Princes Charming and a Glass Sister

My brother died last year and his body lay forgotten in a hospital morgue for 11 days. I got the phone call telling me to go and identify him. He had been in the Intensive Care Unit overnight on a Friday and died Saturday morning. Several hospital staff shifts happened and his chart got separated from his body.

Forgiveness was on my mind, seemingly transferred from his lingering spirit. It was convoluted and confusing and took more than a month to sort the whys and wherefores of how his body was lost and found. Six agencies: two hospitals – Catholic and Protestant, 1 Guardian, 1 Trustee, 1 nursing home, and me, were involved. I count myself an agent since I bear guilt at not having updated Eli’s primary care people after moving to this small town, 45 minutes from Edmonton.

Eli had lived in a nursing home for the last 6 of his almost 61 years. His bad heart had landed him in a wheelchair and it took several people to transfer him from chair to bed to shower. He had cerebral palsy from birth, a closed head injury, age 12, stunted his brain development. Diabetes and glaucoma eventually afflicted him in his early 40s.

A week or so after he went to live there, a family medical conference was scheduled. As I was living in the same city and our sister was in another city, I was the only one who could attend. Eli wasn’t present, for some reason. Th e physician read off the list of his medications and one name caught my attention so I asked about schizophrenia medication and how it applied to him. I was shocked to hear that Eli had been diagnosed schizophrenic in his early 40s and – as far as I knew our late mother didn’t know or reveal it to other family or me – I asked lots of questions but all his chart said was that he had been diagnosed 15+ years ago.

Schizophrenia and Borderline Personality Disorder are closely linked. I was diagnosed BPD when I was 15ish and at 60, and after lots of life and witness to many bizarre family and other experiences, am still disordered. Given our family gipsy-like upbringing, my own diagnosis, and the 14 year estrangement of our younger sister, I have pondered much in the last 16 months.

When I started writing this memoir, 10 months ago, I wasn’t planning on reviewing too much of my own life, mostly wanting to record what happened to Eli and why, for our family posterity. Life happens when we are busy making other plans. I was healing my twice broken humerus bone, enjoying my little 3-month old mini-dachshund, GiGi and 2-year old Shi Tzu, The Zigster, when the phone call about Eli came. My life sure did change that day.