You wouldn’t think a sister would want to attack her little sister, stabbing her in the head with a sharpened pencil, over and over again, in a fit of uncontrollable rage, just the day after she’d buried another younger sister, but you would be wrong if you were speaking about my big sister, B.
I was not there for my little sister’s funeral because I was away on a camping trip and no one could contact me, but I am reminded over the decades, by a friend of mine who did attend, that my big sister, B., put on a raging, out of control, show-stealing scene of epic proportions at Marilyn’s funeral. I can only imagine, although I don’t want to.
I don’t really like it when he shares this story with me each time B’s name is mentioned because I don’t want the image of my little sister’s funeral in my head. I don’t want to picture her lifeless body. My head swims with the image each time he tells me the story. But I say nothing to him. He would never understand.
He shocked me with his seeming complete indifference to his own little brother’s demise, another story for another time.
I moved to Austin three months before Marilyn’s suicide.
She was doing fairly well, having just been released from Brown Schools, and she was living in a halfway house, fairly independent after a couple of years at Brown School. My older sister, B., had returned from Germany a few months prior to my arrival in Austin. She had been spending time with Marilyn and giving her a lot of pot to smoke. Anyone at all familiar with schizophrenia knows that marijuana and schizophrenia do not mix well at all.
It bears mentioning here that I’ve not discussed my sister’s death with B. since her attack on me 42 years ago. She’s never shown any inkling of responsibility for giving drugs to our struggling sister, for threatening violence with her and for being cruel to her on the night of her suicide (our grandmother told us – she was there) . You would think that at age 27, after making another little sister go to jail for her drug abusing life style, she would hesitate to do further damage. To the contrary.
By the time that I arrived, Marilyn was not speaking to B., she told me, because B. had called her on the phone, in anger, and said, “You know what, Marilyn? I’d like to make your face bloody.” Our big sister had a propensity for violence for as long as I can remember.
Marilyn told me, matter of factly, that she had decided she didn’t have to put up with that so she hung up the phone. I remember feeling so impressed and proud of her strength in that moment, for being stronger than I. I would have let it trigger me, but Marilyn was cool. Marilyn was always calm and collected, it seemed. Even when she was writing letters to President jimmy Carter and the FBI, telling them she knew of their scheme and the implant they had put in her head.
But Marilyn was endlessly forgiving and loving to everyone, even her worst abusers. So Marilyn continued to spend time with both of us, and didn’t hold a grudge against B. for too long.
When she was with B., she would smoke pot and get paranoid, and B. would take her to visit our father and grandparents, (as shown in hospital records). My father and grandparents both suffered from paranoia themselves and my opinion was that visiting them was the worst kind of environment for Marilyn. I took Marilyn to movies and restaurants. The three of us enrolled in a dance class, but we only made a couple of classes because Marilyn had a breakdown and was incarcerated for one final time, in Shoal Creek Hospital.
A cloud of pot smoke hung in the air in B.’s apartment and Marilyn confided in me that she didn’t enjoy smoking it but had a hard time turning it down, and it was frequently offered. The detrimental effects that it had on her were obvious. It made her paranoid and withdrawn. It eventually landed her back in the locked ward of Shoal Creek Hospital.
While she was in Shoal Creek, she was allowed frequent day passes where B. and I, separately, took Marilyn out. Every time that B. took Marilyn out, Marilyn would be placed into isolation upon her return because she became inconsolably paranoid and delusional. There are hospital records confirming this fact.
(A most astonishing event happened a few months ago. A file folder of papers literally fell into my lap while I was cleaning and I found psychiatrist notes and sign out charts consistent with my story. After going out on a pass with you know who, Marilyn returned inexplicably paranoid for days, refusing to tell anyone what happened on that day pass. An astute assistant to Marilyn’s psychiatrist, wrote in her notes that she was convinced something happened to Marilyn while out on pass, she returned convinced people were trying to kill her, and because of that fear she could not function for days.
I also found two other notes, written by Marilyn, explaining that her family members were living in an after life created by the martians and she intended to find a way to join them. This now comes to a total of 4 messages that Marilyn wrote in the last month of her life, explaining, briefly but clearly, the reasons for her suicide. She thought she was going to join her family, in all sincerity. The saddest part is that I am still the only family member who seems to know that. Not one of them looked at her journals while they sat in a box in the home that they frequented daily for the last 40 years. Finally and at last this neglected box of letters, records and journals has fallen into my hands. The treasure was there for them. They found literally every material possession more important.
For some reason, hospital personnel considered Marilyn a low risk patient so they let her out on day passes often times without questioning. She was so quiet they were not aware of the delusions and hallucinations that were going on in her head.
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The morning of Marilyn’s last day on this earth, Marilyn’s psychiatrist called and asked me if I could take Marilyn out for a day pass. My boyfriend, John, had just arrived from out of town and we were on our way out the door to the coast for his visit. I told the doctor I couldn’t take Marilyn out until I returned from my camping trip, so we went by the hospital to tell Marilyn goodbye. It occurred to me that there was a chance the doctor might allow B. to take Marilyn out to the grandparents’ house. I had just visited my grandparents with my boyfriend and was reminded during that visit, how insane my grandmother was.
When John and I were there my grandmother took him on a house tour, showing him damaged items in every room, loosened screws in lamps, unraveled table cloths and doilies. She explained, to my astonished boyfriend, that the neighbors would sneak into the house at night and destroy her belongings. My boyfriend, in his innocence, believed her and asked her why on earth they would do that. “Satan told them to.” was Mimi’s reply. I waited to see if it dawned on John’s face that my grandmother was insane.
The gun with the white handle was lying in the middle of the living room floor, and it gave me the shivers as their guns always did. I don’t know why now, but it never occurred to me that Marilyn would find it and use it on herself. We had grown up with those guns all over their house. Marilyn even lived with the grandparents for a few months in her teens. She was farmed out everywhere, just as I had been.
I wanted to prevent her from being in the grandparent’s environment, after having just visited and reminded of my grandmother’s growing paranoia, so while I was visiting Marilyn on that final day I wrote a note to the doctor and explained to him briefly that the grandparent’s house was not a healthy place for Marilyn to be visiting. I told him I would be willing to take Marilyn anywhere except there. The doctor could not be reached and the nurses put the envelope in his mailbox. Answering machines had not yet been invented.
A few days after Marilyn’s death we had to visit the hospital to pick up her belongings. I asked the nurse if the doctor had received my letter. She checked his inbox, found the letter and gave it back to me. It appeared that the doctor never saw it. But I will never know for sure. The letter had not been sealed. I had an opportunity to ask him once, the day after I learned of Marilyn’s death, but I failed to, being in too much shock perhaps. Or maybe I didn’t want to know the answer. It didn’t matter any longer. Marilyn was gone. I could have prevented it. I failed to. Marilyn’s chance at the beautiful life she so deserved was gone forever.
As I lay on my bed alone, still reeling from the shock of my sister’s death, my mother came running into the house. I will never forget that the first thing that I said to her was, “I feel so sorry for you.” As devastated as I was, I could not imagine her pain as a parent. My first obligation was to protect my remaining family members, as ill-directed as that sentiment was. It was in fact many of those family members who had abandoned and abused Marilyn for all the years of her life. Nevertheless, when you are devastated by the loss of a loved one, the last thing you want to witness or cause is pain in anyone else, not even in a blade of grass.
B., on the other hand, had a different reaction. She lashed out at everyone, including every stranger we came across.
The day after I had learned of Marilyn’s death and the funeral that I had missed, the family loaded up the car to go and visit Marilyn’s freshly dug grave. I don’t think my eyes closed that night. You do not sleep the first night after a sibling has left you.
We went by Beth’s apartment to pick her up. She was pacing in the parking lot, angry and refusing to come to the car, so we followed along behind her. We didn’t know it at the time but she had grown impatient and had called a taxi to take her to the parents’ hotel room. As we were slowly driving behind her in the parking lot, the taxi she had called pulled up on the other side of her. She told the taxi driver she no longer needed him because her ride had shown up after all. He told her that she still had to pay him a dollar for showing up. She took a dollar out of her purse, threw it in his face and said, “There, would you like to pay for my sister’s funeral?” The driver was embarrassed and flustered and tried to give the dollar back but she wouldn’t take it. She preferred to leave this innocent bystander feeling guilty for some unknown reason that I could not comprehend. I sat slumped in the car in astonishment, watching, listening, silently enduring, frozen in stunned shock at the loss of Marilyn, as B. lashed out at both the parents all the way to the cemetery in Luling and all the way back to her apartment in Austin.
Losing Marilyn without losing my mind was all that I could grapple with, it not being 24 hours since I’d learned of her death. So I sat silently for hours, listening to B. berate anyone who tried to speak.
Once we returned to B.’s apartment an argument ensued between B. and Mom regarding the boxes of Marilyn’s journals. Clearly these things belonged to our mother now, but B. was snapping and hurling insults at her demanding that she get to keep the journals. Slowly I came out of my fog and observed the verbal and emotional assault. I watched from the couch for a while, at B. on the other side of the 3X3 coffee table, parading back and forth in a rage, hurling insults at our Mom and carrying on about her pain and her burden, as if she were the only one in pain.
At some point I’d seen enough of her snapping and attacking and I blurted out, to B.’s utter shock, “This is the way you treated Marilyn.” B. was air-born and came flying over the coffee table, grabbing a sharpened pencil along the way, landed on top of me , stabbing me in the head repeatedly in a fit of uncontrolled rage. I must have a hard skull because no physical damage was done. It was all I could do to shield her off of me while my step-father dragged her off, wrestled her to the floor and pinned her down so that I could get out of the apartment quickly and safely.
I sat on the curb across the street and waited around for hours while the police and a psychiatrist, Marilyn’s psychiatrist, stayed in the apartment talking with B. I was barely phased by her attack, really, still stunned that Marilyn was gone. Life was nothing but an empty hole and the activities going on across the street were a distant distraction. I was also a few days pregnant by then but did not know it.
I sat on the curb for a couple of hours until the doctor, Dr. Thorstadt, finally came out. He gave me a ride to his office while the parents stayed behind a few minutes and said their farewells to B. and then met us at the doctor’s office.
Marilyn’s doctor apologized for taking so long in Beth’s apartment and leaving me sitting on the curb for hours. He explained to me that he thought he could calm her down but was disappointed to have had such little success. He asked me if she was always like that and if she ever calmed down. I don’t remember what I said to him if anything, because I didn’t know the answer. I only recall the pity on his face as he looked over at me.
Oikos 