‘Asylum’ (Closing)

Closing Excerpt from ‘Asylum’ a Novel in Draft. Excerpts from the Opening and from part of the Middle of ‘Asylum’ are also posted on Medium. All Excerpts can be read on a standalone basis or in sequence.

Journal

Friday 28 April 1944 — St Matthew’s Mental Hospital, Belfast

It was my birthday three weeks ago, 6 April. I have turned sixty-one. The nurses put on a little party for me. All my friends from hospital were there. Ricky pulled my leg about being ancient and Johnny, who rarely speaks except to me, gave me a big grin. There were those who didn’t come; the usual. I have often found that our similarities may as easily divide as unite in the same way as our differences. I suppose it to be true of all humankind.

I have been here twenty-seven and a half years and in that time my family and my old friends have rarely if ever visited. They did from time to time at the start. It is a long journey from our home in Armagh to Belfast. I understand their difficulties. But as the years have rolled by I have scarcely seen or heard from them at all.

They sent no cards or presents. I suppose it takes birthdays to remind you of these things.

I had been coughing up blood for a few days beforehand and starting to lose my appetite. I would at times feel feverish and at others so cold that they had to wrap me in blankets. They said I looked very pale. Two weeks ago, they moved me to another wing of the hospital. I am in an open ward with ten beds. I am told I have consumption and so do my roommates. They give us medicine every day. I am also given my usual tablets.

I feel so weak. This is the first time I have felt able to write for some while. Yesterday, they took me in a wheel chair outside into the hospital grounds. It is spring now, my favourite season. The sun shone and I gloried in its rays, as I have often done over the years when allowed outside. I watched the men working on the garden beds, planting flowers. But best of all, I liked the carpet of bluebells growing in untended ground at the edge of the woodland. They have always been for me a sign of new life and of redemption in an unforgiving world.

Last night Alec died. I only found out this morning and I wept. He was in the bed opposite mine and had been transferred there the day before I was. He had been in St Matthew’s a month before I arrived and we had quickly struck up a friendship. I think, no I am certain he was the best friend I have ever had. On my birthday, he gave me an envelope, which had written on the cover in capitals “IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE.”

When I opened it, I found inside a card — one sheet. On it he had written, “Dear Tom, Happy Birthday. Had it not been for you, I would never have been able to survive and be happy here. However bad things have been, you have always been there for me and I hope I for you. Whatever others may think of us, you have always mattered to me. Never forget how much I care about you. Birthday greetings and many more, Alec.”

On reading it, tears had brimmed in my eyes and we hugged each other.

I am lying in my new hospital bed now propped up by pillows. I can only manage to write between spasms of coughing. Alec’s bed is now occupied by another man I do not know.

Although, the nurses tell me different, I know I am about to die like Alec. We started out here together and we will end together. I know that I have been shunned by my family because my mental illness brings shame on them. Both Alec and I knew, because he had been treated the same, that they probably never talked about us outside our families and within only, if ever, in hushed tones out of earshot of our nephews and nieces. Neither of us have wives or children of our own.

Now that Alec is gone, I do not mind dying. I am ready. The prospect does not frighten me. Rather in a way it gladdens my soul. I know I have done bad things in my life, but that often I did them when I was ill. However much others may not forgive me and I have difficulty forgiving myself, I know God forgives me because I have repented, whatever I may have done and for whatever reason. In many ways, He has brought healing to me over all the years I have been here, though my episodes have continued relentlessly. He has given me many blessings, not the least of which friendship and acceptance for who I really am.

In return, in my more lucid moments, I have in my own way witnessed for Him by singing hymns and talking to others about His love, even for us a forgotten race.

My only real sorrow is that my story and the stories of all my friends will remain hidden forever. No-one will read what I have written. No-one outside these walls will ever understand what it is to be stricken with a mental disorder. The stigma we bear will live on after us.

My greatest hope, other than in release from my sorrows in heaven, is that some day, someone will tell our story, the story of all those with mental disorders. I hope perhaps that they will be brave enough to write about their own illness, without fear or favour, tell it as it is and not how others might wish it to be told and that in so doing, people will begin to realise that we are no better or worse than they. We have no broken bones that heal. We do not lie in hospital beds with our arms in slings and friends and family who bring us grapes with wide smiles. We have afflictions which frighten others and distance them from us because of how we behave. Yet we are no different. In the end, we are all simply ill.

We are often at times a race misunderstood by the world, unforgiven and abandoned. Yet whoever we are, we are all children of God’s creation. We are all born and one day we will all die. In between, we must live the lot we are handed to the best of our ability and, for those who believe, in the love of Christ.

I am too tired to write any more. It is gone 6 pm. I shall just close my eyes for a while and rest.

Medical records: St Matthew’s Mental Hospital, Belfast

Tuesday 2 May 1944

Thomas Doyle died quietly in his sleep in the early hours of Saturday morning, 29 April 1944. It was not possible to revive him.

Cause of death: Tuberculosis.

Date of birth: 6 April 1883.

Age at death: 61

Date of admission to St Matthew’s: 20 October 1916.

Period of incarceration in St Matthew’s: 27 years, 6 months.

His mother Alice (sole remaining parent, her husband Edward having long predeceased her) was contacted immediately thereafter by the hospital authorities to ascertain her wishes in relation to the disposition of her son’s mortal remains. Following dialogue with her son’s four surviving siblings, she expressed no interest in a private, family funeral.

Her son was therefore buried this morning in a common grave within the grounds of the local Worhouse. His possessions on admission have been returned, save for a shilling found therein on admission, subsequently banked and which has been retained to defray the costs of his interment.

In loving memory of my great-uncle

© 2017 James Hanna-Magill