Harmonica

As Alan got more and more into film, he started to go through all the classic directors and tried to watch their most iconic films. In fact, going through Alan's old things, I stumbled across a piece of paper that he and Uncle Steve had written all over on one of our family Fountain City excursions. Under the name of each of several dozen directors was each of their most important films, like a checklist or a syllabus.

When Mom and Dad still lived in Waunakee, we sat down one afternoon to watch  Once Upon a Time in the West, the Sergio Leone classic.

Watching it, you could totally see both sides of the perennial argument about this film: it is one of the greatest films ever made, and it is totally cheeseball. The music is clearly a part of making it both of those things.

The haunting sound of the harmonica in the movie represents the search for vengeance for the loss of a beloved brother against the man who caused his death. It's easy to see how, in times of great loss, anger can develop naturally out of the pain. Sometimes, it helps assuage guilt, another by-product of the loss of a loved one. Sometimes, in the case of suicide, blaming something or someone else allows you to be angry, but not angry at the one you lost. And sometimes, there are places those pointing fingers land that are justified, legitimate and productive.

For Alan, I find myself not pointing fingers at people. But here are the things I would go after with my harmonica.

Mental healthcare barriers

Alan had full access to mental healthcare. He was lucky to be insured and to have a family that encouraged him strongly to seek it out. He had counselors and psychiatrists who worked with him hard to keep his anxiety and depression at bay.

So then, why is this on my list -- when he didn't seem to have barriers to care? The situation is so much more complicated than that. When Alan was younger, it was tough to recognize that he was depressed. He probably went much longer than he should have before getting treatment. He must have known that what he was going through was not right, but maybe he didn't realize it was not normal. And when he did, he had to convince everyone of it.

When Alan did start taking antidepressants, he did not react well to them. Most made him so sleepy, he could not function. Some made him feel so numb, he blamed them for making things worse because he would be getting yelled at, and not even be able to care about the argument going on. He felt that they made some of the worst arguments in his life worse. He had such a hard time figuring out how to adjust them, and his personality and the depression itself made it hard for him to communicate with a doctor what was working or not. Even with a seemingly long list of medications to choose from, there are really only a few classes of medications available. While many people respond well to one of the first couple they try, this is not the case for everyone.

It was even harder to get Alan to a good counselor. Talk therapy is tough business, and very individual. It can be very tricky to find the right person to work with, and for them to find the right strategy to work with the patient. He saw some that were fluffy and bubbly, not a fit for him. He saw some that were so easily intimidated by the situation that they didn't stick with him. They may have been great therapists for others, but not for Alan.

Getting good mental healthcare doesn't just mean having access to one person. It means getting hooked up to a system. Even for Alan, with the privileges he had, this was a struggle. What about for the many people out there who don't have those privileges? Or don't know in the new insurance landscape what is available to them? What about people that are so scared by the stigma of mental illness that they don't get help when they know they need it? Or that don't know enough about mental illness to know that they have it?

In other words, this is a societal problem. When having the access Alan had is not enough, it speaks to a much larger problem in the community.
 
I hope you will all consider taking some action here. Whether it means opening your mind to education about mental illness and healthcare, donating to good causes such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness or to smaller local causes such as this one.

Consider raising your voice politically to help protect mental healthcare parity, the idea that these illnesses should be treated, covered, and thought of like physical ailments, not as some special lesser class. Sign petitions. Go to events to show your support. Help fund research to find better treatments, to provide more resources.

Reach out to friends and loved ones that you see struggling with mental illness. As a society, we need to break the stigma. And while not everyone will want to talk about it, we can start slowly working on breaking down those barriers.

Mug shot extortion websites

These websites work by posting your mug shot, and then a sister website will offer to remove it, for a fee. At least six states have taken action against these operations, but Iowa and Wisconsin are not among them. I know I haven't shied away from Alan's legal issues, and that's mostly because I personally do not find shame in them. Alan was a good person, and his digressions were relatively minor. But a mug shot does not tell that story.

I don't know what legal or political action can be taken to do something about this, but this is an industry that should not exist, and should be taken down.

Bullying

We make such a big deal out of bullying in grade schools nowadays. And we should. It's totally not appropriate, and for so many kids, they don't know how to get help when it happens to them. I remember growing up, and when I was bullied, I somehow ended up being the one who got in trouble. Reporting it was called tattling. Defending yourself physically was seen as unacceptable -- zero tolerance.

I remember seeing a video of a nerdy kid getting picked on by a classmate outside. When he feels physically threatened, the nerd lashes out, seriously injuring the bully. He was severely punished for this, and told that he had used excessive force. Pardon me, but that kid is not trained in self defense. He is not a professional law enforcement officer or soldier. In today's zero tolerance world, it's probably safer for bullied kids to go all out and do as much damage as possible since they will face the same punishment for lesser damage. The clear problem here is that the nerdy kid had no way of knowing how to get help. He had no way of knowing how to get the pain to stop.

Alan confided many years later that he had been bullied as a little kid. He never told us about it. Those little things -- having his backpack taken away, comments about looking funny because he was half Asian or because he was skinny, he stored all of them away until they resurfaced years later.

But it wasn't just in grade school. He stood up for his friends who got bullied on the street for being different. He was bullied by administrators at his school who, having legal degrees, you would think would know better than to casually throw around hurtful words that were not legally justified.



Frankly, I don't see a day any time soon when these issues are gone. But that doesn't mean we can't try to make the world a better place by fighting them. In the movie, the man with the harmonica gets his revenge, and shoves his harmonica in the mouth of the man who killed his brother as he lies there dying. I will never get that satisfaction, but I won't back down.