Category: For Marc

This post was written by Marc’s younger sister, Rebecca, shortly after he passed away:

My eldest brother Marc, 66, passed away on March 17th. I don’t need condolences, and I’ll tell you why.

Marc began showing symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia at the age of 18 – it was not his fault, or anyone else’s – just the crappy hand he was dealt. All the promise he had, as a brilliant scholar, poet, athlete and musician, was forever redefined.

He managed, in spite of his illness, not to get lost on the streets, like so many others; uncared for, feared, mocked and worst of all, passed by. He also managed, when he wasn’t tormented by paranoia or giving in to understandable bitterness, to have a wizened cow poke sense of humor, to be friendly to everyone he met, and most lasting, to write some heartbreakingly beautiful songs.

Like many people with his illness, he refused medication. He’d seen what it had done to friends of his who happened to be in the same boat, and the side effects scared him. The medicine would have made him better for us, but I’m not sure how much better the adjustment to his consciousness would have been for him, and the law didn’t allow anyone to force it on him anyway.

What the law also didn’t do was establish adequate resources for people with mental illness. Deinstitutionalization, beginning in the 1970s, did help a few people from being medicated against their will or from languishing in mental hospitals. It sounded like a good idea, but now many of our mentally ill are either homeless or incarcerated.

Marc refused any kind of medical care. In the last few years his health declined dramatically. My father, who turned 88 the day after Marc died, had been looking in on him weekly for many years, and never stopped urging him to get help.

Three days before he died, Dad and Francis, a man who had known Marc in better days, and who dropped like an angel from heaven earlier in the year to help, went to his apartment and called 911, hoping he would go willingly to the hospital. He refused, mustering, as he often did, enough strength and guile to make the emergency staff think he was “okay.” He even joked with them.

After speaking to Francis, and hearing the defeat in my dad’s voice, I dropped what I was doing and drove up to Vermont. I was afraid of what was coming, of seeing my brother suffering. He did suffer, greatly, but he also lived on his own terms and with tremendous courage. And even though the circumstances of his passing were traumatic, I felt blessed to be able to show him love on his journey out of this life.

In lieu of condolences, which are easy, I want to ask you to do something hard. Be aware of the suffering of the mentally ill, particularly the mentally ill who are homeless. Don’t be afraid of them, because they are rarely a danger to you. Know that they are much more than their mental illness – they have talents, opinions and passions, and they are worthy of respect and compassion.

Be very grateful for those who go into mental health social work, because it’s a tough job, and support the few politicians and legislators who care about the mentally ill. Let people like me talk to you about our loved ones, without judgement – know that we feel helpless, and guilty for having the life that our brothers, sisters, parents, or children might have wanted to have.

Be especially kind to the next person you meet who seems to be struggling with mental illness – because that poor soul could be my brother.

This essay was written by Marc’s mother, Vera Beaudin Saeedpour, in the late 1980’s:

In my place of work for better than eight years, flowers are sent as a matter of courtesy to employees an to members of their families who are hospitalized.

My son Marc was hospitalized in the Payne Whitney Clinic at Cornell Medical Center for nearly two months. But there were no flowers for Marc. He was admitted on an emergency basis because he suffers from schizophrenia, a chronic illness that afflicts more than 1.1 million Americans. And counting their family members, whose lives are disrupted, even destroyed as they watch someone they love suffer, probably another five million are affected.

Marc’s illness is not physically discernable. He has no broken bones, no stitches – only a broken life and a broken heart. His injury is subtle. It resides in his biochemistry.

The decimation of Marc’s life struck him when he was nineteen. Before that he was filled with talents and hopes and dreams. He had friends. He was an A student through 9th grade. He was awarded a DAR medal. He played the piano and the guitar. He put The Child’s Garden of Verses to music when he was nine. He wrote poetry. He loved skin-diving. Marc was a first-rate son in a family of five children.

Marc graduated seventh in his high school class of more than one hundred. He earned five athletic letters. In his third year he was sent to Bennington College to participate in a program for “outstanding juniors” in Vermont high schools. He ran and won the 880. His skiing was something to see. What a dancer. What a decent human being.

But all that ended abruptly on a rainy Fall day when Marc’s chemistry turned around. He’s been hospitalized six times in the past twenty years. That’s half his life gone. No vacations. No holidays. No lovers. No more suits. Only shabby clothes and shabby treatment.

Maybe that’s because people don’t want to cope with a person who’s not “together,” who talks in riddles, who can’t sustain an idea for more than a few minutes when he’s psychotic, when he’s hallucinating and delusional.
A life-threatening illness? Sometimes schizophrenics have been known to take their own lives. “There’s always a possibility now or in the future that this may happen,” the doctors tell me. There are “serious side effects” to the medicine Marc is given to minimize his symptoms. “It’s a trade-off,” the doctors say. In Marc’s case, it’s medicine or no functioning at any level. But Marc doesn’t want medicine. “The research is still primitive,” the doctors say. Schizophrenics often speak of God. What but an abiding faith can keep them from slipping away?
Now no one remembers the Marc interred behind a strange and unfathomable façade. People don’t see, perhaps they don’t want to see Marc’s wounds. And there’s no cast to autograph.

Marc’s songs sing of his pain:
“Borderline existence has me rocking in my cage
The dreamer’s out in space now and I’ve not yet come of age
They’re turning every page in my mind, they’re turning every page
But I’m not worried. No … I’m not worried …

I suppose I can’t blame those who they turn away. But how does a mother stand by and watch her children suffer? Often I cry. Without reason some say. Maybe it’s because I can’t make my son well. Or maybe it’s because there are no flowers for Marc.