Leon was my oldest child. he died at age 28. 1964, the year of my son’s birth. I was so happy without my parents. I was doing artwork and I was happy on the birth of my baby, but I was conflicted about whether to  keep him. A black woman saw me at night looking at my baby in the hospital . She came and spoke gently to me. Then my parents and psychiatrist came on the scene and ruined everything.
After talking about Leon’s death, I feel so strange. Like I’m going to have a psychotic episode. I wish I had the words to describe it. I’m not comfortable in my own skin. At least finally I’m not copping out. Now (January 6th), I’m still mourning the death of the sweet, gentle child who Paul and Robin loved so much.
When he was 7 years old I was pregnant from a black man and he was against him just like my family was. I guess I was just as racist as my family at that point. Without consulting the father, I aborted the baby and married a light skinned man whom Leon liked. I was so unhappy because I loved the black man. I did it because I was afraid to lose Leon.

I started going to a clinic called Post Graduate Center for Mental Health because I was distraught about the abortion. I got assigned to Dr Dimitri Spyropoulos who took me into his private practice charging me only $7.00 a visit. It was a bad thing but I didn’t know it yet. He thought I was a Narcissist and felt no compassion for my distress. I even had another abortion I did not want. I was so afraid to displease him. In retrospect, I think he could have taken Leon away from me. Later on Dimitri changed his mind, saying he had misunderstood me and gave me Stelazine meaning I was Schizophrenic which was more in line with the truth.

I always thought my parents had a hand in Leon’s demise. And Jane with her fake sympathy after the funeral assuaging the family’s guilt with her long talk while the family waited in the car. What I mean by Leon’s demise is that my family and especially Jane, was so important to him and then when he started shooting up Heroin they rejected him. It was such a let down to him. Then we put him in a hotel and he was so depressed even though he was in a Day Rehab and had a social worker who visited him and a Psychiatrist who gave him Desipramine. I doubt it helped him. He was speed balling by that time.
Leon was a robust 16 year old when he was ordered to leave me by the ACS worker. (I was suicidal at the time.) He came back to me drinking and smoking pot. Ian, who had called him a gentleman all his childhood, called him a bastard after the visit which lasted a year.
Then he got started with Amphetamines that an older girl gave him so he could party every night. He soon lost his bank job because he was unkempt. He went on to Heroin eventually at which time my family rejected him with Jane dumping him at my doorstep while telling me he was doing the drug. All this must have been a big letdown for him because he really needed them.
When Leon died he was living in a hotel because Paul had said, “get rid of him, he’s conning you.” Both of them were fed up with his drug use. Robin had found his works in my nightgown hanging in the bathroom. I had to put him in a hotel. He became very depressed and he was in a rehab day program but he wouldn’t take the antidepressant the psychiatrist gave him, probably because it would have ruined the rush he got from speed balling. Anyway he didn’t want to quit. His neighbor said he heard him having convulsions. Maybe he got bad drugs that day and decided to end it. However the circumstances were, he did commit suicide by jumping from the window 14 stories down.

Paul is my 39 year old son. The effect of Leon’s death on him was so devastating because he loved Leon very much. He changed all his friends to bad ones and, in a constant rage, he wrecked the house and lambasted me constantly. He still has an anger problem. Why can’t Paul be introspective or at least nice to me when he’s outside the “box”? It’s like the world closes in on him and he can’t cope. I’m not saying he’s helpless, just only focusing on personal gain at the expense of others. I’m sad about it and I think I have given up hope for things to work out between us. Prison seems to be the only place where his anger is contained and he’s not seeing the world tainted with it. I have about 75 letters from him while he was in prison.

The Sullivanians were the group my new psychiatrist belonged to. They lead me so wrong that I ended up insane. I needed medication but there was only Stelazine and Thorazine. I did take Stelazine for a while. It helped some but I was also bipolar. Nothing addressed the racing thoughts and mood swings. Then a fellow at Mount Sinai gave me Navane. I was very happy for a year until he left. My biggest problem was the sibling rivalry of my two children. Terrible fights where Dr Heiligenstein told me to call him when they occur and he would give advice. Thus the advent of the “separate rooms.” Something which my daughter years later complained about to her therapist at Mount Sinai.

Robin is my 41 year old daughter. I think the therapist ended up leading her wrong. She went to live with her father and was very sad but didn’t come back home. Her father saw to it that she got her AAS degree from Parsons School of Design. She went to Americorps in North Dakota with four other girls. She ended up in Sacramento where she still is. History not resolved tends to repeat itself. Both she and my older sister went to California in exasperation and met their husbands. Good husbands except that hers is alcoholic and my daughter has major depression.