “We don’t get out alive.” I read it as a comment not on life but on the ravages of making war; they are hard words to hear, profoundly saddening in this battering and battered world, and I take some small comfort from knowing that there are caring people like R. doing the work that she does.

She also commented on the fact that we appear to have “a much better system of treatment” here in Canada, simply because we were able ten years ago to have our son admitted for care to the Abbie Lane Hospital, and said that he was “lucky having insurance to help out”. My first thought was that he didn’t actually have insurance, because he didn’t (the jobs he was carrying then didn’t provide those benefits), but then I remembered that theirs is a different country because unlike here not everyone has health coverage. I never think of it as insurance, though I do remember it was called that when it was first introduced; rather it is the medical coverage that we pay for in our taxes and never have to think about because it is always there, and has been for close to fifty years now.

When we took JE to Emergency that day, March 11, 1999, we had run out of things we could do to help him, and we didn’t know what was going to happen there, but we did know that he would be cared for. Without question. Ten years later, his recovery and the medical system that helped bring it about and that continues to be there whenever he might need it are, like R’s work with wounded veterans, events to celebrate, especially in a world and time that is in serious need of such things.