Grandma Henke

A blog on Catcher In the Wry (Disappearing Act – Part II) reminded me of a friend who helped me through a difficult time of my life.   I count myself lucky to have had her friendship even though our connection only lasted three years.

When our son was diagnosed with schizophrenia about eight or nine years ago I was drawn to a site on the Internet to find solace and support.   Somehow we had to survive but I didn’t know where to begin … I didn’t know anything about how to react or help or continue on.   I found a wonderful support group of parents and also a few people with the disease themselves who were particularly helpful.    One of those people was B.   She was from Canada.

When I first started reading her posts I was amazed at the clarity, wit, and wisdom.   At times her vocabulary was enough to burn my ears but behind it was someone I really clicked with … someone I instantly respected and wanted to know better.   We started corresponding.   She was an excellent writer with a humorous, wry style of her own and wrote for several newspapers as a guest columnist.

Gradually as I got to know her better she told me that she only had 2 or 3 hours a day that she was able to write.   The rest of the time she would shut herself in a darkened room with a blanket over the window, a blanket over the television screen and the computer monitor … to keep out the demons, snakes and monsters that came through them to her world to torment her.   

She was a genius.   During the few hours of the day she could focus she kept up the accounting for several businesses.  Most of the people who knew her had no idea she suffered from an extremely severe case of schizophrenia but occasionally it would overtake her in a public situation and she would find herself in a world of monsters and bombings and would cower fearfully in a corner fighting them off.    

In addition to spending years in the hospital for her mental illness she spent many months at a time in the hospital for her physical ailments, which were life threatening on their own.    She was an amazing woman.

She was there for me many times to bring me to reality when I became discouraged and felt hopeless at the possibilities of our son’s future.   One time we awoke to find his empty bed and his suitcase and ditty bag missing.   When we traced him through bank receipts to a foreign country we panicked.   Did he have his medicine?  How would he get home?   What if he had an episode on the airplane and we couldn’t get him home?    What if …. ?   B’s response when she learned what had happened?    “Good for him!    If he can find his way there he’ll find his way home.   Quit smothering him!”     She was excited for him and told us to let him be.    Anxiously and prayerfully we waited for her words to prove true, and they did… and in the process he had regained some of his confidence and self esteem.   

We communicated for two years through emails and telephone calls and had some good laughs and cries.   She shared some of the devastating details of her life with me and many of the triumphs.    I was amazed over and over that she was able to function at all.

I wanted to meet her in person.  From the beginning I had felt an instant bond with her, not because of her disability but because she and I had so much in common when she wasn’t fighting her demons.    It was a hard decision for her to make … to let me enter her real world but I think she was as drawn to me as I was to her and she invited us to visit her and her husband in Canada.     The time there was fun and I found I loved her even more.   She withdrew to her bedroom when she needed to and we visited and went for walks when she could.   One time she let me lay with her on her bed in the dark and hold her hand … which I know was for my sake and not hers.   She didn’t like physical contact.   It was a comfortable friendship for me but it was a difficult friendship for her because it took all of her energy to pull herself together so we could visit.    During those times, though, she was so witty and sharp you would never believe what she went through behind her closed doors.

When I returned home I corresponded with her for a while and then one day I received a sad email that she no longer had the physical strength to cope with our friendship.   What energy she had she needed it to stay connected with her husband and herself.   She was certain she didn’t have much longer to live and friendships, mine included, had become a burden.   She asked me to please respect her wishes and not contact her again … to think of her as dead.    It broke my heart because I had grown to love this unusual friend and owed her so much.   It was hard, but I let her go.    I let her go but I’ll never forget her and what she shared with me about her life and schizophrenia.   Her friendship was a gift from her heart … one that was very difficult to give … and I loved her for it.  I knew that for her sake I had to respect her by leaving her alone.    It was hard.

Through a mutual friend I know she lived at least four more years but I don’t know if she is alive today.   

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