Enter the Two-Headed Black Dog and the Temple Temptress

1987 started with a familiar ritual, going to a car dealer to purchase a new car. In the news during several recent years was praise for Lee Iacocca, then CEO of Chrysler, for bringing the company back from the brink of disaster in 1983. For most of the ‘80’s decade there was praise for the “new Chrysler” and Iacocca became a media icon. Thus I fell for the constant and glorious Chrysler hubbub and I bought a Dodge Omni.

This was my first Chrysler product; it would be my last. We had nothing but headaches with that abominable thing. Like an unsettled volcano it kept overheating and be on the edge of eruption. I had it back to the dealer, Price Dodge along the Route 13 strip, a number of times, but although they swapped out the thermostat a time or two, and ran numerable tests, they couldn’t fix the problem. Anytime we got into slow moving traffic the heat rose beyond the red line as if the car were on the verge of a stroke. Once taking the kids to the shore I had to turn around on New Jersey Route 55 because the traffic was so bad I knew the car would boil over. Had to get on the open highway going back northwest to avoid disaster. That was a long trip wasted. It was a nightmare for the whole time I owned this dog.

The Omni wasn’t the only acting up. Lois’ behavior had become somewhat erratic.

It was not that there was anything which to the casual observer might appear strange. To most people Lois seemed perfectly normal, if a bit distant at times and sick more than usual. But over time unnoticed patterns clearly emerged. She suffered periods of depression, often very deep and dark. Of course, these did tend to be rather noticeable. Many people have depressions, something that Sir Winston Churchill referred to as a visit from the Black Dog, but at that time we didn’t realize this was a Two-Headed Black Dog.

(By the way, Churchill didn’t actually coin the term “Black Dog” as a trope for depression. Its use in that context goes back beyond Roman times.)

IN THE COLORS

Move the colors.
But they stop and go,

Not red or green or yellow.

No, no, they flow where colors never go.

Some darker stolen painted skies

From haunted worlds

And go away and go away

How I wish they’d go away.

But the colors stay

And they have a weight

Because they’re not a shade;

They’re not a ghost, a specter or a Sigh of wispy hues at all.

Move the colors, make then change,

From dark and deep and deeper gray.

Make the colors

Give me back the sky

Of golden rays and lighter blues,

But be careful there if when they lift

That reality I fear within

Doesn’t fling the shattered palette
And blind me to the outside day.

“In the Colors”

By Larry Eugene Meredith

Published “Poetry Vortex”

Dallas Kirk Gantt, editor

2011

She dismissed her bouts of depression as genetic. She claimed her mother suffered them as apparently her father had as well. Some people attributed her dark moods to the loss of our babies, but both the depressions and other patterns preceded these deaths. They began in her childhood. These occurred frequently enough that she discussed the problem with our family doctor and he prescribed an antidepressant. We would eventually learn that this was the wrong thing to do and only exacerbated the problem because what she had was Bipolar Disorder, but no one yet realized this.

Along with continuous attacks of depression, she also had migraines and occasional sleep problems.

MIGRAINE

She lay like old laundry in a dark room.

Tossed and unfolded upon the nearest rest,

Soaked with the pain and depths of gloom,

Throbbing colors and flashing lights.

Her head bloody split from fore to aft.

Her life all drained and seeped away.

“Don’t bother with the empty skin,

Just let me die, just let me lie.”

They roll on waves without warning,

Tsunamis, crushing currents, these migraines,

Which are assassins of the lowest form

Whose knives tear and stab and maim.

All her willingness to exist at all

Has left her useless, limp and drained.

“I cannot reach you with my love,

I’ve tried, I’m tired and I’ve strained.”

“Migraine”

by Larry Eugene Meredith

Published “Poetry Vortex”

Dallas Kirk Gantt, Editor

2011

The depressions and the migraines were certainly a disruption in our lives. But more frightening than these were the paranoia and fears that haunted her so often. She also could not perceive the positive around her. More and more everything became negative. It was robbing her from any joy.

Among her patterns was a compulsion to constantly change our curtains, rugs and wall hangings. Later an even more intrusive desire was repainting our rooms. These habits, if you can call them that, began early. The purchase of pictures began on our honeymoon. It wasn’t anything I saw as unusual. It was just her choice of souvenirs. When we got home she hung her purchases about the rooms. There was one, I believe bought in a shop at Sturbridge Village, that would eventually become a favorite of mine. It was of a young girl holding a rabbit. It was almost a premonition because years later after Laurel was born and became a little girl she reminded me of the girl in the painting.

Her purchases of paintings, curtain and rugs became excessive as decades passed, but I took little note in the early years. After all, I had my own obsessions, such as my growing library of books. I also began collecting coffee cups everywhere we went. These things were not exactly space savers and became a real burden when we moved.

All her years were punctuated by anxieties, panic attacks, delusions and negativity. Another pattern that emerged was her distrust of churches. She could not find a church where she was comfortable; being especially critical of the minister, who along the line always said something that stuck in her crawl. She was also convinced that our fellow parishioners were constantly judging us.

There was something else occurring, but I didn’t catch it right away. It was actually part of entering a manic stage. It was a period where she wasn’t depressed, but quite the opposite. It was nice to see her up, but what she was manic about eventually threatened to ruin us.

“Whether you have bipolar disorder or you know someone with it, you’ll want to be aware of the signs of mania -- the extreme highs that can lead to big risks with money, sex, and even safety.”

There had been periods when we took risks with sex and I thought how great to have a wife who is so open to experimentation. I did not know what I saw as a blessing was part of the curse of Bipolar Disorder. It is a very deceptive disease. Her sexual mania just fed into my own sexual desires and we were fortunate nothing particularly serious resulted from the behavior we indulged in. Of course we never viewed our behavior as being unusual or wrong in those days.
However, when her newest manic episodes finally drew my attention they eventually led to a diagnosis.

As I have stated, although I was beginning to notice certain patterns in her behavior, we still did not know she suffered not just from depression, but from Bipolar Disorder. Meanwhile, life was very busy. With Lois now working evenings into the night, I was cooking many of the meals for myself and the kids as well as looking to the kids needs during those hours between dinner and bedtime. My job was also growing more intense.

I was very happy in my work and part of this enjoyment of work was because it provided variety and it was growing in scope. By the end of 1986 I had developed and presented a plan for

Deposit Services and Data Preparation to include employee involvement in running the units. This was a modification of Quality Circles, a management technique developed in Japan utilizing the theories of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. This method of including employees in management planning was just beginning to pop up in the United States. I had published at Wilmington Trust a book called, Japanese Management Style: Its Relationship to Quality/Productivity Improvement. I had expanded on the idea of Quality Circles in my follow-up book, Tire Teams and Unicycles: Q/P Theory. Now I was working with a vendor out of Atlanta, Rich Toole, to develop a workable team effort acceptable to the management at Wilmington Trust. My title for this project was Action Concept Teams (ACT).

At the same time, I had begun a project on my own, a kind of secret endeavor pirate operation. I was creating a cost system for our divisions. Why a pirate operation, you may ask? It was because since I was a kid I had found it better to employ the “Field of Dreams” philosophy (well before that movie ever existed, I might add). If you build it, they will come or at least come around. If you announce you are building it they may come as well, but to tear it down before you even start. I wasted a lot of time on ideas that everyone else pooh-poohed because “that’s not the way we've always done it”

Lack of cost data was a pet peeve of mine almost from the day I was hired. Much of my presentation in selling a project required financial justification. A project could be cool, it could be sexy, it could be worth having, but it wouldn’t fly with senior management and ever gain their approval without a feasibility study with a good Cost Analysis showing a reasonable return on investment (ROI).

One of my greatest frustrations when I began as project Manager and had to do a Cost Analysis was no cost system existed. I was shocked, shocked, I say! I thought a bank would have its costs nailed down to the penny, nay, down to the mill. But they had no costing, nada. Every analysis I did had to be created out of the dirt, scratched from non-existent data. It was excruciating. No one knew their costs. I did have some knowledge of costing (by gosh I had studied costing at Widener garnering A’s and once upon a time I was Cost Accountant of Olson Brothers, egg-breakers extraordinaire).

I decided to build a cost system.

The growth of the PC, which I had kept pushing in management’s face and hearing the old “that’s not the way we've always done it” chant, now made this effort possible. I choose to build it using M/S Excel.

I immediately ran into a problem. Bank operations did not work the same as the breaker of eggs or a steel tubing manufacturer. The traditional raw-materials come in, get processed and a product dumps on the market just didn’t work. I had to invent a new approach. I found I would have to break every job down to its base elements and I called my system, Activity Based Costing. There would be a real irony in this a half-decade down the road. I, apparently, was ahead of the game.

At the end of 1986, due to the spread of my duties, I was given permission to hire an assistant.

I interviewed several candidates. I finally hired a young woman named Linda.

She certainly came with great credentials, and like me started her higher education majoring in Sociology. She did get her B.A. in the discipline, but she didn’t stop there. She had a M.T.S from Harvard. That is a Master of Theological Studies for the uninitiated in degree shorthand, like I was at the time. She also had a Master of Divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School at Cambridge and was currently working on her Doctorate in Organizational Communications and Psychology at the University of Delaware.

Her work experience was just as impressive. She had taught sociology and community organization at DelTech, been the Rector of St. Paul’s in Camden, Delaware for 7 years and recently been a member of the Mayor’s Task Force on Employment Opportunities for the City of Wilmington.

If anything, I probably should have been intimidated by her background, but it wasn’t her impressive background that led me to hire her. It was we were immediately simpatico. We were a lot alike. We spoke the same language.

Both of us had been through a number of courses where your communication style and personality type were tested. It was taught in the late eighties that you were made up of four general characteristics. You were a Conceptualizer, Analyzer, Activator or Socializer. Actually, you would contain some of each, but one or two would dominate and these would dictate your approach to how you dealt with the world. Linda and I were the perfect team for what we were going to do together. We both scored highest as Conceptualizers, which meant we could sit down and blue sky ideas outside the box and understand where each of us was coming from and going.

My second highest trait was Analyzer and her secondary attribute was Activator. This was great, because we would act as a counterweight to each other. We could both come up with ideas and plan, but her instinct was to immediately go run with the idea, while mine was to dig deeper into how it would work. I slowed down her over enthusiasm that could easily have run amuck, and she sped my getting lose in the weedy details forever and a day. I could keep us on track, she could go out and get the train moving.

We were going to get along closely; perhaps too closely. There was a nasty two-headed black dog attacking at home and a temptation in the making at work, something of a dangerous combination.

Randomly Rambling into 2016

Took a walk this morning. So, what's new about that, you ask? Nothing in particular, I suppose, except I've missed doing much ambling about since-mid-December. That was when I got kissed by some sort of virus. I was suddenly tired with a scratchy throat that eventually became something like sandpaper had been used and thus left it sore. My body was all achy and racked with pain and I turned into a NiteQuil addict through the Christmas Season.

I know I wasn't alone, a lot of people were sick lately. I hate it so and haven't succumbed to many illnesses in the last few years. It visited me as Christmas approached and was as insistent on sticking about as Scrooge's Three Spirits. It didn't nag me about my past, present or future deeds, though, it just nagged like a scold battering me with a prickly broom.

The upshot of this downside was I lost my walks and my exercise. I had no energy for working out and the gremlin of germs especially kept me imprisoned  after the mild weather and pleasant temperatures turned damp and despondently drear, with drizzle and wind. I avoided walking out of fear of rekindling the fires of fever and flu.

Unfortunately, my ailing didn't stop me nibbling away at all the tempting treats of the season, thus the results are that I gained back some of the weight I worked so hard last year to dispense with since I was doing nothing to burn off what I shoveled in.

But I took a walk yesterday morning and again today; the last walk of 2015 and the first of 2016. I felt these jaunts. Both days I had not traipsed afar when my hips and legs tightened and stiffened,

and soon my feet apparently gained about 100 pounds each. Still I pressed on my five miles yesterday, although probably, perhaps, maybe a bit over three today. Tomorrow I will walk some before church and on Monday, Lord willing, I will resume my regimen of walk and workout and normal diet. We will do yeoman battle against the new inroads of blubber about my coast lines.

It was cheering to see, having not ventured to Brandywine State Park for some time, that the new bridge is in place over Rocky Run. The old bridge was closed about two years ago and a new one had been promised for Spring 2015. Well, technically the weather did seem a bit spring like up until today. (That is the old bridge to the left and the new on the right.)

I recorded and am watching in bits and pieces a movie that popped up on Showtime yesterday. It is called, "Boulevard" and is one of the last films made by Robin Williams. It is dealing with a successful, if in-a-rut, banker struggling with his sexual makeup. One day leaving work he picks up a young male prostitute. I know this movie will end badly, but I'll see it through anyway. My daughter is always commenting on how many sad movies I watch.

I had never heard of this film before, I just started watching it because I could catch it at the beginning and I didn't feel like putting up with commercials on the regular channels. I ended up pressing record because I do like watching Neil Caputo's news show in late afternoon, one of the very few I view.  The movie, though, intrigued me because it seems like Robin Williams began portraying a number of depressing characters in the second half of his film career, and doing them very convincingly. Given his own demise, it is not surprising, is it? I had told my wife long before Robin hung himself that I thought he was a very unhappy man. I have some upfront and personal experience dealing with depression and I thought I recognized it him despite the zany, hyperkinetic persona he wore most of the time.

The thought struck me first on watching him on some talk show. He came on in his usual mile-a-

minute joke persona and he constantly flew off on impersonations and wild scrambles of words during the interview, but in the fleeting seconds between such flights he dissolved, if only briefly, into what I would call his natural face. That is the face we have when we allow our features to just totally relax. We don't smile or frown or mug or do anything consciously with our countenance. On the left is what I believe is my natural face.

A bit skull-like, I guess with my eyes showing the unevenness caused by the Graves' Disease I once suffered, but nothing consciously done. I just allowed my features to relax into their natural, nearly 75 year-old state.

Now, it is difficult to find a natural face of a celebrity. There are many images available of Robin

Williams, but almost all are taken when the man was conscious of his expression. They are during performances, appearances, posed, scenes in a film, but pretty much with the man's knowledge he is being photographed.

This one on the right may be as close as we can get to his natural face. It appears to have been snapped as he moved away from a backdrop for an event, like the red carpet at an awards show. A moment ago he was probably posing and even doing one of his shticks for an interview, but here he moves away and his face becomes downcast. The eyes are distant, off somewhere and somewhat sad; his mouth has curved into the near frown he always seemed to have in his last years. When you look at photos of him smiling he appears to be struggling to do so, his lips compressed and still slightly down.

Living with depression is not living a life; it's dwelling in a constant nightmare. His story is very sad. Sometimes I wonder if a few of the later movies he choose to do were a hidden cry for help.

That may seem a bit out there to some, but you never know. Believe me, people who suffer from depression, bipolar and related such problems are very good sometimes in hiding their problems in plain sight. You have to become attuned to subtleties and other behaviors sometimes to realize someone is in dire need of help.  Big issues may be reveling themselves in small gestures.

There's Probably Poison in the Glass

The game of life is hard to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I'll someday lay
So this is all I have to say

That suicide is painless

     --Johnny Mandel - Michael B. Altman

Robin Williams seemed always on, always manic and everyone laughed. And he couldn't sit still long. The TV Talk Show host or another guest would say something and Robin would be in flight again. The slightest word could send him bobbing down some abstract path of off-beat observations and myriad accents. But sometimes, when perhaps it seemed no one was watching, he would sit a moment quite and go to what I call his normal face.

I thought for many years catching a glimpse of that normal face that this was a sad man.There were not laugh lines in that face, just a mouth that fell into a deep frown and eyes that my wife calls sad. I saw his eyes more than sad; eyes distant and fearful. 

This look was always brief, a mere flicker of a shadow between bouts of kinetic mania and a flood tide of words.

Perhaps then there is some irony in Robin's choice of inspiration, Jonathan Winters.

Jonathan Winters was a favorite of mine in my youth as well. He had a quick wit and fertile imagination that took flights of fancy at the drop of a hat, much as Robin did. But maybe that wasn't the only thing that drew Robin to Jonathan, for Jonathan Winters suffered from Bipolar Disease and now they tell us Robin suffered from Clinical Depression.

Bipolar and Depression are mental disorders I know something about. It's not that I suffered from either, but let's just say I have had a close relationship to them for several decades.

People without these problems are often stymied by those who do. We all experience bouts of depression over the course of our life. The difference for most of us is we get over it and the cause is justifiable most of the time. We lose a job, we lose a friend, we have deaths, illnesses and sometimes disaster. I've been through that whole list, sometimes more than once. The thing is that I, and most of us, get past the depression. We get up, dust ourselves off and get on with life. We put our potholes behind us and don't dwell upon them and we find the positive things of life to focus on.

And when a Robin Williams hangs himself we are often mystified, sometimes even angry. He had everything, money, fame and admiration. He wasn't washed up; he had four movies in release and one in post-production planning. He would have been welcomed hardily on any talk show on TV and if he had decided to go out on a stand-up concert would have probably filled any theater. "So what," we say, "if he had his TV show cancelled after one year. Yeah, he'd had heart surgery, but he survived it, didn't he?"  Now we are told he had the beginning  stages of Parkinson's Disease.

So some may say he was a coward who couldn't deal with that. 

Well, perhaps if it were I, you could say that. I am one who tends to find joy in living, even when there may not be much joyful at the moment around me. But you see, as stated, I don't suffer from Clinical Depression. 

A person who has Bipolar and/or Clinical Depression (and remember it is something they have, not who they are) is trapped in a strange prison. The windows of their prison filter out the good and most of what they see is negative. And if there really is a negative that happens to them, they never forget it and they dredge it up and chew upon it like a cow with its cud. They don't absorb compliments, but will hear a criticism, sometimes when there is no criticism intended. 

I can best explain it this way. You know the old question when presented with a vessel filled to the halfway point: Is the glass half full or half empty? We might expect the depressed will say, "Half empty." Chances are they won't even take note of that question.

They will say, "The glass will leave a ring on the table."
And you may tell them, "No, it won't. It's on a coaster".
But this will not comfort them. "I think the glass has a crack. It's going to break and stain the rug."
"No," you say, picking up the glass and tapping the bottom, "it is solid."
And they will say, "Don't drink that. It is probably contaminated."

People suffering from this kind of depression are not going to see they have admiration or money or fame or a career or friends or anything else when the Black Dog stands before them. I speak from long experience.  Whatever door of escape you open to them, they will find a reason to close it. Or perhaps for someone who does what Robin did, they only saw one open door and it was unfortunately the one they chose to enter.

What can be done? One thing is to be more open about these mental disorders and understand what you sometimes see is not who the person really is. We must remove the stigma of having such a disease. There are medications that help control it, though as of yet there is no cure. We can treat the person with respect and love. We can hold them when they need it. We can understand them even when they aren't likable. And we can keep our eyes open and watch them. Perhaps if we are diligent we can keep them with us.

Lets speak of one more thing. The word selfishness is being debated right and left in the media. Is suicide selfish? Yes, it is, but with those who suffer from Bipolar and/or Clinical Depression it is not done with self-awareness, not the way we would count self-awareness in ourselves. It is the disease that is selfish. I think most professionals who deal with these diseases, at least those I have been in contact with, will tell you that those who suffer these diseases are selfish; perhaps self-centered is a better word, but it is all about them. You may not like anyone saying that, but it is true because that is what the disease does, it makes you need to be the center of attention. You don't believe me? Then tell someone with these diseases your pain and see how quickly the conversation turns to their "worse" pain.

You have to recognize that selfish goes with these diseases or you won't survive dealing with those who have them. 

It is a cruel disease, for it not only imprisons the victim in misery, it often drives away those who love the victim because they can no longer stand both the negativity and the self-centeredness. Many marriages crash on the dark shoals of depression. To sail your ship of relationship you need to see the real person beneath the shroud of the disorder and you yourself must be selfless.  I'm not saying it is easy; I am saying it is worthwhile being their support system.

I really don't know what support Robin had, but no one should feel guilty about the outcome. Depression is a dark and dangerous swamp that no one chooses to enter, it just takes you, and it is very difficult to escape and sometimes it simply sucks you down to the damp and deathly depths.