Time Tree For Elsie DSC_0408
Last week I went for a walk around Mont Park for the first time. Mont Park Asylum was a psychiatric hospital and opened in 1912 and closed in the 1990s. It was also known as hospital for the insane. The grounds are now being developed into student accommodation and up market residential homes. They have kept most of the old buildings.
I only found out after my mother’s death that her mother was committed here for Paraphrenia, a type of Schizophrenia. My mother would have been 10 years old when her mother was taken away.
Her name was Elsie May.
I applied for her records and they are difficult reading. She spent several months in the Asylum in 1935 after attempting suicide by drowning, then again in 1937. She was recommitted around 1945 where she remained until her death from a twisted bowel in 1954 at the young age of 51.
I walked around, taking in these old buildings, wondering what her life was like here. From the old records, I don't imagine it was good. It seems she was only visited once in the time she was here with one letter asking for permission to take her for a walk around the grounds.
Did her unstable footsteps echo along the same well worn path where I was walking?
The grounds are adorned with beautiful old Elms and Oak trees. They would have been here when she was a patient 80 years ago though not as large.
I walked up to one of the trees and ran my fingers over its rough bark. I took in the shelter under its large branches as the rain gently fell. I felt their warmth and comfort, I heard the tree whisper.
Did Elsie look at this same tree? Did she feel the bark to remind her that there was life outside of these brick walls? Did she feel its comfort as I did while I wept for a woman I never knew?
When we look at the night sky, we are really looking into the past; the light we see is already old. I felt like this looking at this tree. My gaze matching Elsie’s, connecting me to her through time and space, even though we are light years apart sharing a different moment in time.
Her grave remains unmarked so this is my epitaph to her, my grandmother Elsie May.
Time Tree For Elsie DSC_0408
Last week I went for a walk around Mont Park for the first time. Mont Park Asylum was a psychiatric hospital and opened in 1912 and closed in the 1990s. It was also known as hospital for the insane. The grounds are now being developed into student accommodation and up market residential homes. They have kept most of the old buildings.
I only found out after my mother’s death that her mother was committed here for Paraphrenia, a type of Schizophrenia. My mother would have been 10 years old when her mother was taken away.
Her name was Elsie May.
I applied for her records and they are difficult reading. She spent several months in the Asylum in 1935 after attempting suicide by drowning, then again in 1937. She was recommitted around 1945 where she remained until her death from a twisted bowel in 1954 at the young age of 51.
I walked around, taking in these old buildings, wondering what her life was like here. From the old records, I don't imagine it was good. It seems she was only visited once in the time she was here with one letter asking for permission to take her for a walk around the grounds.
Did her unstable footsteps echo along the same well worn path where I was walking?
The grounds are adorned with beautiful old Elms and Oak trees. They would have been here when she was a patient 80 years ago though not as large.
I walked up to one of the trees and ran my fingers over its rough bark. I took in the shelter under its large branches as the rain gently fell. I felt their warmth and comfort, I heard the tree whisper.
Did Elsie look at this same tree? Did she feel the bark to remind her that there was life outside of these brick walls? Did she feel its comfort as I did while I wept for a woman I never knew?
When we look at the night sky, we are really looking into the past; the light we see is already old. I felt like this looking at this tree. My gaze matching Elsie’s, connecting me to her through time and space, even though we are light years apart sharing a different moment in time.
Her grave remains unmarked so this is my epitaph to her, my grandmother Elsie May.