I know, I know what you’re thinking, we gotta get back on that damn bummer of a half-brain train ride with all that dark emotional turmoil? After getting off it and getting into some easier to digest subjects like memorable moments and people from sports and good stuff like that? I know, I get it, this is giving you whiplash. I’ll tell you what, before you dive back into that messy broken brain journey, how about you go take in a pleasant mood heightener, perhaps pull up some standup comedy routines on YouTube … Me, I’d look for some Jim Gaffigan or Nate Bargatze for a couple of reasons: 1, they are both genuinely hilarious and 2, they both have multiple clips on YouTube. Go ahead, catch some laughs before diving back into serious stuff. I’ll hold the train. It’s cool, take your time; I know the engineer.

OK, you back? Here we go:

Well, as you already know at least part of, I fell into a deep depression that, roughly three and a half years after the stroke, resulted  in my spending some mandatory time in Yakima Memorial Hospital’s psych ward, because as far as the state of Washington is concerned, anybody experiencing suicidal ideations or acting on them is officially psychotic.

I am ashamed that 63 years of living had not taught me how to deal more courageously  with my situation, especially since I had witnessed true courage and grace in the face of far worse circumstances than I was in, and I saw it from humans who hadn’t even had 10 years of living to develop that courage and grace. When I had been the education reporter at the in Marin Independent Journal, I wrote a series of feature articles on the most unique “school” you could ever imagine.

The students were elementary school-aged kids  with life-threatening illnesses, and the school was about teaching them coping mechanisms. Imagine this grace and courage, if you can: A 9-year-old boy who, because of his virulent form of leukemia and his rare blood type that makes finding a bone marrow donor nearly impossible, knows he will almost certainly not reach his 11th birthday, yet is quick to hug and console a classmate who is having a scarier day than he is because he wants to help and he knows love is the best medicine he can offer. I saw that sort of remarkable grace and courage again and again during my visits to that unique facility with those resilient  kids. I remember  one particular exercise in which each child was told to select a stuffed animal or doll from the toy bin and to imagine that it had the same illness the child had. The children’s actions with their diseased toys ranged greatly, but one boy, we’ll call him Nick,  who had leukemia, just sat and stared at his teddy bear for the longest time. The teacher/counselor leading the exercise asked Nick what he was doing with his sick teddy bear. I’ll never forget Nick’s answer: “I’m beaming love to him.”

Yet, even after witnessing grace like that, cowardly me  still found myself in the psych ward, where my fellow mandatory residents included five or six other suicidal types, a schizophrenic guy we’ll call Leo, and several individuals who were clinically depressed. Now that — clinical depression — is a rough gig.  I mean, I was extremely depressed, but at least I could pinpoint the reasons for it: I hated having lost all that the stroke had taken from me, and I hated that my wife and I couldn't seem to have a conversation without me turning it into an argument. The clinically depressed folks I got to know in that psych ward were in an abyss as deep and dark as mine but didn’t have a convenient scapegoat to blame it on. It was as if they had been dragged into this dark pit and were being held  there by some powerful, invisible monster.

Leo, the schizophrenic guy, was my favorite person  in the ward. One day he and another guy were shooting a game of pool on the table in the general area and I was watching somewhat enviously, having not played pool since losing the use of my left arm and hand.

Leo asked me if I would like to play the next game, and I warned him how slow the game would go with me having one hand to hold,  aim and take the shot with the cue stick, but that I supposed I could try to use the triangular rack to brace the cue, though it would be painfully slow for anybody playing me. Leo’s attitude: hey, everybody in here has issues and I got nowhere I gotta be, let’s give it a try …  So we played a game: me glacially slow, him patient as could be. Playing that game of pool made me feel a little more like a normal person than I had in more than three years. How weird is that?: It took a schizophrenic guy in a psych ward to help me feel more normal. Leo had been a normal guy himself into his late 20s, when he began hearing voices. Just hearing the voices of people who weren’t there wasn’t that big of a problem, he told me; when he began answering them, though, was.

I was in the ward for 15 days and nights. I am not sure I slept a wink the entire time. The guy in my room’s other bed snored like an asthmatic freight train, full of fits and starts.

ICEKMWAS stands for I Couldn't Even Kill Myself Worth A Shit, which is the name I imagined for a prospective black humor short book about the experiences that led me to that psych ward and those of my stay there. I shared that little idea with the doctor in charge of the ward. She was not the least bit amused. But she still released me after my mandated 15 days were up, which I appreciated ... I needed to get some sleep.