My All-American, Bipolar Dad: An Evaluation and Appreciation of His Life

By David M. Gaffin

My dad, Morris Chadwick "Chad" Gaffin, was an all-American kind of guy who was a devout Christian, a professional Scouter with the Boy Scouts of America, and an artillery officer with the US Army during the Cold War. He was a well-meaning and charismatic guy who unfortunately suffered from a mental illness known as bipolar disorder. Despite being diagnosed with this mental illness in the middle of his life, he refused to admit it and take the appropriate medicine.

Unfortunately, his mental illness worsened with age, and he began to inadvertently destroy his relationships with people, which prevented him from fully accomplishing his ultimate goal in life of becoming a minister. Most of the bad things in Dad's life were done to himself, but he always saw himself as a victim of evil people out to destroy him.

Despite the unflattering and embarrassing realities of his bipolar disorder, this book will fully examine his life and explain how our family dealt with his mental illness and difficult personality. It was sad to watch Dad's life slowly spiral downward into a personal hell as he became his own worst enemy, especially with his personal relationships and finances. For those who knew him best, he was ultimately loved and appreciated as a person who wanted to make a positive impact on the world. Maybe this book could give his life more meaning and serve as a cautionary tale for those with similar loved ones who refuse to seek help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9798891572294

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My All-American, Bipolar Dad

An Evaluation and Appreciation of His Life

David M. Gaffin

Copyright © 2024 David M. Gaffin

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-89157-228-7 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-89157-229-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Explanation of Bipolar Disorder and Purpose of This Book

Explanation of Bipolar Disorder and Purpose of This Book

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

How Did He Get to This Point?

Chapter 2

Parent's Travails and Contentious Childhood Years

Chapter 3

Travails and Successes as a Young Adult in College and the Army

Chapter 4

Years as a Professional Scouter and Scoutmaster for Sons

Chapter 5

Getting His Dream Job and Increasing Signs of Bipolar Disorder

Chapter 6

Retirement Years as Bipolar Disorder Worsened

Chapter 7

Increasing Religious Zeal and Attending Seminary

Chapter 8

Chaotic Manic Years and Threat of Divorce

Chapter 9

Getting Divorced, Declaring Bankruptcy, and Becoming Homeless

Chapter 10

His Own House and Trail End, Tennessee

Chapter 11

Getting a Conservatorship and His Final Years

Chapter 12

Understanding and Appreciating His Life

Appendix

The Gift of Love Sermon and The Gift of Love Poem

The Gift Of Love

The Gift of Love

About the Author

To Dad, thanks for being there for me throughout my life. Although there were many bad and difficult times, life seemed strange to me after you died since I had never known life without you in it in some significant way. Besides, there were many good times as well. This book attempts to try to understand the bad and difficult times due to your mental illness that you refused to acknowledge while remembering and appreciating the many good times that were meaningful. Despite your disappointments and personal shortcomings, I felt your life was interesting and purposeful to many people. Maybe this book could ultimately help to bring more meaning and understanding to your life for other people to appreciate.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love (1 John 4:7–8).

Preface

Explanation of Bipolar Disorder and Purpose of This Book

Explanation of Bipolar Disorder and Purpose of This Book

My dad, Morris Chadwick Chad Gaffin, was a complicated individual who suffered from a mental illness known as bipolar disorder. I don't know how long he suffered from this mental illness, but it could have possibly been for most of his life. It became more obvious to me personally when I was in college, but then again, this is usually the time in most people's lives when they become more aware of life in general. On the one hand, Dad had an honest and wholesome good side as a good Christian and American citizen. He was a devout and sincere Christian, a captain in the US Army, and a scout executive for the Boy Scouts of America. On the other hand, he had an overly prideful, egotistical, and ultracompetitive side (personality traits likely magnified by his bipolar disorder), which ultimately made it difficult for other people to deal with him and appreciate his sincere efforts to be a good and productive person.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), an estimated 4 percent of the population experience bipolar disorder (formerly called manic depression) at some point in their lives that can last several days or weeks. Individuals with bipolar disorder have unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels, concentration, and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks. They can experience extreme mood swings between intense highs (mania) and intense lows (depression) including periods of unusually intense emotions, changes in sleep patterns and activity levels, and uncharacteristic behaviors—often without knowing their likely harmful or undesirable effects. Most researchers agree that there is no single cause of bipolar disorder, and it's likely that many factors (such as different brain structure/functioning and genetics) contribute to a person's chance of having the mental illness. While research has shown that people who have a parent or sibling with bipolar disorder have an increased chance of having the disorder themselves, many genes are involved and researchers feel that no one gene can cause the disorder.

My dad mainly experienced manic episodes for several months at a time, which included increased energy and agitation, decreased need for sleep, exaggerated sense of well-being and self-confidence, being unusually talkative, having racing and excessive thoughts, and exhibiting poor decision-making abilities, especially with money and personal relationships. In addition, he would sometimes experience depressed episodes where he had a marked loss of interest in his usual hobbies, weight gain, decreased ability to think or concentrate, bitterness about life, and resentment toward others. He also had hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid), which was probably associated with his bipolar disorder and caused him to constantly feel unusually cold and fatigued during his depressed phases. When he was in a depressed phase, he would lay in his recliner watching TV all day with a cocoon of blankets wrapped around him. Everybody has their ups and downs in life, but bipolar people have ups and downs that are more exaggerated and debilitating. Unfortunately for my dad, he rarely was in the middle—it seemed that he was either in a manic phase or a depressed phase. His stubbornness to take medicine regularly for his bipolar disorder caused it to progressively get worse as he aged, and he occasionally lost touch with reality.

I initially wrote this book to document Dad's life for our own family history so that future generations could better understand his life as he (and we) dealt with his many struggles. After writing the initial version, I thought that it could also be a helpful resource for others who had a loved one dealing with or denying their bipolar disorder. This book is intended to be an honest analysis of Dad's life and his struggles to find his way in life. I had always appreciated other people's books that shared their personal accounts of dealing with a family member with a mental illness who refused to admit their problem. Dad mostly denied that he had a mental illness and hated to talk about it since he viewed it as a personal weakness. Thus, he had a difficult time committing to taking psychiatric medicine, which he considered evil since it changed his mood and behavior. We always told Dad that it wasn't his fault for having this bipolar disorder, but it was his fault for not doing anything about it. Dad never realized that this bipolar disorder was destroying his life and personal relationships.

After a few years of honoring his wishes and keeping silent about his bipolar disorder, we ultimately decided it was best to let other people know about his condition, especially the ones who dealt with him on a daily basis. By giving these people an explanation for his strange and irritating behaviors that they were witnessing, I found that most people appreciated our honesty and ultimately became more sympathetic to Dad's plight although it was still hard to deal with him when he was in a manic phase. With all of this in mind, I decided that I would make my dad's life public with the hopes that other people would find it interesting and useful in understanding and helping those who struggle with bipolar disorder. Also, I wanted to try to give my dad's life more purpose and meaning since it sometimes can be difficult to know whether his life created more good or bad. Most of the bad in his life was done to himself as he struggled to accomplish the things that were really important to him.

Looking back on his life, I've always felt sad for Dad because he could never realize the full potential for his life. Despite the unflattering and embarrassing realities of his bipolar disorder, this book will hopefully not cast him in a negative light but rather will hopefully show his positive traits while examining his struggles to understand his perceived injustices against him as he tried to be a good American citizen and person of God.

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge many people in my immediate family for their comments, suggestions, and memories that helped make this book more interesting and accurate. Thanks to my sister for her suggestion to start the book with a climatic chapter. Also, thanks to my mom, uncle, and aunt for their grammatical corrections and additional memories. I appreciate the professional evaluation and suggestions from Dr. Namkee Choi (professor of Social Work at the University of Texas), which included adding Dad's and Mom's voices to the book to make it more real and relevant to others.

Chapter 1

How Did He Get to This Point?

It was a cold, raw January day in Harriman, Tennessee, as my dad, Morris Chadwick Chad Gaffin, was walking home with his briefcase. It was cloudy and a light drizzle was slowly beginning to intensify. Dad owned many old cars (which he always intended to eventually fix into a working condition), but he was currently without the use of a functioning car. Since he was now getting wet in the rain, Dad spotted a policeman and decided to ask him for a ride home. Harriman was a small town in rural east Tennessee, so it wasn't unusual for him to get a ride to church or home from the local police from time to time. According to their procedures, the policeman had to examine the contents of Dad's briefcase before allowing him to