MENTAL HEALTH
My Grandmother Died in a Home for the Mentally Ill
I am proud of her for fighting her depression
My paternal grandmother died in what was then called a psychiatric institution. Less kindly, it was sometimes called a lunatic asylum, which makes me wince — though it’s still commonly used when we talk about hospitals that treat mental illness.
My grandmother suffered from depression, which sometimes manifested in catatonia, meaning the person is unresponsive and does not speak. I grew up without knowing any grandparents. My parents were forty-plus years older than me, and my grandparents were gone by the time I was born. I have only stories, and those I cherish most involve my dad’s father, who was a Klezmer-style musican, and his wife.
I was told my grandmother had long, red hair that hung past her waist, blue eyes, and an overwhelming gentleness. Our family has only a few photos of her, but they show a beautiful woman in a long, voluminous-looking dress. She supposedly loved Charlie Chaplin movies and called my father and his twin brother the Katzenjammer Kids, after a popular cartoon featuring two very mischeivous boys.
My father remembers being ten or so when his mother stopped speaking. His father had a “drinking problem,” according to my dad, and was once hauled off to jail for creating a whiskey still on the roof of the apartment where the family lived. I can get no concrete details about whether drinking issues led to my grandmother’s depression — or whether (as I suspect) her condition was more of a hereditary one.
What my father did share with me is that his mother’s depression was severe and she had to go to the hospital. He can’t recall how long she was there, but she apparently returned home suddenly one day, cooking and making the beds. Not a single word was spoken about where she had been or why she had been away. I am not surprised, knowing how hard most cultures try to avoid talking about mental illness.
My cousin, whose father was my dad’s twin, says she recalled that my grandmother went to the mental hospital more than once, but information and recollections on this are sketchy. I have thought at times about raising money to create a documentary about the institution where my grandmother stayed, but as I live several states away at this point, the logistics haven’t allowed for this idea.
The institution where my grandmother stayed was called Greystone, and was in Morris Plains, New Jersey. According to Wikipedia, it was originally built at the urging of Dorothea Dix, a nurse who advocated for better treatment for those with mental illnesses. Ironically for me, Greystone opened on my birthday in 1876. Patients were relocated in 2008 due to overcrowding and decay, and the building was demolished in 2015.
A new hospital seems to have been created with the same name. I just recently discovered there were several famous patients at Greystone; according to this website, at least, which says that Woody Guthrie and Naomi Ginsberg (mother of poet Alan Ginsberg) were treated there.
I like to believe that if celebrities were treated at Greystone, the care patients received was humane. I have no idea, though, what my grandmother went through when she was hospitalized.
My father said my grandmother was also in a psychiatric hospital toward the end of her life, when her husband was already gone. My father’s recollection is that he and his twin brother were in the Army. By the time they got home, little could be done to liberate my grandmother from the hospital before she passed away.
Some years ago, I visited Ellis Island with a friend and could not help but think of my grandmother. She came to the United States from Byelorussia, but her life is mostly a mystery, so I have tried to fill in the gaps in whatever way I can. Mostly, those gaps are filled by imagination and dreams.
Rather than thinking of my grandmother stuck in depression, I prefer to think of family stories, such as the time she entertained government agents (aka “G-men”) while her husband was trying to get rid of whiskey from his rooftop still. I think of her at the movies with her husband and kids, watching Charlie Chaplain and Paulette Goddard in Modern Times.
I also see her on her wedding day, with a husband who is unable to take his eyes off her at the wedding ceremony. On the day I visited Ellis Island, I looked around at the rooms where people stayed with their belongings while their immigration requests were processed. I imagined my grandmother telling the granddaughter she hoped to have that she was proud of me — and of my older sister, too.
I can’t help wishing my grandmother had never set foot in Greystone. Just the name itself makes me think of scary movies and TV shows like American Horror Story. Patients in most movies and shows always seem to feature patients in serious distress, screaming and abused by staff.
At the same time, I know there are now psychiatric hospitals using new and better approaches to mental illness. My hope is that the depictions of psychiatric hospitals in movies become extinct, and the words “lunatic asylum” stop surfacing.
Unfortunately, I think stereotypes and misunderstandings about mental illness are still everywhere. It is too late to change whatever happened at Greystone, or to fill my grandmother’s life with the loving kindness she needed when she was ill. I wanted to write this story to honor her, and to remember the kindness she was known for.
While I won’t ever meet my grandmother, the stories I have are crucial to my sense of who I am now. Besides imagining her saying she is proud of me, I want to tell her I’m proud of her too. Proud that she pressed on and put one foot in front of the other and did all she could to love her twin boys — even when being overwhelmed by a hideous depression. I am proud of her for trying to rid herself of her condition at a time when nothing was available except confinement.
She is one of the most unforgettable presences in my life, and I wish I could tell her: I will always carry you in my heart.
