Our brother, David Walker Wilkinson, died this week at his home, Brownway Residence in Enosburg Falls, Vt. David was 66 years old and was receiving hospice care for the last several months.
David’s life was hard. He was born with developmental troubles, later in life identified as cerebral palsy. CP caused his death. Our mom, Betty, and dad, Jim, worked with him so that he could speak, even though muscles in his mouth were not working right. He received special education help and graduated from Spaulding High School in Barre. With the assistance of vocational specialists David got a job cutting meat in Norwich University’s kitchen and did pretty well there for a few years, eventually doing his work without a job coach. He lived at home and bought a VW bug to commute to and from work.
He enjoyed fishing on the Otter Creek in Proctor, though we seldom caught anything. Running about in the woods and playing in the streams in Proctor and Barre. Rock music and action movies. Capture the flag along Tremont Street. At Boy Scout Camp Sunrise he freaked out his Scout-mates by pretending to be incurably hypnotized and wandering about with eyes closed and arms outstretched. The Red Sox and the Raiders. One trip to the beach in San Diego. Visits to the Button family farm in Chelsea and Walkerway Farm in Cabot. Coffee.
In about 1980 David began to have severe anxieties and thought his co-workers were threatening him. He moved to St. Paul with Jay and Karen and walked the city looking for work while his thinking deteriorated. He sought help for himself and was found to have a severe mental illness. He flew back to Barre where our parents began the hard, hard task of understanding and dealing with this new tragedy.
David lived at home, in a group home, a supervised-living apartment, at Waterbury State Hospital, in a foster care home hosted by former Waterbury employees and at Brownway assisted living. He received a full range of services through Washington County Mental Health Services and later other regional mental health services. Vermont Legal Aid provided free legal counsel. While in Montpelier he tried working on several jobs but his mental illness was too much for him. Montpelier is a small town and the Capitol city. His neighbors knew him after a fashion and were ok with his peculiarities and didn’t object to his wanderings and consumption of endless cups of coffee at this or that downtown cafe.
About twenty years ago he was given a new medication and had a day or two of lucidity but the medicine also created conditions that threatened his life and had to be stopped. Sadly his ability to communicate or to read or do much of anything that we could see as giving enjoyment declined over the past two decades. The medications that kept him from freaking out also did terrible things to him. We could understand he was often angry or unhappy. I hoped that David had an interesting inner mental life in his later years, even if it was all a fantasy, because his outward life was so constricted, socially, mentally, physically, etc. But that was probably just my own fantasy.
In addition to the help he and our parents received from medical and social service and daily help professionals, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) was a source of major support for my parents. With NAMI they learned more about the illness and systems and how to give and get help and they helped others to know that “we are not alone.”
It was fortunate that in his 46 years of unmoored mind he never had one encounter with the criminal system. Kudos to him and his caregivers. I am pretty sure that had he been jailed, probationed or imprisoned he would have suffered even more, cost Vermonters a lot, and died much earlier. As my sister mentioned, it bears repeating that David and the family had much support from local, regional, state and federal government throughout his life and we could never have done our job without help from you, the taxpayers and many public servants.
Staff at Brownway do not have an easy job there and David must often have been a challenge. He trusted you and this was sorely lacking for him. Thank you!
Jo-Ann writes: David’s service to his family and larger community was to help us understand the need for compassion. He taught us a lot of things. Mom learned from him that illness is not a personal failure or bad parenting. Dad learned the necessity of patience with those who can’t always keep up. They both learned to share this compassion with the broader community affected by mental illness. I learned to appreciate that my taxes, not my bank account, supported David over the majority of his life. I learned that “obvious” fixes don’t usually work in the long run. (Such as the personal message David got from Nancy Regan “Just say No to Drugs”.) All of these learnings lead back to compassion, if we start with that in mind we can survive and thrive in this crazy world.
Jay: Yes to this, Jo-Ann. We surely become better humans when we care for others, especially those with such challenges. David was wise or fortunate to avoid the scourge of alcohol and other drugs and to have a family who chose the hard work of caretaking and advocacy rather than leaving him to the “freedom of the streets”, which surely would have killed him quickly as it has so many others.
When our parents were no longer able to oversee David’s life and care, our brother Jon and his family, Deb, Briana and Skyler, took over with no rewards and very little complaining. David was never able to thank them and we will never thank them enough.
A gathering will be held at Hooker Whitcomb Funeral Home in Barre from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern time on December 3. For zoom access contact me.
The family prefers memorials for David to Washington County Mental Health Services, www.wcmhs.org or your local NAMI affiliates. You are not alone.
With sadness and affection;
Jay, Jo-Ann, Philip, Michael and Jon and our families.
February 2007
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