If this is a dupe, I apologize. A very moving story.
http://skogsblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/senator-wellstone-you-have-visitor.htmlSenator Wellstone, You Have a Visitor
Yesterday I received a phone call that we all dread. A dear family friend took her own life in the culminating act of a long and protracted battle with mental illness.
I still remember the day that I met her. My Daughter, who was five at the time, had made a new friend in her class. She was at that friends house and I went by to pick her up. I had already known this family for a few weeks but had not yet met all of the children. They had become dear to me and I truly enjoyed visiting with them and basking in the warmth of their dynamic family life. Mr and Mrs O have several small girls that are as sweet as a contemporary Norman Rockwell painting come alive. I cherished those times when I crossed the veil into their world and feasted upon their vitality.
On this particular day, I rang the door bell and a new face answered the door. As I looked at her face, I thought "another beautiful child to compliment this perfect family." But as she opened the door, I saw her in full and was stunned. As I took in her emaciated physique my inner voice cried out "Oh God! I do not want to go to this girls funeral."
I'll call her Sally, after her favorite photographer Sally Mann. Sally was a beautiful girl, tall and athletic. She was intelligent and artistic. Her chosen medium was black and white photography and in that stark and Spartan world she could capture light and emotion in a way that is difficult to explain but a pleasure to experience. She took many pictures of her sisters in "Edenesque" settings and it all complimented the aura of this beautiful family.
But Sally was battling bulimia and at the time that I met her, she was already losing.
Over the years, to the outside eye, things stayed much the same. My wife and I knew that Sally was getting treatment and we hoped and looked for signs of recovery but if there were any, we could not see them. We took little stories as omens of recovery, 'Sally has a boyfriend. Good! He might help her self image.' 'Sally got into a good photography school. Great! A change of environment might help her.'
They moved a few towns over and we saw much less of them, but we kept up through friends. I missed the energy that they injected into our community. Each time I drove by their old house, I envisioned phantom little girls bouncing on pogo sticks or riding bikes in their driveway. I was heartened by the thought of some other man in that other town driving by their new home and enjoying that which I so missed.
My daughter is now nine and she has not seen her little friend in about a year. When she called me last night to tell me that she had terrible news, it never occurred to me that it could be this. She new that Sally was dead, but she did not know the details.
She did not know that Sally was found by the State Police, on a precipice between life and death, trying to get the courage to jump to her death off of a dam that her family and ours used to picnic at together.
She did not know that Sally was taken into to custody and released to her mother and step-father a few hours later.
She did not know that Sally and her family returned to the dam to get her car and when the stopped next to her vehicle Sally jumped out of the car, raced to the dam and leapt over the side, before her horror stricken parents could prevent her.
She did not know that Sally received a letter on the previous day telling her that her health insurance was no longer going to cover her mental health treatment.
Sally made a choice and on the surface it was a very logical decision. She could continue to die painfully and slowly, wasting away in front of her family and friends or she could do it now. Get it over with once and for all.
We make choices too.
As a nation we choose to open the treasury and poor it's contents into munitions factories. But that's not enough. We must also borrow against our children's futures (the ones who have one) to pay for the destruction that our nation is addicted to.
We choose to grant tax cut after tax cut to the wealthiest few, cutting vital government programs to pay for them.
We choose to treat mental illness as if it is some social problem or character flaw to be dealt with until it becomes too much of a burden.
Just think of what we could accomplish if we could dedicate just a fraction of our obscene defense budget toward our nations health care.
Paul Wellstone did.
In 2001 Paul Wellstone sponsored a bill called the Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act. It simply asked that when insurance companies treat mental illness, the must "provide for equal coverage of mental health benefits with respect to health insurance coverage unless comparable limitations are imposed on medical and surgical benefits. " That's legalese for "mental illness can not be ignored."
That bill was never brought to the floor of the Senate due to heavy pressure on the Republican party by the insurance industry.
In 2002 Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash. Since then the bill, under new sponsorship has been brought forward by Democratic Senators time and time again but the majority will not allow it to come to the floor.
As I prepare to go to this girls funeral and drown in the misery of a family torn apart, I can not help but think that our leaders found time to vote upon flag burning, bringing a brain dead women to testify to Congress, and keep dumping truckload after truckload of cash into an inferno in the middle-east, but could not spare a few minutes and maybe a little cash to save a young woman's life.
She had so much potential. She was so dynamic and full of life, but her insurer chose to cut her loose because she was too expensive. Why can we do that to the mentally ill but not to the elderly or the terminally ill?
Maybe if Paul Wellstone's bill was reversed and it allowed the insurers to treat the physically ill in the same manner that they are treating the mentally ill the bill would have gotten a vote.
The Culture of Life.
Now when I drive by that house, I no longer see the beautiful children playing in my mind. That kind of innocent joy can not exist beside the image of a loved friend dashing herself on the rocky ledges of a scenic gorge.
The picnics too must go. Their's only one way to the recreation area and it's over that dam. I know that if I cross that dam Sally will once again be present at the picnic and somehow it just won't be the same.
posted by Paul Skogstrom at 9:16 PM
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