I am 15 years old. My father has started on a binge. I have just returned from "collecting from paper subscribers" (more than likely I was only pretending to be collecting money when actually hanging out a Schumann's delicatessen playing the pinball machines.) When I return to the house, everyone is gone. I would be nervous if everyone were here. I am even more nervous that no one is around.
The telephone rings. It's my mother. They had gone to visit the Dugans, a family on Ray Road in Chillum. Mr. Dugan works with my father and they have done some projects together for the Boy Scouts. The visit has not gone well. My father has lost self-control with his inebriation and has become verbally abusive to the Dugans and has thrown some things around their house. My mother asks me to come to the Dugan's and occupy my father so that she can get to the car and get the children away.
It is about a half mile through the woods and creek bed to the Dugans and I start out at a trot that brings me to the Dugan household about 10 minutes later. I am the rodeo clown to the bull. As soon as my father sees me, an angry scowl crosses over his face. He yells "You come here!" He is wearing a baseball cap, a pair of reasonably short shorts and no shirt. He often wears gloves, even in summer, but tonight he is not. He shoes are sneakers.
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| Bill Sohr, my father, in 1958, with his parents in Erie, PA. Typical Bill outfit.He's a big guy. |
I'm about fifty yards away and I can hear his shoes slapping the road and grunts of breathing. Should I swerve? If I do that there is a chance that he will merely place himself between me and the woods and force me to use sidewalks and streets where he will have an advantage. No I won't swerve.
Will he tackle me? I don't think so because he risks being hurt.
Most likely he will try to grab my shirt. I make a note to pivot sharply if he does so that I might spin him off, like a running back in football.
Meanwhile the little bridge is directly ahead. I have to make a sharp right immediately thereafter and I will be able to jump down a slight hill to a pathway that he will not be able to follow.
All of a sudden his foot cadence indicates a stumble and I hear a mild thud and then a long, long, long sliding-scraping sound. I can only see him in my mind's eyes abrading his hands, chest, stomach, and legs on the gravel and macadam. Silent laughter and glee explodes from somewhere so deep inside that it appears to be trumpeted from my legs through my balls to my belly button.
I was home within a few minutes. Mrs. Carragher came up the street to find me. I was sitting in the vacant lot next to my house smoking a cigarette. She asked me to come home with her and eat something. I thanked her and told her that I needed to wait until my Mom got home.
My father didn't come home that night. Instead he ran into some Prince Georges County Policemen. Their story is that he resisted arrest and they beat him up pretty thoroughly. My mother wouldn't bail him out the next day but relented the following day when friends threatened to do it. He was in big trouble. He had a secret security clearance. This was an incident that threatened it. Without that clearance, he had no job.
He obtained the "right" lawyer for Prince Georges County, thought to be rife with various kinds of public corruption. He stopped drinking for 5 years. He attended AA meetings and got very involved in the program. Cessation of drinking was an enormous improvement for our family. But alcohol was not his only problem, just the most obvious. He was still a very angry guy who was "white knuckling" his abstinence.
1993: I'm 50 and wondering if I can do this anymore
In 1993 I'm making almost $200,000 a year working about 2500 hours a year in a prison system in Maryland. My older boy is in school at William and Mary, my younger is in 10th grade. Kristin is still in graduate school and I am giving her a small stipend.
I have reached the age of 50 and realized that I had been a much better family doctor at age 40, when I moved to Smith Island. At the age of 40, I was still delivering a few babies each month, taking care of newborns and children, doing routine GYN work, particularly pap smears, assisting in surgeries, etc. I was still reading a lot. By age 50 I had moved out of family practice to prison work, all adult males and administrative duties. As the medical director of a prison for 7 years, I had seen our wonderful psychiatrist, 70 year-old Charlie Bagley, in action for many years. He came to work a few hours after I did and went home a few hours before I did and took no call which I did for me and for him. He was making twice my hourly rate. It was time to think about retraining for the home stretch of my career.
Psychiatry had great appeal. I had always been interested in it, particularly so when working in a prison and discovering that most of sick call was about something other than being physically sick. Not many physicians were curious about this, but I was.
Consider the difference between medical and psychiatry emergencies in sheer volume of the number different types of medical and surgical problems that come racing through emergency room doors. Chest pain can be heart attacks, pulmonary emboli, pneumonia, a cracked rib, shingles, peptic ulcer, dissecting aortic aneurysm, etc. What about abdominal pain? Appendicitis, cholecystitis, liver abscess, peptic ulcer, celiac or superior mesenteric thrombosis, Crohn's disease, ruptured spleen, kidney stone, inguinal hernia, etc, etc. There are severe time restrictions on making the diagnosis since survival with some of these conditions is predicated upon very early recognition and intervention.
Compare these medical emergencies with the treatments that must be provided the psychiatric patient? The primary tools that are useful in psychiatry are threefold...
- talk to the patient, see if you can de-escalate the situation
- if the patient is threatening self or others, you may grab the patient and try to control the situation with overwhelming physical force humanely supplied
- medicate the patient with one of about 4 or 5 various cocktails of proven effectiveness
I envisioned the investigators from some State Board of Medical Practice arriving at my office when I was in my 90s to strip me of my cherished medical license, yellowing on my yellowing walls in my long deteriorating psychiatry office complete with Escher paintings and Matisse and Picasso nudes. There would remain the 25 year old big-box big-screen Hitachi television in the waiting room and several pillow-beds for Archie's adopted grandson.
Then I imagined investigators actually trying to prove that a psychiatrist was outside the boundaries of accepted medical practices. It looked like the major worry was sleeping with your patients, and even then there might be found defenders of such unusual practices. Here is a biography of an amazing character:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Ellis_(psychologist)
It was very likely that once ensconced in a psychiatry practice anywhere in the United States, it would be very hard for self-important critics in State Board Agencies to actually pull my medical license off the wall. I even wondered if they could do it posthumously to psychiatrists.
And so in 1993 I had decided against further immediate work in prison medicine in somatic medicine and set my sites on a psychiatry residency and a chance to be reborn in another medical specialty. I chose New Mexico for a variety of reasons, and it was a road that led to Jasmine so I have a lot to be thankful for.
August 1994. Beginning of psychiatry residency.
I have started a psychiatric residency as the University of New Mexico. Brian is doing his second year of college at William and Mary. Keith has gone to live with his Mom, Molly, for the last 2 years of high school. My daughter Kristin came to visit me for a few days. She is currently moving from an advertising firm in Baltimore to Satchi & Satchi in Los Angeles. She is her usual bubbly self, excited about her new job, enthusiastic about the shopping in Santa Fe and the food in Albuquerque. We even find a bar that has pinball machines, our shared secret passion.
After she leaves, I drop into a horrible funk. I am sad, irritable, not sleeping, having difficulty making decisions...a depressive episode associated with the Empty Nest Syndrome. I think I need to be taking an antidepressant for a while. I do not want to be in the position of treating myself, so I call my insurance company to determine where I need to go for Mental Health Services. Lo and Behold--it's the Bernalillo County Mental Health Center and that's where I work. This will be very convenient.
I leave my office and walked 200 feet to the registration area and put my name on the list to be seen at an evaluation clinic. Then I go back to my office to finish some paperwork. Within an hour, the Chief for the Bernalillo County Mental Health Center is in my office.
"Why did you register to come here? You work here."
"Well, if I had a sore throat, wouldn't I go across the street and get a throat culture? I'm not ashamed of needing some help. I'm trying to get what I think I need now without simply taking samples of a medication that is lying around. Can't you see that I am trying to do this in the right way?"
The faculty actually forced me to go out of the system and to pay for out of pocket treatment which I must admit was well worth it. I started on prozac and and a combination of insight-oriented and problem-focused therapy. It is the fourth time in my life I have had a course of talk therapy and Dr. Leckman was both good to me and good for me.
November 1994: A recurrent dream.
I'm in therapy. This is a dream occurring more than 6 years after his death. My father has become enormous. The only way that he can fit in the VW bug is by sticking his left arm and head out of the driver-side window. His right arm sticks out of the front passenger window. He actually looks like a large, motorized black tortoise. There is mean look on his face and he is intentionally trying to run over me. He has a menacing scowl on his face. He guns the car and tries to keep me in the line of site. He repeatedly tries to hit me with the car. On the final attempt, he rolls the Volkswagen and I can hear an angry yell was the car rolls off of the horizon.
The dream occurs without significant modification at least 3 times during the fall of 1994 but never thereafter. The dream recalled my actual running away from my father in 1958. What is really behind this nightmare of my father trying to kill me? Dr. Leckman is helpful when he points out that the friction between my godfather and my father was much more likely to be a man-woman jealousy thing than anything that has to do with me. It is helpful information but not comfortable as any answer.
My considered assessment of my mental state is that I have unresolved issues with my father--what an ingenious insight. My attempt at psychotherapy more clearly defines the history. I remember more bad stuff. I remember more good stuff. I still feel a loss that I don't know who this father person was and some of the stuff is a lot worse than what will be presented here because it would seem so unfair to someone denied a voice by death--and because the family already knows the worst and will have to make their own choices about revelation to their own offspring. (I am giving children, nieces and nephews the right to interrogate one another! You can also call me and I'll tell you anything that your parents won't. You are old enough to decide!) Anyway, stuff keeps coming up without an ending and without understanding.
On the day that I had my CT scan at the end of September, I was supposed to be in Augusta, Ga to talk with Joyce Kephart, my father's second cousin who opened the door to him in 1938 as he walked through the snowstorm from the bus stop in D.C. to Takoma Park. This was a side of the family that knew him for the six years prior to combat and I was hoping to get a better feeling for him in early manhood. If I can get a window of time where there is no tumor progression, I'm hoping to get to Georgia yet.
Fall 2001: The Soothsayer
In November 2001 I am working at Mojave Mental Health for an 8 hour day on Fridays as a contract psychiatrist. The patients are generally very ill schizophrenic and severe bipolar patients who require medications. The program is so surprisingly good being that it is in Nevada, a state where the obvious goal is to rank last in any possible kind of social support network so that taxes can be kept as low as possible.
Just off the top of my head, I would say that the State motto of Nevada should be "TRANSIENT." If you believe that no one actually lives in Nevada and that everyone is passing through, it makes sense to have the leanest, meanest welfare system imaginable--the chief ingredient should be an excellent interactive computer system that guides you to the social welfare offices of the next state you intend to visit. Just passing through!. Unfortunately, to build a city that provides a very efficient level of hotel and other personal services, skilled blue collar employees are a must. They need places to live. They have family, some of whom will have severe mental illness. The failure to provide good social services affects these essential workers mightily.
Anyway, I'm working in this remarkably effective program where the sick patients have skilled case workers who can find them housing and teach them the bus service and provide a clubhouse and a thrift store and a cafeteria--a really amazing place. I don't have to worry about anything except trying to get the medications right.
I meet the medical director. He is in his eighties. His face is so old looking, it might be a mask--Dr. V. When I meet him, I tell him that I'm trying to follow in his footsteps--I want to work until I die. He laughs. "I retired once. I started going out with my buddies to play golf. After a few weeks, I make this shot and my partner says 'Nice shot.' Immediately out of my mouth 'Who the fuck cares! I gotta go back to work. Here I am.'"
His associate medical director, also in his late 70s was Dr. K. He practiced at Mojave in a wheelchair. He was a boisterous, fun-loving man, totally at ease in the environment. He occupied the office next to mine. For the first month I was working there, every once in a while I would hear Dr. K's voice booming,
"Goddamit. What's the number of that soothsayer? What's her number? I need a consultation"
and people would laugh. It was an inside joke. I waited for a couple of weeks until I happened to run into Dr.K's usual nurse, Gretchen, a beautiful breath of fresh air, who told me that there was a local woman who seemed to have some psychic abilities--good enough to have her own show at some of the casinos but a serious enough worker that local psychotherapists occasionally referred patients to her when there were like-minded beliefs expressed.
At first I was put off by the inclusion of this kind of thinking within a profession that espoused "scientific principles." I saw the use of mind-readers and fortune tellers as being too far off the scientific path and to risk the scientific foundations of the profession. But personally, I was curious. I still had this very open "father wound" that was no doubt complicated by my own failures as a husband and ongoing concerns about how my children would turn out.
I kept hearing more and more about this person, Marlene Lombardi, and I talked to Jasmine about it and we decided to make an appointment to see her. I called and received an appointment for a Saturday in November 2011.
Here is a picture of my family in August 2001 at the time of my mother's 80th birthday.
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| Big Red's 80th Birthday: From Left Jasmine, Eric, Kristin, Brian and SO Sara, Keith with Mom in foreground. August 2001. |
- What does my father have to say to me?
- I am worried about Brian. He is engaged to this law student but is planning to teach away in Mexico for a year?
- I notice that sometimes when I talk to Kristin, she has a slurred voice. I think that she is beginning to drink pretty heavily.
Eric E. What does my father have to say to me? From time to time in my life, he appears in a dream or I just have these gnawing thoughts and feel that things are not right.
Marlene M. If you want to talk to your father, there is a blue box in your garage where he hangs out. Does this mean anything to you?
(This is her technique. She throws out something and asks about meaningfulness.)
E: Yes, the blue box is a small metal box that contains some of my father's tools that were left in his estate. These tools are small dental picks and blades that he used in doing fine kinds of work working on projects. This is one of the few items I have of him.
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| The Blue Box in my current tool box. It was stored on an open shelf in Las Vegas. |
E: Yes.
M: Well, you could talk to him there if you like. If you happen to see some purplish coloring, that might be him.
E: Does he want something?
M: I don't know. He doesn't talk. There is a table in front of him. There are three blank pieces of paper on it and he is pointing to the paper. This guy is incredibly not talkative. He is just pointing to the paper. Does that mean anything to you?
E: No.
M: Well, you can begin to try on your own by going to those places and just talking or thinking.
E: My son Brian is engaged to an American girl but he has gone to Mexico to teach English. I'm worried that his engagement will not survive this.
M: Well he's not going to marry the American. He will meet a woman in Mexico and he will marry her. He's going to be fine.
E: My daughter Kristin is in touch with me a few times a week, but I notice that late at night, her speech is sometimes slurred. There is alcoholism throughout my family. I had my own issues when I was younger. I'm worried about her.
M: That won't be anything to worry about. Kristin is going to run into a life event and alcohol won't be any issue.
There was another half hour in which Jasmine and I talked about some of the trials in our own relationship. We worked in cities 250 miles apart and commuted back and forth from LA and Las Vegas each weekend. Marlene assured us that we would eventually get to live together someplace north in California in one of those "San"s or "Santa"s. She couldn't tell which one. (It turned out to be San Luis Obispo).
Marlene's Scorecard: The blue box and double shower head were such unlikely pieces of information that I was truly amazed. The fact that the blue box belonged to my father was such a rare type of coincidence.
Within a few months Brian and Sara had broken up and Brian was hanging out with Lorena, his eventual wife and a native of Guadalajara.
It took a few years to see her meaning about Kristin. In January 2003 her stepfather was killed in a Russian fighter stunt plane in Park City. Later in 2003 Kristin was diagnosed with her terminal cancer. Alcohol never figured into her life as an overwhelming destructive force.
Well now you have the goods on me! How can I still espouse an atheistic point of view? The link above to Albert Ellis provides a clue. There are many mysteries out there. I can't be certain that there is nothing after death. If there is I am as certain as I can be that it is not an intentional punishment.
My belief is that others should back off from the proseletyzing. What becomes dangerous are people who believe they have answers for everyone. It makes me want to gag!
I am able to accept that I am stumbling around in the dark here but it looks like it won't be for very much longer, much as I really like this stumbling around.
The best part of this death is the opportunity to contemplate what is happening to me, to make contact with people who have been meaningful in my life, to have conversations where both parties know we may not speak again. The opportunity for reality is so great and the little incidents in life are so sweet that I feel privileged to have been granted this kind of a death. I am enjoying so much of this time.
I know from forty years of medical practice how valuable my time with the dying has been. I am happy to offer old friends the same opportunity to see this part of the life cycle up close and personal.
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| The Life Cycle Doesn't Have To Be This Ugly, Particularly in the Abstract. But Individually.Yikes!! |
However, it isn't always pretty because in the back of your mind you will have much less faith in our shared delusion of immortality.
I know that Marlene knew that she was sick for some time before she died. I called a few times and left messages for her but she never returned them. I think that she was a wonderful person who used her gifts and personhood to bring comfort to a number of people, a psychic physician no doubt.
Marlene Lombardi
| Visit Guest Book
MARLENE LOMBARDI July 28, 2010, Las Vegas lost a local well known talent of the entertainment business. Marlene Iesue Lombardi, born Aug. 16, 1958, the voice of the famous phrase "do you really want to know?" passed away peacefully in her hometown of Erie, Pa., following a courageous battle with cancer. Marlene was known for her work in radio, television appearances, and columns published in magazines such as Las Vegas Woman. Marlene especially enjoyed her live shows at the Sunset Station Casino, where she was able to interact one-on-one with those who came to see her. She made many friends connected to her shows, and predictions of famous celebrities, thus becoming known as "the psychic to the stars." Marlene helped numerous people cope with all aspects of their lives. She will be sadly missed for her love of people, concern for those in need of her "special gift," and her wonderful sense of humor; but mostly for the happiness and comfort she brought to all who knew her. We encourage anyone who knew Marlene, and would like to share their experiences with her, to do so at Face Book, titled, In Loving Memory of Marlene Lombardi. A memorial service was held at the Dusckas Funeral Home in Erie, Pa.
Published in Las Vegas Review-Journal from October 2 to October 3, 2010
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