I came to know Max because of being a card-carrying "lunatic fringe" member of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Dr. Fuller Torrey values what he calls "lunatic fringe members" because they are activists, they "push the envelope". Every year at the NAMI national convention, Dr. Torrey would pass out his famous "refrigerator check list" of what it would take to earn his admired "lunatic fringe" (activist) button. That's the way he would keep members from being passive and complacent. Very effective. I enjoy and love Dr. Torrey: he is one of my heroes. I even earned a lunatic fringe button of my very own once.
One day I read a front page newspaper story about a local man who was on trial for what he called a "mercy killing". He had murdered his wife who had long been diagnosed as having schizophrenia. It was an intriguing story. Remember that I teach "Family Class" every single week at the psychiatric hospital where I work. It became important to me to know what had happened in that case.
So I wrote the man a compassionate letter expressing my genuine regret that he had never joined the Alliance. I told him, "In the Alliance we are family," and that I considered him family, that he was not alone in his dilemma. The only reason I could do this was because of the quotes from him in the newspaper--it was obvious to me that the guy was suicidal.
And Max got himself a prison sentence that he certainly could have delayed and likely could have minimized time served, but he insisted that if he had done wrong to "spare" her, give him the maximum-- which is exactly what he got, eighteen years and labeled a felon.
The lawyer who prosecuted Max was fixing to run for mayor and gave a heartless interview in the same newspaper. This lawyer courted newspaper coverage every chance he could get. He made clever droll remarks, zinging the victims he prosecuted, merciless. I worried that in Max's case there was an extenuating circumstance--caregiver burn-out--that should have, in fairness, been considered.
Max responded to my letter. We ended up close friends. I wrote him a letter just about every day for two years, until he died in prison. What an experience that was!
And I got an answer to my burning question of why he did it. He (at age 62) had lost his job the week before. No insurance. His wife had emphysema in addition to schizophrenia and had gone into cardiac arrest once before in the emergency room in acute emphysemic distress--had to be revived. At the time of her death she was both acutely schizophrenic and needing to go to the emergency room for emphysema. Max had no insurance, plus he thought his wife's obvious schizophrenic state would cause the emergency room staff to have her committed to the State Hospital. Max had no way to pay, saw no way to save her, had promised her that he would never let her be put into the State Hospital again, a promise that was deeply important to both of them. He was in a crisis. He thought he made a "rational" decision to kill her then kill himself.
(Max always did choose to embrace the worst case scenario. --It was his only way of conquering his fear of it, by choosing it. He did that with his wife, and he did that with prison.)
--Max prided himself on being very rational and on his intelligence. He had been a spy in the Cold War, spoke 14 languages. When the CIA took over Army Intelligence, Max quit being a spy and ended up using those skills as a professional debt collector. He was in charge of making collections for J.B.White Department Store in Columbia for a number of years.--
So Max was "rational" in carrying out the first part of his "solution": he shot Nelly, his wife. He killed their pet cocker spaniel, with intentions of "sparing" it, too. Then he put the gun to his own head and froze, sat there for two hours. He decided, "Wait and see what happens with the rest of my life. I can die at any time." So he picked up the phone, called the police and told them what he had done.
Max was very law-abiding. Previously, he had never even gotten a traffic ticket.
I still am horrified at Nelly's death. I wish Max and Nelly had had a better social network--that might have saved them both. Society didn't say, "We almost lost both; but, thank God,one was saved," (but I said that to myself). Society punished Max. Max's story still makes me sad to my core. He ended up being one of the closest relationships I've ever had in my whole life. His death tore a chunk out of me.
I did what I could to make the rest of Max's life better. I felt that I was doing a "yoke ministry". That term was told to me by a friend at work, a wonderful nurse who married one of the chaplains in the Prison System. She said that's what her husband selectively does in his ministry--chooses to be yoked to a prisoner to help him bear his load of burdens. (But it wasn't enough. Max got insufficient relief even so.)
Prisoners could have two meals per year brought in by a visitor. I made Easter and Thanksgiving meals for Max. He died on a February 7th. The Thanksgiving meal that I had recently brought him had been prepared by me and Diana then age 12. It was the first turkey she had ever cooked. It was the most delicious, moist turkey I have ever eaten. I doubt I will ever have a better Thanksgiving meal.
And Max complained of how loud the prison was, so I was very pleased to think up giving him a battery-operated small radio&tape player with earphones as a gift so he wouldn't have to listen to the prison noise. I thoroughly enjoyed selecting music for him. I found out he loved opera. I had never listened to opera before, but I did then, so I could choose and record selections for Max. By the way, I listened to Madame Butterfly when Princess Diana died. I think she could have related to Butterfly's desperation at desertion by the man she had pinned her hopes and life on and had had a son by. Max gave me opera. I never listened to music so well in my life than at that period, because I was listening to hear for his relief, to send what was good to him. The same was true of life events. No other period of my life except courtship, early marriage and the birth and infancy of my daughters can touch those two years regarding vivid memories and also recognitions of significance of events. This is because I shared my life with Max in those daily letters. Even a simple drive down a street seeing seasonal changes was more potent because I was seeing it to remember to tell him, because he had to miss it in prison. I still remember and savor myself those things I saved to tell him. I noticed things I otherwise would not have noticed.
I believe that God intended me to be His representative to Max. I believe that Max froze at the point of pulling that trigger because God realized how devoted Max had been to his sick wife, how good Max really was, and God loved Max so much that He wanted to give Max more chance to gain Heaven. Max was an intellectual snob when it came to God. Max was arrogantly an atheist.
Max's isolation was an obstacle I kept bumping into when I would try to untangle his pain and soothe and smooth it. His atheism communicated itself as the ultimate isolation. The poor man had been so isolated by having a schizophrenic wife. At her first break, there was no one even to help him physically manage getting her into a treatment facility--the automobile drive to the hospital was horrible for Max to maneuver while trying to control Nelly. During her second break, Max gave up his job, moved with Nelly to Austria, and lived up his savings because he still thought he could find some sort of top psychiatrist in Vienna who might cure her.
But of course he didn't find a cure for her. That's the way it goes with schizophrenia.
When she had her third break, Max slept at night tied to Nelly with a rope, one side knotted around his waist, the other side knotted around hers. That way, when she woke up, he could also be pulled awake to keep her from wandering. He was out of money, so he took a position as evening clerk at a motel, working well below his potential in order to have Nelly present with him, a job that would let him be available to look after her.
He learned what to expect about her limitations, learned how to adapt and manage. Things got better and Max was able to move to a better, more suitable job. He worked at a local finance office,and was able to make it a top producer for its chain. Then Nelly got sick again. Max was fired from that job when he began having to pay more attention to his sick wife than the office and could not "keep up production". His employer was cold-blooded, heartless. The supervisor helped Max drive Nelly to Baptist Hospital. When they returned to the office, he fired Max. Ironically, Max said how he wished the supervisor had told him before the trip to the hospital, because being fired made hospitalization not affordable while giving Max time that (he believed) would have allowed him to be able to manage the illness situation himself, perhaps avoiding the hospitalization.
The ultimate irony, though, was still ahead. Nelly had had to change psychiatrists shortly before her death. The new doctor had confronted Max, telling him that he was too controlling of Nelly, that Max should "back off" and give the very disabled Nelly more independence. Max knew the situation much better than that psychiatrist. Max gave the doctor the benefit of the doubt and attempted to give Nelly more independence. But the former spy trailed his schizophrenic wife, unseen by her, which ended up being a very good precaution because she panicked in a shopping mall and was totally losing it until Max rushed to her side. Nelly was genuinely disabled. Max was her necessary crutch. But the damned new doctor "adjusted" her medication downward, which is the reason Nelly was having another break which precipitated the final crisis.
I've replayed the events that led up to Max's murder-suicide "rationale" in my mind many times, trying for a different outcome. There were several things that, had they been different, would have avoided the tragedy. A better psychiatrist, one with just an ounce more savvy, would have been sufficient for a better outcome. How completely frustrating!
Just a few days before his death, Max and I had a visit that I will never forget. He knew he was dying. I knew he had cancer and that it would eventually lead to his death, but I was remembering the deaths of family members whose cancer received treatment. I thought Max had much more time. It did not register on me that Max was refusing treatment for his cancer and that the cancer was, therefore, eating him alive, rapidly consuming him. Max knew; but I was stupid, naive. That day two preachers were roaming the halls of the prison hospital trying to earn notches on their Bibles, or at least that was the way it seemed to me. They appeared like gunslingers packing their King James Versions, barging into Max's room because they knew he was terminal and they wanted his repentance. They never bothered to get to know him as a person before they tried to sell him Eternal Fire Insurance. Before Max threw them out, I told them in total surprise, "But he is a good man." I thought that they must have just assumed he wasn't because he was, after all, a prisoner. Later I worried that I might have spoken up and interfered at a crucial time, derailing something I should not have. But I don't think those particular preachers were bringing salvation around with them that day.
Max was pleased with me for speaking up for him, for recognizing that he was good. It opened his heart, let his defenses down. He told me, from his heart, "To Hell with God, I want Nelly." I begin stroking his hand and said, "Max, I think you will be reunited with Nelly again." I have no idea why I said that, but I felt confident. I told him that God loved him and that God was Good. Max asked me for a piece of paper and a pencil. I dug in my pocketbook and pulled out a scrap of envelope and gave it to him with a pencil. Max wrote a G - sideways infinity sign - d, and gave it back to me. "That is my idea of God," he told me. He showed me that he believed God was infinite goodness. I framed that scrap from him and have it now on my dresser.
--Kay McCrary, a member of Whaley Street United Methodist Church
(also Director of Patient & Family Education, Bryan Psychiatric
Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina)