Can Do Attitude in a Can’t Do Body

One of the things my wife and I like to do together is attend performances at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre. We consider attending plays one of our better date activities because it provides us with an opportunity to break out of our normal routines and have engaging conversations together about the moments in the performances that stirred our emotions or stimulated our minds.

Recently we attended a two-man play called Best Summer Ever that was written and performed by Kevin Kling – an accomplished playwright, storyteller, and contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered. Kling is an ebullient personality and there is something childlike, mischievous, and endearing about him that works to win over his audiences from the start.

One of Kevin’s most admirable qualities is his attitude towards overcoming the physical disabilities that are a part of his life. He was born with a congenital birth defect that shriveled his left arm and left it without a wrist or thumb. Then, at the age of 44, Kevin was in a motorcycle accident that completely paralyzed his right arm and disfigured his face.

Kling is open about his disabilities and tries to explain, with humor, the blessings he has derived from his misfortunes and the benefits that can come from tackling life’s obstacles with faith and a positive attitude. His family and friends stood by him while he recovered from his motorcycle accident and years of rehab.

“It’s hard to deny the power of prayer when you’re on the receiving end of it. I know it helped me heal. At times it was like skiing behind a power boat — all I had to do was hang on… As terrible [as my injuries were] and as scared as I am sometimes, I still feel blessed. And when I get discouraged I just look at my two wiener dogs because they are the best example of a ‘can do’ attitude in a ‘can’t do’ body.

Kevin Kling

Kling separates the disabilities that we are born with from those disabilities we acquire later in life and he points out that being so-called “able-bodied” is always just a temporary condition – sooner or later we are all likely to suffer from life’s frailties. He feels that when you are born with a disability, you grow from it, but when you experience a loss later in life, you have to grow toward it; you need time to grow into the new person you haven’t yet become.

Kevin wrote “The Best Summer Ever” as a way of growing toward the new person he was becoming after his accident. He does this by going back and telling the heartwarming story of his 9 year childhood journey growing up as the son of Norwegian immigrants in rural Minnesota. Exploring his childhood from this perspective became a kind of therapy; helping him to find pieces from his past to fit, not the person he was, but the new person he was becoming.

There were two moments from the play that stood out in my mind as reflections of the kind of positive wisdom Kevin had to share about life with his audience:

We all have a deep desire to feel connected, no matter what age

There is a scene in the play where 9 year old Kevin tries his best to comfort his aging grandfather who is grieving the death of his brother. Kevin is trying to understand why his grandfather is so sad and comes to the realization that his grandfather must feel like an orphan now because his mother, father and all his siblings are now gone. He is the last one of his family left.

How must it feel when the people you had the strongest connection to throughout your life are no longer here? I wonder about my 93 year old mother. After living through the deaths of her mother, father and seven siblings, does she feel like an orphan in some way? Despite her many children and grandchildren, is she happily looking forward to re-establishing connections again with her family on the other side?

Kevin talks fondly about his grandparents and the role they played in his life, saying his relationship with them was one of his strongest connections and one that most shaped who he became:

“I connected with my grandparents. And I think we were in the same light. I mean, I was in the dawn, and they were in the twilight, but we were in the same light. And because of that, they were heading to the creator, and I was coming from the creator. And it seemed, because of that, we spoke a very similar language.“

Live so that your Light outlives you

At the conclusion of the play, Kevin is looking at a nighttime sky full of shining stars and marvels that since the stars are so far away it takes hundreds or thousands of years for their light to reach the earth. This means that those of us left on on earth will continue to receive light from the stars even after they are long dead.

Kevin believes that the light from people can live on after they die too. The good that we do, and the light we share will outlive us if we act to make a positive difference in the lives of the people we love and take meaningful action against the injustice we see in the world.

When Kevin looks up at those stars at night he is happy to feel the presence and memories of his grandparents and parents shining down on him. I hope when you look up at the stars, you too can take comfort and feel gratitude for the connections you had with your loved ones. But more important I hope you are living the kind of life that will continue to shine light long after you are gone. When you think about it, being a light for someone else is one way for us to become immortal.

“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage”

I grew up in Central Massachusetts near the small towns of Ashburnham, Gardner, Hubbardston, Templeton, Westminster and Winchendon. I have strong connections to that area of the state and pleasant memories of the days I spent exploring the roads, woods, lakes and streams that make up this collection of industrial and rural townships.

To my surprise, my daughter found a book specifically dedicated to telling the history of this region and sent it to me for my birthday. One particular story in the book about the history of the Gardner State Colony for the Mentally Ill brought back memories of my own exposure to that institution when I was a boy.

The Gardner State Colony was originally established in 1902 on 1500 acres of land near the Westminster/Gardner town line. It was designed as a self-supporting complex for mentally disturbed patients who were considered able-bodied and sufficiently cooperative to engage in construction and agricultural work.

Dr Charles E. Thompson, the Colony’s first Superintendent, utilized an innovative cottage system to house the patients. Groups of patients were placed in separate cottages according to their needs and interests. Patients worked 10 hours a day, six days a week to support the material and physical needs of the community.

The idea behind the colony system was to to place the mentally ill in a rural environment where they could form an independent agrarian society. It was reasoned that simple farm life – where patients worked the soil in close harmony with nature – would give the patients a better chance for a secure and stable life.

Once the colony was up and running, it became well known for its fine orchards. The various cottages produced just about every fruit and vegetable that could be grown in New England. Records show that in 1912 the colony produced more than 1800 quarts of blueberries, 300 quarts of piccalilli, 400 quarts of string beans and 600 gallons of pickled cucumbers and tomatoes. Their bee hives produced 550 pounds of honey. By 1917, the colony was generating so much produce that a cannery needed to be constructed on the grounds.

Animal husbandry was also practiced within the colony including the raising of dairy cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys, geese and rabbits at various times. With an aim to be fully self-sufficient, the colony also set up shops to produce shoes, brooms, clothes, sheets, pillowcases and mattresses. Furniture was made in its own shops from wood cut on its own acreage.

In 1935 the institution was renamed the Gardner State Hospital and placed under the jurisdiction of the State, subjected to the same uniform laws applicable to all the other state mental hospitals.

In 1976 the hospital was closed because there was an increased emphasis on alternative methods of treatment and a trend towards outpatient community based mental health services. The diminishing population resulted in the closing of the hospital in 1980, at which point it was turned into a medium security state prison.

The system originally employed by the Gardner State Colony was a bold idea at the time and one that I’m guessing was preferable to the limited alternatives that the mentally ill had in those days. However, the evidence of a successful farm did not mean that it was a successful hospital. As idyllic as life at the colony appeared, the architects good intentions alone were not enough to render moral the forced labor and incarceration of the mentally ill.

The early years of the 20th century were ones of involuntary commitment for the mentally ill, whose freedoms were taken from them while being forced to live their lives out in unfamiliar surroundings without their consent.

A case can be made that some patients enjoyed certain types of occupational therapy such as sewing or light gardening, but tasks such as building roads, chopping down trees, clearing fields, working in hot laundry rooms, etc. were probably not enjoyable and there is really no way to know what kind of coercive and abusive measures the colony’s overseers used on the patients to get them to perform some of the more difficult and undesirable tasks.

In addition, there were stories about how the practice of involuntary commitment were used by those in power as a weapon to suppress dissent and punish political opponents. An example is a woman named Aurora D’Angelo who was sent to a mental health facility for psychiatric evaluation against her will after she participated in a rally in support of anarchists. This kind of practice once led Ray Bradbury to note that “Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage”

There is also no way of knowing what happened to the more than 700 former patients, many of them unidentified, who are buried in the Colony cemetery and who took their stories to the grave with them.

To society’s credit there was a gradual trend by the mental health profession, starting in the 2nd half of the 20th century, towards deinstitutionalisation. Most states now have laws that abolish or substantially reduce involuntary commitment. Individuals now have a right to the least restrictive treatment, not what a doctor may consider the most beneficial treatment.

Getting back to my boyhood exposure to the Gardner State Hospital. It was during the Summers when I was just a boy of 10 to 13 years old. A group of my friends and I would take day-long bike trips around the city and towns in which we would travel 20 miles or more while stopping to play at various interesting locations.

I fondly remember these bike trips with my friends because they really gave me my first taste of independence and they helped me to expand my view of the world beyond my own street and neighborhood.

One of my favorite bike routes had us riding through the back roads of the Gardner State Hospital grounds while on our way to a dairy bar where we would stop for refreshing ice cream cones.  The ride through the State Hospital grounds was very scenic, filled with pastures, meadows, flowering trees and cottages. It had the appearance of a relaxing summer camp.

However, as we rode along I remember my friends telling me that the people who lived in the cottages were crazy and weren’t like normal people. They told me to speed up and avoid anyone who tried to come near us – and they told me stories of insane ghosts haunting the institution’s graveyard. They stigmatized the people who lived there as damaged and made me think of them as “freaks” or “monsters”.

As I got older I gradually came to know better and realize that people afflicted with mental illness are simply sick and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. They are one of society’s most vulnerable and least understood populations and often there are no easy therapies or miracle medicines that can cure them.

Anyone who has lived with mental illness, or has a loved one who has suffered from mental illness, knows how painful it can be and how hurtful it is when others characterize them as defective.

If I could go back to those young boys riding their bikes through the Gardner State Hospital, I would tell them that the mentally ill ought to be treated with compassion and kindness because one of the greatest cruelties in life is blindness to the despair of others.