My friend from Junior High and High School (1960 to 1969) joined the air force after getting his jet engine certification from Glendale college. I was designated 4F so I would never be drafted so I never had to go to Viet Nam as as soldier like many of my friends had to because I had had blunt trauma childhood epilepsy from 10 to 15 from a blow to the head around age 9. However, like most people who went to Viet Nam he had some PTSD that he was trying to recover from this experience when he returned. However, I was married to a girl when he came back from Viet Nam that was someone who was a protestor of the war in Viet Nam. So, even though I was sort of neutral about he whole thing and saw the point of view of all sides both pro and against I needed to protect my son by keeping my wife and my friend apart because I knew this wouldn't be good. So, my friend and I never really connected until our 40s. Then through a yahoo email address I found of him we reconnected and went to Yosemite like we had as 15 year old boys where we hiked up to California Nevada Falls past Vernal Falls to the base of the rounded back part of Half dome then. I noticed he was more afraid of heights as we climbed then and I had to coax him up to the top of Vernal Falls because he was afraid of heights. I also realized that he not I was the one who froze climbing the face of the littlerock Dam as boys in the desert of southern California on a rusty iron ladder then. He froze where the ladder went out at an angle because he didn't do well with heights. I had thought it was me who froze all these years because I almost lost him that day. So, it was like I almost died I guess. I'm not afraid of heights and always was pretty fearless those days of both danger and women I guess. Whether that is good or not I guess I was always fairly macho in this way. How I saved him that day was I was at the top of the dam and looking down and he froze 100 or more feet up from the ground at the base of the dam on the iron ladder. I got very scared he was going to fall off eventually from being frozen in fear. So, I climbed down and over the top of him and then grabbed each of his feet one at a time and took each foot down to the next rung of the iron ladder until he was safe again at the bottom. But, it scared the hell out of me because I almost lost my friend doing on a dare something that almost killed my friend.
I realized when I met his wife that he had married someone who was clinically insane like the people in the movie "Map to the Stars". So though she was mentally brilliant and had a master's degree she was actually really nuts too. I knew she was capable of killing Mike eventually and was worried about her because of this as the years passed.
Their relationship worked only because he was very methodical and emotionally strong person but so around age 60 he started to develop senile dementia from likely PTSD in Viet Nam and having survived Polio as a boy. Both things likely shortened his life.
So, eventually she let him move toward death naked on the floor of their home in his own feces. A neighbor finally called Social Welfare and he was taken away from her custody and into a rest home. When he finally died his ghost came to me because being a very loyal husband he couldn't understand why I wouldn't help his wife. However, I knew she was dangerous not only to him she was dangerous to anyone in her life. So also, I couldn't help someone who was responsible for my friend's early death either whether she was sane or not.
The movie "Maps to the Stars" brought all this up to me once again in a useful context for me to deal with this more because I always make good decisions in my life. However, living with those decisions is never easy. Decisions in your lives often have thousands of shades of grey and there is no one answer that can be ultimately right. Because of this we have to just keep making the best decisions that we can.
The last time he tried to leave her it was already too late because of how loyal he was as a man to his wife. It didn't matter whether she was insane or not he was going to be loyal and die in her care.
I had to tell him this weekend that if he went back to her I knew she would kill him and that unless he allowed me and his sisters to rescue him his wife was going to surely kill him. So, I said to him that if he chose to go back home to his wife I would never go to see him again. He being loyal to his wife understood then but forgot as time went on. I talked to him on the phone but realized she was going to be responsible for his death. I felt sick about this but his sisters and I couldn't prevent this because he hadn't been declared non compes mentes yet and hadn't been put into the custody of his sisters yet and taken away from his wife.
So, until she just about killed him and a neighbor saw him naked on the floor of their home for several days with feces on the floor without food or water during this time, the state finally got involved and removed him from her custody just before he died. He then lived 6 months to a year in a rest home facility out of reach of his wife. She also did not attend his military funeral or his ashes being put in a military cemetery here in California. I and his sisters and my son and wife attended this military funeral in southern California. Mental illness like this is awful to address especially when it kills your best high school friend since 1960 that you used to surf and skin dive with on southern California beaches and adventures climbing mountains and other adventures throughout California.
I live 400 miles away from where he and his wife lived or else it is possible he might have survived longer with either senile dementia or Alzheimers before he died in his early 60s. Writing about this helps heal some of the awful decisions we have to make in life because there simply is no other better choice at the time.
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