I'm working on a possible story for a volume on mental illness, with a theme "echoes." Well I have echoes all over the place. I have a little too much familiarity with mental illness.
Turns out the year I stopped in on my schizophrenic aunt was the same year my friend's son killed himself and his girlfriend, and a dog, thus upsetting everyone, all the survivors, all of Iowa, but particularly her, because he was her only child, and years later she'd die with dementia, and no id, and no one to care for her.
Is dementia like schizophrenia? My mom had a kind of dementia - in the end she didn't even know who we were. Here she'd raised me for many years, spent hour upon hour watching me, then what? Her mind just doesn't recognize? And then there was my aunt. She didn't recognize me either, but she'd never really seen me - but I could also tell, upon talking to her, that she just didn't do well with all real connections. Like knowing that I was her brother's son, or that my daughter wasn't my wife. She was in a good mood but pretty out of it, and it was scary.
I always thought that a killer - like the son in the above story - is almost mentally ill by definition. Like if you thought actually killing someone would be good for anyone ever for any reason, there must be something wrong with your thinking. In that case he seemed to take the life of a woman who had rejected him, so, my guess is that it wasn't a double suicide, it was a murder suicide. But on the other hand maybe people are making that part up about her rejecting him, or, maybe everyone has it wrong in general. I try to make up or find reasons why maybe he wasn't mentally ill. But things are looking bad for him, in my book, if her family says she'd rejected him. And her son - he left that son out in the truck, locked out of the house - when he did it. Who could do something like that? He must have known the kid was out there.
That year I visited my aunt was a flood year in Iowa. So, while this kid killing his ex-girlfriend, and leaving her son out in the truck, and I was visiting my aunt (I swear, not far apart in time, mid-May), it was raining, day after day, all through Iowa. As I left my aunt's house, I'll never forget - I didn't quite know my way out of town (Des Moines), but I passed over a bridge, and the water was rising very badly under it. It was scary. It was like it would envelop us all.
And it almost did, in many parts of Iowa. One friend of mine had to go way around every time she came from home to work, and I think this was a Cedar-Rapids-Iowa-City commute. One of those major roads was shut down all summer because of those endless rains.
To me, there's your echoes. They've had what, three hundred-year floods in ten years in Iowa? The water's rising under the bridge, and everyone up here on dry land is beginning to feel it.
I don't know about that story - not sure I can tie all this together. It may be a little too slippery, or even a little to real, and believe me these people I've mentioned are all real. It is quite scary being on that edge of sanity, and by the way my kids are suffering right now and I have no idea what to do to keep them from going over the cliff.
Some action is going to be required here. The wter is rising.
Monday, December 16, 2024
Sunday, December 15, 2024
After a little more research I got some basic facts about the story in the below post, which is still somewhat wild, book-worthy, but now a little clearer.
One aspect of it is that my friend, the new-age woman whose only son committed murder-suicide, was already planning to move to New Mexico when it happened. She did not, as I'd surmised, go there to get away from mean Iowans. But if she was already planning to go, and he was steadily working in a place in town (Cedar Rapids) - then it would be possible for her to blame herself partly for his demise. After all, he was losing his mother, and then his girlfriend, who had apparently rejected him. She was coming to his house to pick up furniture, and had actually brought her son, thinking she'd be safe if that son was with her. Wrong.
What made him snap, kill her, kill the dog, and kill himself? I have a hard time blaming psilicybin mushrooms, though I think they've been mentioned as part of it. Mushrooms alone wouldn't make you violent. Or maybe they would. So there's a mystery there, where did that violence in him come from? Not her, I'm sure.
The other real reason has to do with the book. The author went on to be a professional writer in the big leagues, as if having the right degrees was pushing her in that direction from the start. This was one of her early works and was personal; she'd known the guy and considered him like a father, sympathetic as I am, wanting to show that something, maybe Iowa itself, drove him to it. Well I also saw him in his better days, as a sweet innocent kid, and I can still say that whenever someone goes over the edge there's always a dozen people who can't believe such a mild-mannered gentle spirit could do such a thing. We all could do such a thing, if pushed just the right way, and who knows what else was in his life that we didn't know about? I still haven't located his father, for example, don't know a thing about him.
Back to her book. She knew him as a kind of father figure, was sympathetic, went and talked to the boy (that he had locked out of the house when he did it), and the book was panned. Some very important people thought it was garbage and said so. Now I don't even ask people like that what they think of my books, because I already know what they'll say. But to her, it was a blow. She had to do better next time. She had to even eliminate all evidence of her previous failure. That's my explanation.
There's no one deliberately hiding information about what happened; it's findable though it's not easy to find it. I don't see a coverup or suppression of news articles, just news articles that are hard to find and getting harder to find every day. And I think my conclusions are right if only in a general way about her book and why I can't just read it. As a writer I consider taking on personal situations (like this one - I met the kid) - and that's a hazard of doing it. I could write a book about a writer, I think - that might be somewhat wild - but these things have to go somewhere. If it doesn't go to a grisly murder-suicide or to the mother's sad and pitiful demise, where does it go? Make the writer fictional and let it go where I take it, I suppose. Or let her just be successful, still alive, left alone, but haunted, as the rest of us are.
One aspect of it is that my friend, the new-age woman whose only son committed murder-suicide, was already planning to move to New Mexico when it happened. She did not, as I'd surmised, go there to get away from mean Iowans. But if she was already planning to go, and he was steadily working in a place in town (Cedar Rapids) - then it would be possible for her to blame herself partly for his demise. After all, he was losing his mother, and then his girlfriend, who had apparently rejected him. She was coming to his house to pick up furniture, and had actually brought her son, thinking she'd be safe if that son was with her. Wrong.
What made him snap, kill her, kill the dog, and kill himself? I have a hard time blaming psilicybin mushrooms, though I think they've been mentioned as part of it. Mushrooms alone wouldn't make you violent. Or maybe they would. So there's a mystery there, where did that violence in him come from? Not her, I'm sure.
The other real reason has to do with the book. The author went on to be a professional writer in the big leagues, as if having the right degrees was pushing her in that direction from the start. This was one of her early works and was personal; she'd known the guy and considered him like a father, sympathetic as I am, wanting to show that something, maybe Iowa itself, drove him to it. Well I also saw him in his better days, as a sweet innocent kid, and I can still say that whenever someone goes over the edge there's always a dozen people who can't believe such a mild-mannered gentle spirit could do such a thing. We all could do such a thing, if pushed just the right way, and who knows what else was in his life that we didn't know about? I still haven't located his father, for example, don't know a thing about him.
Back to her book. She knew him as a kind of father figure, was sympathetic, went and talked to the boy (that he had locked out of the house when he did it), and the book was panned. Some very important people thought it was garbage and said so. Now I don't even ask people like that what they think of my books, because I already know what they'll say. But to her, it was a blow. She had to do better next time. She had to even eliminate all evidence of her previous failure. That's my explanation.
There's no one deliberately hiding information about what happened; it's findable though it's not easy to find it. I don't see a coverup or suppression of news articles, just news articles that are hard to find and getting harder to find every day. And I think my conclusions are right if only in a general way about her book and why I can't just read it. As a writer I consider taking on personal situations (like this one - I met the kid) - and that's a hazard of doing it. I could write a book about a writer, I think - that might be somewhat wild - but these things have to go somewhere. If it doesn't go to a grisly murder-suicide or to the mother's sad and pitiful demise, where does it go? Make the writer fictional and let it go where I take it, I suppose. Or let her just be successful, still alive, left alone, but haunted, as the rest of us are.
Friday, December 13, 2024
This is an absolutely true story and I hope I don't make anyone mad. It's told entirely from my own perspective. There's a rich kind of book in here.
In 1976--1977 I became close friends with a woman commonly called "the purple lady" because almost everythig she wore was a shade of purple though there was some pink in there. She was New Age before New Age became a thing, and that pretty much defined her. She gave tarot readings and often talked about our fates and destinies and such things like there was a power she was in touch with that she could so easily share.
She was of the non-violent variety, in her very nature - I never really heard her say anything bad about anyone. She didn't seem to have any enemies and most people knew her and liked her.
Around that time I met her son, who was a kid maybe ten or older, a soft-spoken kid, nice. I got a brief explanation that he didn't live with her, but presumably with his father, but they seemed to get along fine, and they were happy to see each other when he arrived. It seems I was discouraged from asking too much about his father or whatever divorce precipitated their separation. I have since concluded that maybe his father was a dark and mysterious character because the kid would have been entirely sweet if she had more to do with it. But sometimes those small towns around Iowa create very controlling families and maybe that one was unable to let go of that kid when she became new-agey and needed to drift off and find her way. That's as good an explanation as any.
I left the village for many years and heard only traces of what had happened: there was a fire, the kid was involved in a tragedy; she moved off to Taos never to return. Though I too was living in New Mexico I never looked her up. She had renounced Iowa entirely.
It turns out the kid was involved in a murder-suicide in which he killed his girlfriend and a dog. This story gets stranger now with every step. It is not clear where this happened because I simply cannot find a trace of it in any newspaper. I've got names, date (May 1993), some details, but not some important ones like where.
Stranger yet, a very good writer wrote a book about it (called An Iowa Murder), but took it off the market and it appears to be the only account of it even though it's admittedly subjective. The author, as a girl, knew him and couldn't believe he would do such a thing. That's kind of how I feel, except I have even less to go on when it comes to finding the truth.
Perhaps I have the place wrong, or one of their names; I seem to get entire dead ends when I go looking. One newspaper article mentioned it at the end, almost an afterthought, as if it was in this tiny town (Vinton), but too obscure to notice.
He could have grown up there - family there, etc., and very easily had a double life, one with his dad in a small town, one with his mom in the village with the tarot readings. One can imagine that people were cruel to her after the murder and that's what caused her to move to Taos, ok, I'll buy that. Iowa can be cruel that way although I must say, if he had a dark side it didn't come from her. In Taos she was an icon, quite famous, but had no one, and when things got bad there was no one around to look out for her, until one of my old friends' daughters came around and took are of her until her death quite recently. That's when I started looking into this murder-suicide. And this book that was written about it, apparently.
In the time I knew her she didn't want to talk about her marriage (if she had one) or her son, or the hard parts of being split up. She wasn't even that tuned in to mothering although she got along just fine with the kid and he seemed to have what he needed. After I left the village, there was a fire, in which she saved some of her fellow residents but at the expense of all her possessions including lots of purple clothes. And after that, the son moved into the village to be near her and know her better. He didn't stay, though, the murder-suicide was not in the village. Not sure where it was, but it wasn't there.
The details of the killing are horrible, of course. How could a person do that? Drugs, is one answer. and it's possible.
She died in bad shape a couple of months ago. Dementia, and not taking care of herself, and having no place to go, and apparently it was sad, though there was a very nice service for her after she died. None of the above was really her fault, in my figuring, because it seems to me she was probably forced to leave for one reason or another and not allowed to take the kid with her. That's just how I read it. The kid was never able to restore the bond that was cut when she was forced to leave him. Of course that's speculation. Why would she never tell us more?
People have these stories. You never know it by looking at their lost, confused faces later in life. But things happen, and we never forget, we just sometimes fail to record them well. There is no record, no record, of this one. Why, I have no idea.
In 1976--1977 I became close friends with a woman commonly called "the purple lady" because almost everythig she wore was a shade of purple though there was some pink in there. She was New Age before New Age became a thing, and that pretty much defined her. She gave tarot readings and often talked about our fates and destinies and such things like there was a power she was in touch with that she could so easily share.
She was of the non-violent variety, in her very nature - I never really heard her say anything bad about anyone. She didn't seem to have any enemies and most people knew her and liked her.
Around that time I met her son, who was a kid maybe ten or older, a soft-spoken kid, nice. I got a brief explanation that he didn't live with her, but presumably with his father, but they seemed to get along fine, and they were happy to see each other when he arrived. It seems I was discouraged from asking too much about his father or whatever divorce precipitated their separation. I have since concluded that maybe his father was a dark and mysterious character because the kid would have been entirely sweet if she had more to do with it. But sometimes those small towns around Iowa create very controlling families and maybe that one was unable to let go of that kid when she became new-agey and needed to drift off and find her way. That's as good an explanation as any.
I left the village for many years and heard only traces of what had happened: there was a fire, the kid was involved in a tragedy; she moved off to Taos never to return. Though I too was living in New Mexico I never looked her up. She had renounced Iowa entirely.
It turns out the kid was involved in a murder-suicide in which he killed his girlfriend and a dog. This story gets stranger now with every step. It is not clear where this happened because I simply cannot find a trace of it in any newspaper. I've got names, date (May 1993), some details, but not some important ones like where.
Stranger yet, a very good writer wrote a book about it (called An Iowa Murder), but took it off the market and it appears to be the only account of it even though it's admittedly subjective. The author, as a girl, knew him and couldn't believe he would do such a thing. That's kind of how I feel, except I have even less to go on when it comes to finding the truth.
Perhaps I have the place wrong, or one of their names; I seem to get entire dead ends when I go looking. One newspaper article mentioned it at the end, almost an afterthought, as if it was in this tiny town (Vinton), but too obscure to notice.
He could have grown up there - family there, etc., and very easily had a double life, one with his dad in a small town, one with his mom in the village with the tarot readings. One can imagine that people were cruel to her after the murder and that's what caused her to move to Taos, ok, I'll buy that. Iowa can be cruel that way although I must say, if he had a dark side it didn't come from her. In Taos she was an icon, quite famous, but had no one, and when things got bad there was no one around to look out for her, until one of my old friends' daughters came around and took are of her until her death quite recently. That's when I started looking into this murder-suicide. And this book that was written about it, apparently.
In the time I knew her she didn't want to talk about her marriage (if she had one) or her son, or the hard parts of being split up. She wasn't even that tuned in to mothering although she got along just fine with the kid and he seemed to have what he needed. After I left the village, there was a fire, in which she saved some of her fellow residents but at the expense of all her possessions including lots of purple clothes. And after that, the son moved into the village to be near her and know her better. He didn't stay, though, the murder-suicide was not in the village. Not sure where it was, but it wasn't there.
The details of the killing are horrible, of course. How could a person do that? Drugs, is one answer. and it's possible.
She died in bad shape a couple of months ago. Dementia, and not taking care of herself, and having no place to go, and apparently it was sad, though there was a very nice service for her after she died. None of the above was really her fault, in my figuring, because it seems to me she was probably forced to leave for one reason or another and not allowed to take the kid with her. That's just how I read it. The kid was never able to restore the bond that was cut when she was forced to leave him. Of course that's speculation. Why would she never tell us more?
People have these stories. You never know it by looking at their lost, confused faces later in life. But things happen, and we never forget, we just sometimes fail to record them well. There is no record, no record, of this one. Why, I have no idea.
Monday, December 2, 2024
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