We managed to get our son into a day clinic. We drove him there and met the doctor; an empathetic man with shoulders wide enough to fill a doorway, yet he didn’t loom. He moved with the grace of a smaller man and his eyes reflected a life line. He looked like someone who had earned his wrinkles. If I closed my eyes when he spoke, I was able to conjure up the voice of the father bear in the children’s story, Goldilocks.
“Why are you here?” he asked our son.
“Well doctor, I heard that you have a great setup for table tennis. The guys also told me that the café opposite serves the tastiest snacks in town.”
“That’s as good a reason as any I’ve ever heard,” the doctor said with a smile. David was drawn to this man the way he was drawn to his dad. They also had the same sense of humor.
David spent three months there but as he did not co-operate, they released him and we had no idea what would happen next. I found this poem on the desk in his bedroom.
For eight years, few people cared about me.
THEY tried to convince me it’s all a dream
but even Hitchcock couldn’t have contrived
nightmares like mine.
And all this because of an illness
‘THEY’ say I have, a mental illness.
Everyone is against me.
David.
