Crazy Love

Comment:

I just finished crazy love…I went through the same thing with my 1st husband. I am now happily remarried but my son from my first marriage is struggling like his father. I know all the ins and outs of this territory and I try to be resolute about the reality of the situation
My question is this…what finally happened to Ted? I feel like I want to prepare myself for the ending of things for these loved ones in my life. A personal question that I understand you may not want to answer..But it was like a light to know you had a similar experience.
 

Phyllis replied:

I’m so sorry.  One reason I wrote “Crazy Love” was to let others know that I’ve been through a similar situation.  As many readers know, my first husband became paranoid schizophrenic five years after we married (when I was 18), and this book, written for adults, tells the story of the beginning of his illness, and how it progressed.  After his parents took him out west and had him committed and I had married again, I heard from a psychiatrist who had read my book, wondering what had happened to “Ted,” and I told him the last address I’d had, which I traced to a men’s shelter.  I was so upset, trying to imagine him living in a shelter, but the psychiatrist said, “That’s in my city, and it’s a wonderful place for veterans who are having trouble adjusting to society.  They live two to a room, have home-cooked meals, and are taken care of very well.”  And he volunteered to visit the home occasionally to check up on Ted.

I was so grateful.  I found out that Ted had a part time job and a car, but that he kept to himself and did not socialize much.  I don’t know what the job was.  Ted loved books and records of classical music, and the psychiatrist told me there was a used-book and record store next door to this shelter.  So I made a sizeable donation to that store so that any resident of the shelter could get books and records for himself.  But the psychiatrist later told me that there was no record of Ted ever going there.  One day the psychiatrist called me to say that Ted was dying of throat cancer.  (He never smoked). It was one of the saddest days of my life.  He was buried in a veteran’s cemetery.  I wondered if I should have gone to see him, but decided it would not be a good idea, and the psychiatrist had agreed.  Ted’s story need not be your husband’s fate nor your son’s.  None of us know what will happen to us, but I want you to know how well I understand your pain.  I wish you strength and courage and time also for yourself and things that make you happy.  I appreciate your letter.