by Debbie Kerr

Created on: July 21, 2008

Being alone, truly and completely alone, should not be a burden carried by a human being for long. I'm not sure we were born for it. Our lives are such fragile existences just as they are it only takes one blow to unhinge the mechanisms which hold us together. There are few who can survive for long in such conditions. I was lucky to have known such a woman, one who had survived essentially alone in a cacophony of insanity for fifty years.

My mother was a charge nurse at Wingdale State Hospital in Wingdale, New York. It was a facility where the crazies and mentally handicapped were housed until the 1970's when the government dismantled these facilities and dumped most of the inpatients onto the streets. Mom worked in the wards for the elderly insane women. It was there she met Lillie.

Lillie was in her seventies when Mom discovered her. She was in a general ward a huge room where twenty women were housed all bedridden. These women were certifiable. They rocked in their beds . . . moaning, crying, or screaming never silent. They clutched toy dolls to their chests, hollow remembrances of children who no longer visited or never were. Their matted, tangled hair hung strangled down their back. The aroma of urine seeped into your pores when you were there, its reek steeped in the air, always stronger than any antiseptic could cover. You can't imagine the din. It was awesome, ferocious, never ending.

When she was twenty-eight, Lillie immigrated from Sweden to marry the love of her life. Two weeks after the wedding, he dropped dead for an aneurism. In shock, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to Wingdale where she began the slow process of piecing herself back together. However, the state of New York had a catch-twenty law in place . . . once admitted to a state hospital, only a relative who could sponsor her could check her out. All Lillie's relatives were, unfortunately, in Sweden. She was trapped.

For years she worked in maintenance and housekeeping, cleaning out bed pans and washing floors. The state had a cheep source of slave labor. It certainly wasn't glamorous but it filled her days. It was a tentatively workable solution until she fell and broke her hip.

During her convalescence, arthritis set into her body. Suddenly bedridden, she had to draw on inner resources to survive. But she took it a step further and fell back on her spirituality. Her faith was awe inspiring. It was dynamic and fluid. You could not witness it and fail to be changed in ways

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