“My Father’s Theory of Everything” Book Excerpt: When We Were At Your Mercy

My father organized his life around his efforts to create a mathematical equation describing his theory of everything. Like Einstein did for gravity. He described his theory as a “new revolution in science and theology that would bring them both back together again.” He was able to pinpoint the origins of his ideas to the visions he had when he was a child. These visions were actually his first hallucinations.

When I told him I was writing a book about our family, he was eager to participate. Before he died, he sent me many emails with family history, his life story, and his ideas. However, it became apparent he didn’t understand how he would come across in the book if I shared what he wrote. It gave me pause about what to say about him.

Fundamentally, he was not a good father, although of his six children, I received the most nurturing. In fact, he was not successful at much of anything he tried despite working very hard. It wasn’t his fault. He was dealing with schizoaffective disorder. My mother told me he had to take a self-esteem inventory once and he scored a zero.

His grand theory of everything was in the planning stages following a discharge from the Air Force for medical reasons in 1969. Specifically, his mental illness had become too severe to continue serving. I knew he wanted to please his parents by serving his country in a time of war, like his father did during World War II, but, Vietnam was unpopular. His parents seemed unimpressed, and he was distraught. He didn’t realize it was the other things he was saying they were reacting to.

He said he met a Mormon African American man named Alex in the military who had been to another planet named Orarus-Orr. Apparently, Alex was capable of mental telepathy. Other times, Dad said he personally had been to another planet called Zorcon. Alex took him to Salt Lake City where my dad met my mom. I’m not sure if Alex is real or not.

He would say his ideas were best represented by pictures and symbols rather than words. His two most prized possessions besides his Bible and Strong’s Concordance to the Bible, were his colored pencils stored lovingly in a wooden box container with a metal latch and his Spirograph™ set. He had a set of colored pencils that he sharpened carefully with a tiny plastic pencil sharpener. The set came in white and pastel plastic gears with interlocking teeth around their edges, some shaped like circles, some like rods, and triangles.

With his pencils strategically spinning the gears around each other as the instructions provided, he created beautiful shapes that looked like colorful daisies. Some of his designs were pastel; some were vivid bright colors, but they all made for a pretty pattern.

“These will the language of my theory. My theory is an eclectic combination of sacred and secular wisdom. It has very ancient roots and futuristic elements that make it world-class in its character.”

He studied maps of the sky, topographical maps that showed the height of the land around the world. He had a globe where with his permission and clean hands, you could feel the relief of the Earth, pointed mountains and flatlands. He insisted I learn the geography of the United States without error.

I’m not sure when I first figured out he was cognitively impaired but it wasn’t until I was a teen. In 1983, when I was twelve, my mother asked my dad why he was living with his family if he refused to participate in it? His response — convenience. She kicked him out within days. Neither of them had a clue he had a serious mental illness preventing him from participating in social relationships normally.

He sent me an email ten years ago, well past the age when explaining himself would have been helpful to me. It continued to be necessary for him.

I was offered a $1 million back in 1968, but turned it down because nobody gives away money without a hitch. I was right. I know too much, and some prefer me dead. That is why I have stayed clear of the family, after all the troubles, to prevent anymore evils to arise. You kids don’t appreciate this right now, but I hope to clear the air as you get older and are more mature in life to understand and appreciate the wiles and evils of life.

He had woven a story about why he had to leave his family. Once he left, I didn’t see him for ten years. I did get letters, and it was these that gave away my father’s bizarre thoughts. When other people lamented their absent fathers, I was too embarrassed by mine to want him around. I pitied him and worried I might become like him.

Once gone, I thought more about what time we had had. My dad had taken me along with him on Sunday drives where he drove slowly down country, dirt roads in rural Iowa listening to music. We didn’t talk. He was a ponderous man and I was eight, below his intellectual chatting preference. It was the Eagles, John Lennon, and Little River Band on the radio that cut the silence.

He was finally “caught” by the mental health system only a few years before his death at 61, when his health had deteriorated from years of hard labor and bad food. I was kind of proud of him, actually, for being able to live without getting locked up for being crazy for about 40 years of his life. His paranoia about sharing his thoughts with others had paid off. However, his mind deteriorated so much he didn’t even recognize psychiatric staff as mental health providers. Instead, they were just another audience of his theory of everything.

His mental illness had also stolen many precious things from him. I know on some level, he knew he was not the same as everyone else. He knew it held him back, despite being very intelligent. He watched his brother get a Master’s degree and get a high-paying job, while he labored at minimum wage his whole life. His grandiose ideas were compensation for all that he couldn’t accomplish as a thinker, a worker, a parent, a husband, and a citizen.

He didn’t get to make a difference when he was alive. I want him to make a difference in a way he wasn’t quite expecting to when he died. His stories of untreated mental illness, societal stigma which caused his parents and siblings to distance him, and encounters with the child welfare system that did more harm than good are stories of systems that can change. There are lots of stories of mental illness, but it seems like there still haven’t been enough to make things right.

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