My Hart Thaw: A Memoir of a Sister's Love, Courage and Faith amidst the Chaos of Schizophrenia

By Claire Hart Daniels

Claire's oldest sister Janice was her erratic roommate and companion through the distress, trauma and personality changes of schizophrenia. Claire and her family learned that while family bonds can be severely stretched, they can never truly be broken.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543905977

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Epilogue

This memoir attempts to paint the canvas of two sisters’ lives. An unlikely duo, the colors of our years together still glow to me from another place in time. My arrival into my family was on the eve of my sister’s ensuing departure. I was born when she was in her junior year of high school. I, the youngest of seven children and she, the oldest. She would be leaving home; me arriving. It would seem that our worlds would always be far apart except for one complication that kept her world tethered to mine-Schizophrenia.

One of my earliest memories of family parties was the one celebrating my sister’s going into the convent. Our home was filled with those near and dear. There was a celebration going on for my sister Janice in that late summer of 1958. I was four years old and remember peering up at aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, and neighbors as they congratulated Janice. Ladies in their waist-fitted dresses, men in their coats and ties. Janice was leaving to join a semi-cloistered convent called the Good Shepherd located in the city of Philadelphia. The party sounds—laughter, hugs, glasses clinking—still echo through the decades. A cherished family time surrounded by love and good wishes. I was caught up in the excitement of the day. As the youngest present, I was proud to be included in such a grown-up party.

With all those felicitations, were there any questions, doubts, fears about this girl surrounded by her fun-loving friends? The 1950s teenage years were filled with jitterbug dances, Bill Haley and the Comets, the Platters, and Elvis Presley. Stealing sips of beer was the utmost in teenage illegal rebellion for them. Happy Days, not Teenage Wasteland. Guess this was not the time or era for those thoughts or inclinations.

Janice, soon to turn twenty-one, must have decided after much deliberation that this was to be her life’s path. It was not a peculiar decision back then for children raised in Catholic homes and attending Catholic schools. I have no insight of what her reason was for leaning toward the religious world at that time. Later it fell into "wish I had asked" folders of my memory.

Off we went that fall as a family to visit Janice in her new home. Bringing items of food and necessities—gifts from us to the sisters there. It was always after mass on appointed Sundays, all of us in our best clothes, spending the afternoon with our sister.

One Sunday in December of 1958, I can still remember sitting in the back seat listening to the radio and my father rolling down the driver’s window to signal his turn. The Baltimore Colts were playing the New York Giants in a championship game, my father and brothers, (both Philadelphia Eagles fans), paying close attention to the game. It was a Super Bowl type of event before the Super Bowl existed. This carried great significance for the sports addicts in the family, but not enough to stop us from visiting Janice. It never occurred to any of us to object or state we didn’t want to go.

No sighs of impatience about the excursion. This is just what we did. This is what we were, a family going to visit and encourage their big sister.

Early 1959

Our household was going to move. My mother was busy with the anticipation and preparation to transfer six kids, a dog, and possessions of years into a new home a few blocks away.

Then crashed in the storm that lasted for decades.

The Mother Superior of my sister’s convent called to inform my parents that Janice was no longer a suitable candidate and they needed to come and pick her up. The call came in on a Friday, six months after Janice’s entrance into the convent. My parents were asked if she could leave by that weekend.

No one knew what had happened nor was there any information forthcoming. Back then, it was referred to as a nervous breakdown.

Janice came home exhausted and unglued.

I had just turned five, but I can still remember the confused, dazed, dark look in her eyes. I would come to see that look in multiples for many years.

Mom and Dad searched for the best psychiatrist in the city at that time. Thus, my sister started a routine that would go on and off for what was an eternity to the rest of the family. We were being submerged in the murky world of schizophrenia.

In April of that year, I went to the new house with my mother. Mom had packed the car with small boxes to drop off there with the addition of my brother Joe, seven, and me, five, crammed int0 the back seat as well. After we completed that task, she collected us into the car for the return trip.

When we came back to our soon-to-be-former home, Mom went in to gather up more items to return again to the new place. Joe wanted to wait in the car. I went into the house and looked out the big porch window as the car started to make its way driverless down the street. Mom forgot to put the car in park, and suddenly it was careening down the road with Joe trapped inside. Thank God, he managed to pull the wheel and the car went into the curb. The relief in the air was palpable.

As you could imagine there were a lot of shouts and racing to stop the impending accident. Bodies flying out the door in a mad dash down the street. My parents and other siblings checking on my brother and the car. In the midst of all the commotion I turned around and saw Janice standing right behind me, the two of us left watching. Her eyes were dead and staring as if nothing was going on. She was rooted to the floor with just that dark distant gaze. The house was eerily quiet. Moments before, where there was utter mayhem was now a glum hush. I stood confused; my brother was safe, the car undamaged, so what could this be? No wonder Mom was so preoccupied. A state normally reserved for busy mothers, however in this case, Mom entered a whole other realm of distraction where she resided for the rest of her life.

We moved into a Victorian house with five bedrooms. It had beautiful old trees in the side yard, a dirt lane alongside leading to the garage, a long-standing building where formerly horses, now cars, were parked. Looking back, I realize my parents must have thought Janice would be in the convent for the rest of her life and the new home provided all the necessary space. Now with her future undetermined that plan changed.

This adjustment was how I came, at age five, to room with my mentally ill sister in her twenty-second year, an arrangement that would go on and off, like Janice’s mental health, for many years to come.

Our family settled in and grew into the house quickly. We were a teasing, fun-loving, and noisy group in all the good ways, until we were not.

As Janice’s condition waxed and waned, we went from sunny days to shattering nights filled with yelling, arguments, and hatred of these behaviors that made up what my sister now was. Janice would appear calm and tranquil, then break into paranoid, accusing, and nonsensical rants. Mom and Dad tried to talk sense to her, but that only infuriated her more. We all began to recognize one specific symptom: Janice’s random talks or shouts to no one.

My parents desperately tried to find help for Janice—no easy task in 1959. Janice would show some improvements, but it was only a shaft of sunlight shining through during a hurricane. These sun periods gave us hope that the worst was behind us and tomorrow held a promise not a threat. Eventually, those optimisms became weary and worn.

A stabilized Janice entered a nursing program that she completed and began a career in that field finding employment in a city hospital. She was maintaining, complying with some sort of medication program I suppose at that time, which enabled her to complete her coursework and obtain a job.

Off she went in her completely white outfit—starched uniform, nurse’s hat, stockings, and shoes—to work. I remember sitting in our room smelling the white shoe polish she was using to clean her shoes. I would wake up and see her getting ready in the predawn hours to catch a train for her 7:00 a.m. shift.

One early morning I heard Mom speaking to Janice asking her to take a wrench to put in her purse, as a pre-MACE safeguard. The city was not such a safe place in those early hours or late nights.

As I listened to her soft whisper of concern I thought as a young child this is what nurses dressed in their starch white attire must do. Carry wrenches to ward off offenders. Only later did I think how odd it was that our calm, collected mom had Janice pack a wrench. Perhaps she was more apprehensive about Jan’s fragile state, afraid her mental steadiness could be shattered like a delicate egg.

Near the end of summer 1961, Janice applied and was accepted into the Dominican Sisters of Rose Hawthorne, an order dedicated to the care of patients with terminal cancer.

The order was started by Rose Hawthorne, the daughter of author Nathaniel and Sophia Peabody Hawthorne.

Rose converted to Catholicism and in the latter part of the nineteenth century, began her mission to serve and take care of incurable cancer patients in New York City. There was no place for many of these desperate people to go and because of this they would suffer terribly at the end of their lives from lack of shelter, care, and basic human needs.

Rose Hawthorne Lathop was appalled at the conditions she discovered in New York City. She started to care for the destitute sick in the city’s tenements. Rose raised some funds and rented a small flat with four rooms in the 600 block of Water Street. She soon was overwhelmed with patients and petitions for help. Her mission increased and she decided to start a religious order of nuns dedicated to the care and well-being of the impoverished, terminally ill.

Eventually the order moved into a large monastery in what is now known as Rosary