Previously

Let me back up a bit to the years leading up to Mac's death. A little backstory, if you will. In 1985, the year after I'd gone to college up north, Mac showed up on Mom's and Daddy's doorstep, in a state. Someone was after him and he needed a place to hide. Of course, they let him move in. There he stayed for the next 23 years.

Over the course of the six years after he moved in, he became increasingly ill, and his behavior became increasingly frightening and unpredictable. He covered the window in his room, sealed off the connecting door, and created an aluminum foil contraption around the T.V (why does paranoid schizophrenia seem to often include the use of aluminum foil?). He had become obsessed with Oral Roberts.

During one visit when I was attempting to make contact with Mac (that's really what it was like-trying to make contact, not converse), he sat on the edge of his bed, playing and re-playing a recording of a phone call he had made to the Oral Roberts headquarters, and watching a taped broadcast of one of the shows. His attention to me was minimal and hostile. One of his favorite things to say to me when I tried to make contact with him was, with a sneer, "Oh, that's right. You love me," stretching out the word love to indicate his complete contempt for me.

I learned many years later, during a period of remission, that his delusions involved the belief that everyone could read his thoughts. Therefore, when I asked questions like, "What's wrong?" or "What can I do?" he believed that I was totally fucking with him. After all, I could read his thoughts so of course I knew what was wrong but was just pretending to not know, and pretending to care. I also learned that one of the things he was doing when listening to the tape recording and watching the show was looking for evidence that "they" had infiltrated his thoughts.

Toward the end of those six years, he became the Classic Crazy Person. He stopped bathing regularly. He wore a wool knit cap in 90 degree weather (paranoid schizophrenia also seems to often involve the wearing of these knit hats-to keep the thoughts in? Or out?). He talked to himself, sometimes argued with invisible people, and became increasingly angry. He slammed doors, yelled at Mom and Daddy, and went screeching down the road in the car, screaming out the window. I think it was during this time that he was arrested, or at least picked up, once or twice for causing disturbances in public, including indecent exposure.

Things finally began coming to a head when he started behaving in a threatening manner toward Mom and Daddy. (It was probably at this time that Daddy began sleeping with a pistol under his pillow.) Mom managed to get a court order stating that the next time he threatened them, they could call the police and have him picked up. (Tennessee has no "5150" law like California.) The day finally came and Mom called the police. Two officers came, one of whom had apparently actually had some training for a situation such as this, thank God. Daddy came home from work. Maggie left work and went over. And Mom's brother went over. I did not join them because I was in New York.

As I understand it, after talking with Mac, the officers agreed to let him drive himself to the hospital for evaluation. And the hospital agreed to let him go home if he took his meds and went for outpatient treatment. So back home he went, where, for the next year, he "bided his time," as he later told me.