Stanek weekend Q: What would your life suitcase contain?
The end of the year offers a great opportunity to reflect as well as make new goals. In that vein, here’s an interesting story in Wimp.com:
Willard Asylum for the Insane, located in New York, was built in 1869. Patients had an average stay of 30 years, and many who came to the hospital never left. Eventually the site was abandoned, until, in 1995, an incredible discovery was made in the attic…
Over 400 suitcases, each packed with the belongings of people who lived and died decades ago, were found. Each one is a tiny time capsule of the lives they lived before being committed….
Many of these people had been abandoned by their families. When they died, they were buried in unmarked graves, and their belongings were packed away and forgotten.
Photographer Jon Crispin has spent the last few years breathing life back into these abandoned suitcases and memories by documenting the bags and their contents in a series of incredible photos.
He said: “It’s such compelling stuff. These people were essentially prisoners inside. Their families largely abandoned them. They gave them a suitcase and had them committed. Looking at these suitcases, you just get the idea that that these people really had lives outside before they went to Willard.”
Each story haas a unique story to tell…. Although some are melancholy, others are bursting with personality.
If you had to pack one suitcase to describe your life, what would it contain?
I thought that was a great question! What would your life’s suitcase contain?
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
A bath towel.
A jar of quality salsa.
A harmonica.
One thousand Peso.
A bus pass.
And a set of burglar tools.
All other items are unnecessary.
This just fascinates me.
A friend of my grandmother’s, “Ann” lived the life of the wife of a prominent lawyer. Sadly, Ann was also an alcoholic and when she lost her leg in a car accident in the mid 1940s, she was put in a state institution by her son, who she never saw again. To think this woman’s world was reduced to a bed and a nightstand on a 50 bed ward.
She maintained her spirit though. I remember as a child going with my mother to visit her, and seeing the rows of beds.
She became a part of our family, but when my mother remarried, my stepfather couldn’t be bothered with her. Totally lacking in empathy, “the state takes care of her”.
The institution closed and Ann would be shuttled from nursing home to nursing home, sadly losing the only “home” and “family” she knew for decades. She remained part of our family in spite of my stepfather, and when he died my mother remarried a man with considerably more compassion who showed Ann only kindness.
She passed away in one of the nursing homes, but my mother saw to it that Ann, a devout Catholic, had the appropriate funeral and burial.
I can only wonder what this poor soul, once a woman of status and wealth, packed when her son turned her over to the state.
Most of the institution has been torn down but one building remains as a social service agency and museum. I visit when I can, I find the museum fascinating. The building and museum is a step back in time. Interesting that many of the agency’s clients are people with special needs who 50+ years ago would have been confined behind those very walls.
I actually grew up with something very similar to this. We cared for the elderly in an in-home foster care situation. Think nursing home but in a large family home and the care the elderly needed had to be minimal enough to not need nurses or doctors. (we could give oral medication or an insulin shot but not I.V.s, we could do wound care, incontinence issues and bodily care for stroke or paralyzed people, but couldn’t do a ventilator for instance). Some had very active family involvement, their children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren would come and visit frequently. Others either had no attached family. Our ladies typically left from our care directly to hospital or hospice to die, and those without caring family usually left a small box or two of personal items that we were largely responsible for disposing. Antique toys, scarves, stuffed animals, books, hair brushes, old jewelry, costume jewelry, a silk purse, etc. You’d be surprised, perhaps, how many of them included toys, dolls usually, or stuffed animals, some old, some new. I grew up going through these left over items, treasured memories that were footprints of the ladies we had cared for. I believe I still have a few items that I had ‘inherited’ through the years as a child, but most are just in my memory. But there is something uniquely treasured about the little things a lifetime leaves behind.