Stuff I know
I know a thing or two about mental illness. It runs in the family.

My maternal grandfather was an incredibly intelligent and driven human being. When he was in his mid-20s, he was an accountant in Cleveland. An image that stands out in my mind is a picture of this man and his two daughters standing in front of a car with a 1956 Ohio license plate. The car was a '54 Cadillac. The daughters were my mom, who would have been 4 or 5, and her sister, two years older. Clearly, to get himself into a ride like that, he was doing something right.

Five years later, my mom found herself in the back of an old Buick station wagon, leaving Cleveland, headed for Springfield, Mo. Her dad had chucked everything to go to a Bible college in the Ozarks, a place he'd never been. He packed his wife and two kids and whatever possessions they could fit into the Buick and headed west. God had told him to.

If God speaks to you, that doesn't make you insane. But it wasn't God's voice he was hearing.

My mom has, thankfully, been stingy with details about what her life was like during the 1960s. The only thing I know clearly is that her life was bad enough that she believed the only way out was to get married at 16 and have a kid.

My grandmother divorced my mom's father in 1967, which was a pretty gutsy move, not just because divorces were uncommon in the late '60s, but also because it left her and her newly married, pregnant, high-school sophomore daughter without any discernible means of support other than my soon-to-be-dad's wages as a fry cook. My grandmother went to work, for the first time in her life, in her late 30s, and later married the man that I called Grandpa when I was growing up, a retired Army guy who was 18 years her senior.

I knew nothing of my biological grandfather until I was 5 or 6; at that point, because I wasn't very good at assembling details, I thought he lived in Cleveland. And because I had what I believed to be a complete family unit -- two parents, four grandparents -- his lack of presence didn't bother me in the least.

As I got older, I started asking more questions and getting fewer answers. It turned out that I actually had met the man, when I was 2 or 3. My mom had broken off contact with him shortly after my sister was born in 1971, because his illness had progressed to the point where she not only was uncomfortable around him, she felt unsafe.

Treatment and medicine advanced, and by 1978, my mother and her father had reconciled. I was allowed to meet him when I was 10. He wasn't living in Cleveland at all. He was living in Anytown, not 5 miles from my house. He was married to a charming woman, who happened to be 2 years older than my mom.

I spent quite a bit of time with him when I was 10; he was smart, and fascinating, and funny, and creative. He and I shared a love for American history. His political hero was Stephen Douglas; mine was John F. Kennedy. We also shared a love for old cars, although I found his obsession with Cadillacs a bit odd. Deferring to the fact that he was my grandfather and I was 10, I didn't question that obsession, nor did I question the fact that he called himself "Steve" when his name was actually Rupert. Hell, I thought, if my name was Rupert, I'd have come up with something different, too.

I was also fascinated with his smoking habits. He was the only person I've ever known who smoked Old Gold cigarettes. He would open a new pack very carefully, tearing the foil portion so he could re-close it after he got a fresh smoke rather than just tearing it off. When non-filtered Old Golds were unavailable, he'd buy the filtered variety, very carefully open the pack, and even more carefully pop the filter off each cigarette.

I did notice that he signed his name with the title "Rev.," when, my mom told me, he wasn't ordained in anything. I ran this by my other grandfather, who was in fact ordained as a Baptist minister, and he quickly and not very subtly changed the subject.

I later learned that in the late 1970s, my mother's father was very well medicated, and he was diligently taking his medicine in an effort to stay in step with the world as much as possible. His charming young wife worked in the millinery department of a downtown department store; he didn't work at all, best I could tell. But other than that, he was trying to get by as best as he could around the limitations of his illness. My mom leaned on him very hard to take his medication, but it was hard; he felt fine when he was on his medication, he believed, so, clearly, he was cured, and therefore he no longer needed it.

Then, in 1980, he suffered a heart attack while shoveling snow. He had not been diligent about his medication before his heart attack, and the voices in his head had been telling him to be mean to his charming young wife -- mean enough that, after he had his heart attack, she threw him out of their house. He moved in with us while recovering from open heart surgery, and argued that his medication wouldn't mix well with his heart pills, and given the choice, he was going to take his heart pills.

The decline happened fast. His presence was the last straw on my parents' faltering marriage. My mom threw her dad out, and shortly after that left my dad. My grandfather went back home, reconciled with his charming young wife, then began accusing her of cheating on him with my dad, then began threatening her life. She, wisely, left again.

My mom tried as hard as she could. She ignored his threats, she bought him groceries, she made sure he at least took his heart pills. One day, he threatened suicide. She delivered his groceries while he was gone somewhere, went into his house, and took his gun.

I came home from school to find several bags of groceries on the front porch, with a note scrawled in his very distinctive handwriting: "I WILL NOT accept CHARITY from THIEVES." The tail on the "s" went all the way across the paper, from right to left, as an underscore for his indignance.

That was it. She cut him off at that point.

My mom was angry, and sad, too. Me, being a teenager by that point, I had no time for simultaneous anger and sadness, so I stuck with just anger. We went on with our lives.

When I started writing for the newspaper, my mother noted that he might try to seek me out sometime. "He'd be very proud of you, I think," she said. "Don't be surprised if he tries to make contact with you."

"If he does," I fumed, "I won't be responsible for what I'll do."

A tear formed in my mom's eye.

"I know, and I understand," she said. "But he isn't either."

That exchange happened in 1988. Two years later, my mother's father was dead of a heart attack. He had just turned 60. I couldn't tell if my mom was sad or relieved. I suspect it was a completely unexplainable and justifiable mix of both.

I don't have nearly enough megabytes to go into all the complexities of my mother's immediate family -- her mom, strong as a rock, who died of a heart attack six months before her ex-husband died; her sister, insecure, overweight, trapped for years in abusive relationships, who died of a heart attack in 2002; my mom herself, who is so detached from everything that she allows herself to be close to nobody. But at the heart of so much of that was a man whose greatest sins in life were caused by something over which, for much of his life, he had very little control.

I learned a lot from those experiences. I learned that mental illness is real. I know that perfectly wonderful people can carry a mental illness, and that they're no more deserving of your contempt than somebody who has diabetes or MS.

I also know that many mental illnesses are genetic. This is always in the back of my mind. Schizophrenia, for instance, often doesn't show up until a person is in his mid-20s. I'm 35, safely past that point, but I still worry when I don't feel like I'm in complete control of my emotions. I worry about my sister, whose ability to handle average, real-world stress is zero. I worry about my kids.

I've been scared into therapy a couple of times, and both times, I was reassured that my worry about having a problem was a sure sign that I didn't have one. Many of the elements of my dad's side of the gene pool cancel out those from my mom's side.

Society and science are starting to come around to understand that mental illness is just that, an illness, and it needs to be treated accordingly. It's difficult to say it's just like any other illness, because few other illness cause people to lash out at those they love or at total strangers and say and do hurtful -- or possibly violent -- things.

But in most ways, it is. And I know that somewhere inside my mother's father was a smart, and fascinating, and funny, and creative man.

If you know somebody who's mentally ill, stick with them and support them. Do everything you can to make sure they get the help they need. I understand -- deeply -- that there may come a point where you have to cut them off, for your own sanity or, perhaps, safety. But all you can do is all you can do, and that's all I'm asking.