24/07/2020
My grandmother was born Doris Jean Hendricks on July 24, 1935, in a small country town named Hearne, Texas. She was the third child to Mr. & Mrs. Lorenza Hendricks.
My grandmother was a registered and school nurse for almost 40-years. She graduated from Prairie View A&M University in 1958—making her the first college graduate on my mother’s side of the family.
In 1981, she was diagnosed with what was then referred to as Manic-Depression and what is now universally known as Bi-polar Disorder.
When I was 12, I went to live with my grandmother. She’d recently moved to Houston from Austin, TX and I’d been placed with her through the courts. I lived with her until I was 17 and can’t remember better years that the ones, I spent with her.
As it was just the two of us, we’d often eat out. One of her favorite restaurants was Luby’s Cafeteria, where she’d always order the liver and onions, spinach and jalapeno cornbread. When she reached the soda fountain, she’d always opt for water instead, first, filling her cup up slightly with crushed ice. “Aubrey, imma get four lemon slices and you get the same”, she’d whisper to me, every single time we went down the buffet line.
Her favorite place to sit was a booth near the middle of the dining room, next to a large window. She’d take her lemon slices and mine, and squeeze them into her glass of water, following it with a packet of sweet-n-low. “That lemonade is too damn high’, she’d once told me, and so she made her own.
If she’d not eaten her cornbread, she’d roll it up in one of Luby’s signature green cloth napkins, look around to see if any of the staff was watching and then quickly stuff it in her purse. She’d always eat it within a day or two. Buttered (with “real butter” not margarine), folded twice in a napkin and then microwaved for 20-seconds. That was Doris Jean!
I felt free with my grandmother. She saw me for who I was, even when I didn’t know myself and she was giving, probably to a fault.
I never knew about my grandmother’s illness growing up. I’d hear whispers every now and again, but never realized who they were talking about. It was a family secret, I suppose. I also suppose my family was trying to protect me, although I understood more than they realized, even at 12.
When I was 14, I went to stay with my mother and brother’s for about a month. I found out years later, I’d stayed as long as I did, because my grandmother had been admitted to a psychiatric ward. She’d been “acting manic”, I was told; spending money lavishly, purchasing a fur coat and diamond rings she couldn’t afford and cramming an extreme amount of activity into each day for weeks at a time, before giving way to a deep depression. It was the third time she’d been committed.
I have several family members with mental illness, including an older sibling. It can be incredibly difficult to navigate at times. There is a great need for even more open discussion. There is a great need to eradicate the stigma that ultimately leads to shame and silence for those who suffer with mental illness. There is a great need for more research, but there is mostly a need for understanding and that will happen only through awareness, hence my telling whomever will listen, a fraction of my story.
I miss my grandmother dearly, on what would have been her 85th birthday. I find solace in the fact that she lives on—not just in my heart, but on paper and beyond, as I write and fight for social and institutional change in how mental illness is regarded. And I dedicate my entire work to her life and legacy.
