The Real Laura (Part Two)

by Anna

Every weekend my mother and I would take the drive to the mental hospital. I would climb the long steps of the old building and each time I did, my legs got more and more heavy and my body felt more and more limp. There were times that I would stop and hold on to the railing. My mother didn't seem to notice what I was going through. She would just keep saying, "Come on, what's wrong with you."

When I went into the mental hospital I had to sit in the waiting room until the nurse came out to let us in. There was a painting of a Saint on the wall. I stared at that picture for the longest time. It seemed to comfort me.

When we went in to see Laura, she looked so sad. I remember thinking that Laura looked sadder than I had ever seen anyone look. I wanted to hold her and take her out of there, but I couldn't get myself to do anything but just be there. I looked around at the other patients and some of them kept staring at me. I can still see all of their faces. There was a girl about as old as Laura who had flame red hair. There was an old woman who kept talking to someone who wasn't there. There was a girl who kept looking down every time anyone looked at her. Then I would look back at Laura. There she was, in that place and I could nothing about it. I couldn't make her better like the psychologists thought I could. I was not the great healer they thought I was. I was just a 13 year old girl who felt utterly powerless against the darkness that had taken my beloved sister.

Laura was in the mental hospital for a year before they moved her to another mental hospital. I was not taken to the second mental hospital. I had failed to bring her out of it. Once my mother told me that one of the psychologists at the first mental hospital said that the reason Laura was in the mental hospital was because her younger sister had rejected her. As soon as my mother said that, I felt stunned as if lightning had entered my body. For years afterward, even into my adulthood I lived with the guilt that in some way I had driven my sister Laura insane. I know that I had spent some time trying to avoid her when she started to get violent. I had been afraid of her.

Laura has spent almost her entire life in a mental hospital. She is still there. One of the times she tried to kill herself had left her brain damaged. It also caused her to be even more violent. She had to be separated from the other patients because she was hurting them. There were stories from the nurses and other people who worked in the hospital that Laura could move things. They said that objects flew in the air around Laura. They said that sometimes they could see a ball of fire with Laura. I searched my memory until it hurt and I could not remember even one incident in our childhood where I saw Laura move anything with her mind, and I have a very good memory. I know that I definitely have no such power, and neither did Laura.

They said that Laura was satanic due to spending time with my Uncle Phil. I did not spend the time with Uncle Phil that Laura did. In the mental hospital they had called in an exorcist because they claimed that Laura was possessed by satan. It was a Catholic mental hospital. The exorcism didn't work.

Laura has had five heart attacks due to the huge amounts of medication that she had received over the years. They kept her medicated at all times. The last heart attack was the most severe. I was living in Alaska at the time. I woke up suddenly at 3:00 a.m. one night and screamed, "Laura is dead." Then I felt the most calm, loving feeling that I had ever had. Somehow I felt myself traveling with Laura, as if I was going down a long tunnel. The next day I called my mother and asked her if Laura had died. She said, "My God, how did you know that?" My mother said that Laura had been dead for so long that the doctors gave up on her. One intern would not give up and kept trying to revive her until she finally came back to life. The doctors expected Laura to be a vegetable after being dead for so long, but that didn't happen. Laura's brain damage seemed to have improved and she was talking better. She could even write her name. Laura was furious at the man who had revived her, but otherwise, she was doing remarkably well.

After Laura had her near death experience, she was not violent or satanic anymore. My mother kept saying that it was probably temporary, but I believe that God had saved Laura from some of the torment she was going through.

Now Laura is still alive, but the doctors say that she could die at any time. Part of me dreads the call I will get from my parents when Laura dies, and the other part will be relieved that Laura can go back to a place where she was so loved and cared about. I pray for her everyday. She is a beacon for those who wonder if there is a God. She shines brightly in her own way to tell us all that there is hope for even those who have been labeled the most hopeless.

Now, when I close my eyes, I can see the real Laura. She is the child walking down to the creek at the bottom of the hill we grew up on. Ten little ducklings faithfully trailing behind her, unafraid to call her mother. She gently cradles them in her hands and loves them softly like no one else ever could. She is the troubled teen with her head pressed against a dying radio straining desperately to hear even the faintest soft melody, holding on to a tiny piece of beauty that nurtured her when everything else in her world had gone insane. She is the child that I clung to as she clung to me in the middle of the night while our parents screamed obsenities at each other on the other side of the wall.

She is my sister and no matter what happened in the past or will happen now or in the future, I will always love her.

I wrote a poem about my experience at the mental hospital with Laura and I will add that here.



“THE YEAR THEY PUT HER AWAY”


The year they put her away the locust
swarmed and when I was brought
to see her they crackled beneath
shiny black patent leather shoes,
in drones no-one could remember
so relentless.
I stood frozen as they gathered
and crawled across me,
some dangling from the pink lace
of socks carefully selected to match
my dress. And if they would have
devoured me I would have been less
devoured than by those who glancing
back shook their heads,

“Just don’t look at them.”

I made my own way across the
slithering earth,
up the long gray steps, down a narrow
hallway, to a room where she sat
swaying back and forth on a bed
restraining straps dangled from
like henchmen on every side.
Her tortured eyes turned away as mine
searched desperate to understand a look
that I would be eventually told
to ignore.


Response from Dr. DeFoore

Thank you for this powerful and moving story, Anna. You have given us a glimpse into a very private and beautifully painful world, and I think you have shed a little more light on what we call "mental illness." It has been my experience that emotional damage is behind most if not all mental illness, and you certainly make it clear that that is what happened with Laura. Most importantly, you stay committed to your love and devotion for the tender soul that was "The Real Laura."