The words to say it
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 15: Divided Nation
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Charlie Stansfield
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Charlie Stansfield's biography and other articles by this writer
The funeral was held in a rural town in New South Wales on the hottest day that year. I nodded at the priest and he nodded at me and then we avoided each other's eyes for the rest of the brief service. A coffin sat in between us unadorned with flowers or symbolic belongings. The silent dry land surrounding the crematorium seemed a fitting backdrop to the event.
There was no eulogy about the great man he was, no generous accounts of the achievements of his forty-six years, no photocopied sheet containing his photo, a prayer and the words of a hymn to be sung. Just thin words that echoed around a room, two sweating professionals waving flies from their faces.
I don't know where he grew up. He was moved to a boarding house when the psychiatric hospital closed down. No historical records accompanied him. I don't know if he had a psychiatric illness, as he couldn't speak, was partially deaf and couldn't be assessed. I know that he had Hepatitis B, as it was written in large red texta on the front of a file with his name on it. He no doubt had a story to tell, but was never taught the words to say it. The boarding house was "for profit", and services from speech pathologists were not provided.
His name was George. I don't know if he had any family. For fifteen years, he lived in this rambling old house with thirty others also discharged from various psychiatric hospitals. They became his people. Sometimes he was "looked after" by other male residents, who occasionally spoke for him. "He needs the toilet," they might say. "He wants his tablets." During these brief relationships, he ran around waving his arms, scratching his legs until they bled, covering his face and hiding in corners. A local GP prescribed Haloperidol to make it easier for him "to be settled". He sometimes spat out the medication and stayed up all night. His end of the bedroom was empty, save for a single bed and mattress; his clothes often went missing. Nobody staffed the place after dark.
I don't know if he liked his tea sweet and white, but that is how it was served to him every morning because that is how it was served to everyone. Large aluminium pots were prepared with no-frills tea bags, powdered milk and sugar. Given the scale of abuse he experienced, it seemed trivial to ask what happened if he wanted his tea black, or in a mug rather than a plastic beaker.
He didn't smoke or drink, he was frightened of dogs, but he seemed to like sitting in the garden, stroking the family of cats who visited. He spent most days waiting at the front gate, his pallid face and distant expression melting into a childlike grin as he rushed to shake hands with the infrequent visitors who came and went. He wore shorts all year round, with his pale distended belly hanging over the top, and grey shoes with zips up the side. His skin was dry and scaly, his hands always cold.
He rarely left the boarding house grounds. Cut off from consumerism, he had neither litter to throw, nor unwanted goods to make landfill. In the pockets of his shorts, he sometimes kept a few smooth round pebbles. His presence was light. Any marks he left treading his small world were fragile, momentary, like footprints in the sand.
George died in hospital just after the boarding house had been closed down when the operator had to shut up shop. Government funding was suddenly made available and residents were moved to smaller community-based houses. He died just after he was given the opportunity to live with paid staff to support him, where perhaps someone would have been able to get to know who he was.
There are many more people buried in George's situation, but no one just like him. Forgotten people, living and dying in a parallel underworld, their voices silenced by neglect, their stories missing from our common history.
Back on that day in the rural west, the coffin creaked its way into the embers, and the priest cleared his throat. We looked at one another, perhaps both aware of a strange fleeting kind of intimacy now hanging in the air between us. The priest had rather kind brown eyes. I said "thank you" for some reason, and I left. I didn't ask what would happen to the ashes. On the drive back, I felt compelled to sing Amazing Grace loudly and out of tune to my car windscreen that was dotted with the blood of dead flies.
GEORGE'S LIFE AND DEATH HAVE A BIGGER PICTURE than the small country town where he and I first met. To look back at the story in a wider context might explain why, forty-six years after his birth, he was buried with only a priest and social worker looking on.
Since the 1980s, there has been at least one report every decade that highlights the failure of government to uphold the basic human rights of people with mental illness. The 2005 Not for Service – Experiences of Injustice and Despair in Mental Health Care by the Mental Health Council of Australia and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission cites New South Wales as one of the worst states in the country for responding to the needs of people with a mental illness. Although this story refers to New South Wales, the patterns are repeated in other states.
The deinstitutionalisation of large psychiatric hospitals from the late 1960s to the 1980s resulted in the discharge of substantial numbers of former patients into "the community". The movement was prompted by a number of factors. Psychotropic medications improved the management of symptoms of mental illness and/or the kind of trauma or pain that is sometimes conveyed in socially unacceptable ways. Although this improvement in treatment often represented a cost to the individual, in terms of side-effects it did also mean that more troubling behaviours were reduced and people no longer needed to be "contained". A philosophical shift promoted the integration of people with mental illness and disability into the community, where it was believed access to more normal lifestyles would be improved.
Unfortunately, the necessary resources did not accompany the movement of people. Even when the process involved the sale of hospital sites on large blocks of waterfront land, funding was not transferred back in any meaningful way to support the people who used to live there. Instead, psychiatric nurses – among other entrepreneurs – bought large buildings in the Blue Mountains, Hunter Valley and Sydney's inner west, then applied for licences and took in busloads of former patients. In short, the care of perhaps the state's most vulnerable people was placed in the hands of those looking for a small business to run.
Of course, standards in boarding houses differ – some provide better care than others – but the motive for all is essentially profit. People affected by mental illness, intellectual disability, brain injury, age-related illness, poverty and all of the above supply this profit by contributing their pensions for board and lodgings. They aren't protected by any of the tenancy rights of other rental situations and many are afraid to make complaints for fear of reprisals. They usually lack family or friends to check on them regularly.
Visit a boarding house in the inner west of Sydney and two things will be immediately conspicuous by their absence. One is light. Houses are characterised by gloomy, damp corridors and windowless rooms. The other is meaningful activity. Residents are often to be found sitting silently in rows of plastic chairs, smoking. They wait for the next cigarette to be handed out, or for the next mealtime to arrive, or they wait for visitors. Mostly, they just wait.