Author: Sharron Burnett

I often look back on my life and realize that I missed so many cues that would have alerted me to my mother’s mental illness before it became so extreme. Sadly I was still quite childlike when she experienced her first breakdown. I had no experience or knowledge about symptoms of a troubled mind. I was a twenty year old living in a safe bubble of joy that my mother had created for me and my brothers. It is only now that I am able to look back and see the signs that all was not well with my mom. 

When my father died I mostly felt sorrow for myself and my brothers. I was eight years old and hardly experienced with trauma. My parents had created an idyllic life for me and my siblings. I was too focused on myself to even notice that there was an air of tension in our family. All I knew is that after a gypsy-like journey to California and back again we seemed to finally have a plan for the future. My father had a job that he liked and we were on the verge of settling down in a new home. It never occurred to me that my parents were still incredibly young at the ages of thirty and thirty-three. These many years later I can recall how my own life was still unveiling when I entered my thirties. 

There were many hints that my father’s death occurred when my mother had meager funds to carry on with her life. My parents had believed that they had many years to build up their savings and with my father’s job it would have been a rather easy task to complete. The timing of his death was unfortunate on many levels given that he had not been with his company long enough to even qualify for life insurance. So here was my incredibly young mother facing life without him at the age of thirty, a horror that had never crossed her mind. With three young children and no permanent home or job for herself she must have been filled with anxiety which she hid from me and my brothers so that we would not worry. 

Things seemed to work out thanks to the efforts of my Uncle Jack, a wheeler dealer who found her a car for the price that the insurance company had paid out for the wrecked one. Then he discovered an affordable house in a neighborhood that would prove to be idyllic for all of us. When the seller of the home learned of my mother’s situation he even lowered the price. With the help of family members and additional income from Social Security Insurance we seemed to sail through the tragedy mostly unscathed. It was not until later that I began to understand how frightened my mother must still have been. There was so much day to day uncertainty that she endured in a time when women were not particularly treated fairly in the economic market. 

Things rolled along after a time. Our home was perfect for us because it was within walking distance of our school and our church where all of us found comfort and happiness. Soon my mother was tagged to be a teacher at the school and she was also a regular attendee at church events, even holding office in the Women’s Club. The ugly car that replaced the fancy one that my father drove lasted until I was in college. With my mother’s talents for stretching a budget me and my brothers were fooled into believing that life was a lark. We hardly noticed how pressures began to pile up on our mother. 

She decided to earn a college degree by attending classes after work and in the summers. She would study deep into the early hours of the morning, existing on very few hours of sleep. She began going out with friends and even dating men. In the meantime I was moving forward with my own life, going to college and falling in love with the man who would become my husband. I hardly gave much thought to my mother even when she began to ply me with conversations that seemed uncharacteristic of her. She sounded afraid much of the time and often came to what seemed to me to be silly conclusions about her relationships with others. Her fastidious care for our home became lackluster and sometimes when she spoke her eyes would be darting as though she was unable to keep up with a normal conversation. She began to sleep most of the day and her appearance was unkempt. She lived in darkened rooms and showed little interest in the world around her. 

I was a newly wed focused on my little world. I brushed off any concerns that I had about my mother until the evidence piled so high that I was no longer able to find logical excuses for the dramatic changes in her behavior. I had to take a crash course in how to help an individual experiencing a mental crisis. I learned on the fly and thankfully I was able to get my mother the help that she needed before too much damage was done to her brain. 

I write about these things because over and over again I learn about families who are faced with a beloved member who becomes so mentally ill that they embark on dangerous activities that sometimes lead to desperate and horrific consequences. I fully understand how easy is to be oblivious to the signs that someone is suffering and crying for help. It is especially difficult to accept such signs when the person has led an amazing life as my mother did before she became ill. Denial leaves families wondering how things became so wrong. 

Each time I hear of a young person striking out in violence I find myself wondering if members of the family missed all of the cues that much was amiss. As a teacher I often encountered students on the verge of ruining their lives because of mental problems that had never been addressed. I know all too well that even when we get our loved ones the help that they need there will be relapses and maybe even a lifetime of struggle. Mental illness is not something that can be avoided by a vaccine or cured by a single treatment. It requires vigilance on the part of every person who loves those who are afflicted. 

Mental illness can be controlled but it more often than not becomes a lifetime challenge for the afflicted and those around him/her. Just as a diabetic cannot pretend that it is okay to stop the medications or rules of diet, so does mental illness require a long term commitment  for everyone involved. We can’t just leave it to the persons who are ill to do take care of themselves. 

My mother lived on to enjoy a mostly normal life. Her sweetness and optimism were signs of good health. When those things were not present we always knew that it was time to intercede. Our efforts were always rewarded. The fight for her sanity that we forged year after year was worth all of our efforts. Most of our memories are now of a loving and courageous woman. 

I taught fourth grade students for a brief moment in time. I loved the principal of the school and she did many things to help me grow as an educator. I had friends at the school and I was lauded for doing a good job with the children but it was not a good fit for me in spite of all of the positives. The basic problems was that nine and ten year children tend to tattle and bicker with one another. Most of such behavior was benign and I was even quite good at tamping such situations down, but after a few years I grew weary of having to constantly put out petty fires. At one point I mentally considered making it a punishable offense to tattle which of course was only a pipe dream rather than a real possibility. Instead I moved on to work with older students who not only did not tend to tattle but worked actively not to let me or any other adults know about their private spats. 

It is a childish and immature behavior to constantly accuse others for our shortcomings or to bully other people into bowing to our needs. Sadly there are adults who never seem to outgrow the immature need to portray themselves as martyrs who are constantly harassed by terrible people rather than owning up to their own failures. The blame game in adults too often begets violent abuse that is both psychological and physical. Such people can attempt to lay so much guilt on someone that the accused actually begin to believe that they are the tormentors rather than innocents locked in a toxic relationship. 

I still saw a few instances of teenagers who had never matured enough to outgrow their childhood tendencies to blame everyone but themselves for their mistakes. All too often such individuals were violent with their words and ways that they treated the people around them. Sometimes they frightened their own parents or abused their fellow students. They were difficult, often arrogant and difficult to control. As a teacher I would hear about such bullies from frightened students or parents who outlined stories of the cruelty that they imposed on souls that they believed were weak. Most of the time it became obvious that their bravado was actually hiding their own low self esteem by masquerading as being strong and confident . Sadly their horrid behaviors did grave damage to their targets. 

Of course I mostly wanted to protect the innocents who were being frightened by a protagonist, but at the same time I understood that the seemingly evil students needed help as well. All too often their behavior was briefly punished and then mostly ignored when they obviously needed deep counseling. Without an intervention I knew that they would simply continue to wreak havoc on others and ultimately on themselves. 

I can’t say that I ever discovered how to successfully change a person who was so broken. Perhaps there is some truth to the idea of a bad seed, someone born so psychologically damaged that nothing will help them. Instead I think to this day that there has to be a way to positively change even the most egregious behavior if it is caught early enough to keep it from becoming a lifetime habit. 

When I was teaching in that fourth grade setting I had a set of identical twins in my classroom but they were anything but the same. They came the closest to being a real life Cain and Abel that I have ever witnessed. One was shy, hard working, polite and genuinely kind. The other seemed like a young sociopath. He beat up not just other students but his own brother. He stole, lied and was easily angered. His own mother was so afraid of him that she left home one night and never returned. She left a note begging her family not to try to find her because she could no longer take the pressure of dealing with her frightening son. 

I suppose that with such situations there has to be a dire collision of nature and nurture creating an individual whose behavior is vile. I don’t know what the father was like but the mother was frightened and weak. I have no idea about all that was actually happening in that family but I learned years later that the violent son eventually crossed a line with the law was doing time in prison. I was not surprised but it still bothered me that he was not given therapy while he was still young in an effort to change the trajectory of his life. 

We have so much to do when it comes to discovering how to fix a broken soul. If we never make an effort to help such souls to be better we will have to deal with the kind of bullies who grow up to be criminals or maybe even tyrants who manage to take control of nations. We see these difficult individuals when they are young and all too often look the other way or wash our hands in frustration allowing them to just move them along. Somehow I believe was can do better.  

He boasted that he is rich and then explained why he believes this is so. In fact, what he sees as his riches have nothing to do with money or possessions. I thought about his words for sometime and then delightfully realized that I too am rich. So here forth is an explanation of why that is so. 

I am rich. I have a working mind that has allowed me to read hundreds and perhaps even thousands of books and articles and written words that have inspired me and left me ever more edified in knowledge and enjoyment of the human capacity to analyze and learn. 

I am rich. I have always known love from my family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and students. My store of good times and laughter is immeasurable. I am an oligarch of incredible relationships that have created the true wealth of my life. From the time I was born to the present day I have experienced the good fortune and extravagance of being with generous people who showed me that nothing in life is more valuable than the moments that I share with others. 

I am rich. I live in a cocoon in which I feel safe and secure. I have not had to endure war or want. I sleep each night in a state of comfort and rise to each new day with the assurance that I will have food to eat, clothes to keep me warm and the beauty of flowers and birds festooning the world around me. I am grateful that my life is not ravaged by want or need even as I see what I must to for those who do not share my good fortune. I understand that my richness requires me to be a generous steward working for the good of all people everywhere. I know I must share the wealth of my life. 

I am rich. I have enjoyed excellent health for most of my seventy seven years. I have mostly had boundless energy and only slowed down a bit as I aged. I have been the beneficiary of good doctors, good medicine and plentiful food. My life has been long and rather easy because of who my parents were and where I have lived. I did nothing to earn my good fortune. It has simply derived from lucky circumstances. 

Sometimes I wonder why I am so rich while others struggle. I suspect that I owe more to those in need because I have so much. It is only fair that I share my energy, my talents, my knowledge, my love. Hoarding the wealth of my life would surely be wrong and so I do my best to help others to learn, to feel safe, to experience the goodness that I have always known. I expect that I fall short of giving enough even as there are so many less fortunate souls crying for help all around the world. I can only do so much but is it ever enough? Surely I am meant to open my heart to the suffering without judgement for they did not have the advantages that have been mine from the time of my birth. 

I am not speaking of money or possessions when I make an accounting of my wealth. In that regard I am quite average but still rather wealthy when I read about a woman living under a tarp with her children not far from where I once lived. I have to wonder what happened to her and how she ended up in such dire straits. I know full well that my family and my friends would never have let such a thing happen to me. What was her story? Why was there nobody to help her? Why I am rich while she is poor?

I have friends and family who do wondrous things for others. They humble me with their generosity and show me that I must do more to spread my own gifts and talents while my mind and body are still working so well. 

Most of us are richer than we may think we are. The measure of our wealth is not focused on gold or possessions but on the relationships and joy that fills the coffers of our lives. Those of us who have much incur a duty to seek out those who have little. Instead of shunning immigrants in search of better lives for themselves and their children it is our duty to welcome them. Instead of insulting and taunting people who are different we should open our arms and accept them. There is much want in the world around us that can be repaired if we all simply learn to love and to choose leaders whose hearts are open as well. Hatefulness is the enemy of us all. It breeds the kind of greed and distrust that threatens to bankrupt us.. Our riches increase in value when we spread them far and wide. The poor in spirit are among us and in need of our generosity and protection. 

I am rich and I have known that every single day of my life. From the time I was born I enjoyed the silver spoon of love, acceptance, safety and freedom. Those who gave me such riches showed me how to share good fortune so that is what I will continue to do. 

Life was adventurous when I was a child. My neighborhood was filled with children on every street. At the end of the subdivision there was a bayou where childhood explorations felt just like living alongside Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. While I never actually went into the water, I many times swung over the snake filled Simms Bayou on a swing that someone had built high up in an ancient tree. It took daring just to climb to the platform from which we jumped but I was either exceedingly courageous or really dumb as to any dangers back then.

There were rumors that alligators sometimes sunned themselves on the lawns of those whose homes backed up to the bayou but I never actually saw one. I just made sure that I would never have a close encounter by staying away from the murky waterway that separated Overbrook where I lived from Garden Villas on the other bank. Those who shared homes with critters from the deep had to watch for snakes like water moccasins or they might get bitten. A lady from Czechoslovakia who was friends with my mother almost died from a bite by the viper so I made sure that I checked the area before moving around. My Grandma had shown me how to watch out for critters lurking in high grass and I always followed her advice. 

Who knew that squirrels were also troublesome? A girl who lived around the corner from me became very sick when a squirrel that she tried to pet turned on her and bit her hand. Unfortunately the cute little fellow had rabies and she spent many painful days in the hospital getting the treatment that would save her. I remember praying for her at my Catholic school and being delighted when she survived her ordeal. 

There was a large wooded area across from our church that was the domain of the neighborhood kids. I was a true free range child who delighted in the adventure of roaming through trees and weeds to explore and build forts that made us feel like pioneers of old. Most of us began our adventures around the age of seven and neither our parents nor ourselves seemed to worry that we might encounter danger. Nonetheless we created scary stories about what we had seen that we told at night whenever someone had a slumber party. Little of what we claimed had happened was real but our imaginations made us feel that such things probably might take place if we were not very careful. 

Our bicycles took us up and down the streets and sometimes even over the railroad tracks at the entrance to the neighborhood. Everybody knew everybody else and even though we thought we were free as birds adults were watching over us all of the time and keeping our parents advised of where we were and how we were doing. That’s just how life was back then.

Most of the time I didn’t get into any trouble but now and then my friends and I might come across some teenagers smoking or making out. They usually scared us into running away as fast as possible and never revealing what we had seen. I probably learned more about taking care of myself in those wonderful days than all the formal lessons might have taught me. 

My fun was not limited to the place where I lived because my cousins and I roamed my grandmother’s neighborhood in the east end of Houston whenever we got together. We climbed on mountains of rock and shale at a local business on Sundays by skittering under the fence. We pretended we were mountain climbers. Only later did we realize how dangerous it was to climb on those loose rocks. We most surely had guardian angels watching over us us or someone would have been hurt. As kids we had little regard for possible danger.

There was an abandoned two story house one street over from where my grandmother lived. We avoided that place out of fear of what kind of demons were haunting it but eventually our curiosity got the best of us. We made our way over to the place only to find that the front door was ajar. The downstairs was littered with leaves, cans and other refuse but was otherwise not particularly interesting. We took a vote and agreed that we needed to go up the stairs to see what was there.

The planks creaked as we made our way higher and higher. Finally we gazed from the stairway at a wide-open area that held a makeshift bed of blankets. Nearby a pile of clothes convinced us that someone was living in the dilapidated place. One of my cousins decided to bravely do a bit more investigation so he moved from the stairway into the room in spite of our worries that doing so was not a good idea. Suddenly the floor fell apart under his feet and he saved himself from falling down below by spreading his arms like an anchor, but his feet were dangling in mid air. The oldest and strongest of the boys gingerly made their way over to him and managed to pull him out of his precarious position. Then we all hightailed it down the stairs and out the front door as fast as our feet would take us. 

Just as we turned to head for Grandma’s house the person who lived in the “haunted” place came in to view yelling obscenities and warnings at us while we ran with as much speed as we could muster. Never looking back we hurled ourselves at the safety of our grandmother’s front porch and breathlessly vowed never to tell our parents what we had done and never to venture over there again. 

It’s been a long long time since those days of my youth. I would not consider doing those same kind of things today. I am older and wiser and my sense of adventure is muted. Still, the memories bring a smile to my face and a sense that those days were as good as it ever gets. I don’t even think of how lucky we were not to get hurt and true to our word we never told our moms what we had done. Sometimes I wonder if they somehow knew.

I am a history freak. My favorite books are historical. I get a kick out of learning about events and ways of life that were previously unknown to me. I suppose that my interest in history goes right along my search for my ancestry. I have had great luck in some branches of my family tree and not so much in others. I have been rather surprised by how much I was able to learn about my immigrant grandparents who came here from Czechoslovakia. Using ancestry sites, family stories, reading historical tracts and culling through dusty boxes of family documents have provided some interesting insights about my ancestral heritage. 

For years there was a family disagreement about where my grandparents were born. Everyone seemed to agree that my grandmother was born in Czechoslovakia but there were two different stories about my grandfather. While some agreed that he too was born in Czechoslovakia, others insisted that he was born in Cleveland, Ohio. For a very long time I had no proof either way until one of my cousins sent me a box of documents that had sat for years in a dusty garage. 

I had to use gloves to handle the yellowing and brittle papers and most of them gave me little new insights about my grandparents. It was a photo of a page in the family Bible that unlocked the mystery for me. It clearly listed both grandparents dates and locations of birth along with the names of their respective parents. Further verification came from yet another cousin who had enlisted the help of a professional from Slovakia who confirmed that the names, places and dates that I had found were indeed correct. Furthermore the new findings gave me the names of my great great grandparents as well. 

My grandfather was born Pavel Dusan Uhrik in Trencin in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I read about the era when he was growing up into an adult and learned that the Hungarians had created very strict laws for the nations under their thumb. In fact they had made it unlawful for anyone in their empire to speak native languages, instead insisting that all citizens had to speak Hungarian in schools, churches and other public places. The rules were incredibly restrictive and considered Slovaks like my grandparents to be of a lesser quality than Hungarians. The Slovakian people were treated as inferior and generally relegated to lives with less education and laboring jobs. 

I suppose that my grandfather was looking for a way out of the horrific treatment of his people and so when places like Houston, Texas sent advertisements to European countries enticing the people to come to America he saw a way out of the situation. In 1912, he booked a ride on a steamship from Bremen, Germany and found his way to Galveston, Texas which was one of the ports of entry at that time. I have seen his name on the register for the day that he arrived. 

Grandpa Uhrik found work at a farm near Houston and saved his money so that he might send for my grandmother the following year. She too arrived in Galveston and the two of them got busy planning for a future that would allow them the freedoms that were missing under Hungarian rule. Eventually Grandpa would Americanize his name to Paul D. Ulrich and he would also become a naturalized citizen of the United States.

. According to my mother and aunts and uncles my grandfather was quite proud to be and American and he cherished the freedoms that came with his move. He instructed his children to ignore the taunts that were hurled at them by people who were angered by their presence because they were immigrants. He urged them to hold their heads high and to appreciate the opportunities that were so numerous in the United States even as rocks were being hurled at them.

My mother often spoke of her father’s attention to the country from which he had come. He was quite happy after World War I when the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell apart. While he was not so sure about the Slovaks and the Czechs being joined as one country, he was at least happy that his nation finally had found a way to be free. When Hitler invaded he was gravely concerned that his people were once again subservient to a nation that only wanted them for their rich farmland and supply of labor. He carefully followed World War II and was especially proud that all four of his American sons served in the military and helped to free Czechoslovakia once again.

My grandfather had wisely used his talents, his curiosity and his investments to have a house that he owned and a job where he faithfully worked. He had even bigger plans for his retirement years so he had purchased land in Richmond, Texas where he hoped to one day have a farm. Unfortunately he had a cerebral hemorrhage and died after World War II around the time when Russia laid claim to Czechoslovakia and made it a member of the USSR.

My mother always wondered if her father’s stroke resulted from yet another disappointing enslavement of his homeland by an authoritarian government. She said that when the takeover was announced in the news her father cried, something that he had rarely done in all of his life. 

I have followed the fate of what is now Slovakia for most of my adult life. I was ecstatic when the USSR fell apart and Slovakia became a free nation in its own right. I have most recently been concerned by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his rarely spoken but very real desires to resurrect the former USSR. I worried about the authoritarian government in Hungary with its rules that sounded so much like the ones that convinced my grandfather to leave his homeland so many decades ago. I felt his smile in my heart when Orban was defeated in the recent election and I found myself hoping that there will be no more bitter disappointments that would have make him cry. 

I think I understand my grandfather even though I have never met him. He was an honorable man who endured humiliation from Hungary in his youth and had to ignore those who did not want him in the United States. His grandchildren like me and my brothers and cousins have truly enjoyed the best that the United States of America has had to offer. My hope is that we will preserve our freedoms which are now under stress. I think he would appreciate that so far we can still speak our minds and even protest the wrongs that we see. I imagine him feeling quite proud that he was able to give us such a gift. I know that I will always thank him for his foresight and will do my part to preserve the freedoms that mean so much to us all.