Good-bye

A great deal goes on behind the iron gates and brick walls of a Health Center, far more than the eyes can see, ears can hear, or imaginations can conjure. This is as it must be, because the facilities house those who need special care, care that the average person can't quite understand. Society has a merciless way of banishing its misfits, its mentally diseased, the relatives that embarrass them. I've seen several thousand such people go through Sugar Loaf and around the Health Care Circuit and, like so many who have been close to them, wish the loud majority would quit making so much noise about how normaltheyare and spend more time with their more needy brothers and sisters.

Before I say good-bye for the many challenged Residents of Sugar Loaf, I feel compelled to recapitulate the lessons I've learned from reading my Sugar Loaf Journal. First, like Tommy MacInvey said, when people get to know the handicapped they find that they have hearts and souls just like them. My years at Sugar Loaf have completely convinced me of this truth. Somewhere in history our ancestors got the notion that anything not exactly like the ruling majority was inferior or freakish. True, the Quasi'sappearfreakish, but they are certainly not inferior. And because the challenged minority looks and acts differently, the "normal" ones can't see that their challenged brethren possess the same kind of loving heart or divine soul that they possess. Their solution has been to shun, humiliate, and throw them into irons and dungeons, burn them at the stake, lock them

into attics and basements, always treat them basely. If the torturing "normals" took the effort to familiarize themselves with their challenged brothers and sisters they would realize that they possess every quality their victims do, especially at the deepest levels. And once they did that, perhaps they would realize that the surface differences don't mean much. Who knows, miracle upon miracle, if the ridiculers saw the common denominators to all mankind and overlooked the differences, maybe our world family would lose some of its uptightness and we'd all get along better.

Another thing the Residents of Sugar Loaf taught me is that categorizing, stereotyping people, can be deadly. It's the mentality that says that because the rattlesnake is poisonous, then all snakes are venomous. But worse than that, once labels are attached, all that's human is lost. People living, breathing, laughing and crying like you and me are no longer thought of or dealt with as human beings but as categories and statistics. How this happens is quite natural: it's easier to deal with a non-human group like a bag of rocks than with beings who can stare at you with tear-full eyes. While we all know the tactic of dehumanizing people should be banished, it's all right to remind us of it here. Please take note, you who absent yourselves from health care and nursing facilities or abandon your own relatives.

I've also learned that while it may be inconvenient to deal with everyone as an individual and not group him in stereotypic lumps, it's actually downright FUN to enjoy everyone's differences. While Abe Stringer was a man who didn't know nouns, I think when dealing with people, normal or otherwise, we would do well to use far fewer pronouns. Not "they" but T., Tommy, and Abe. Not "them" but Carey, Lane, and Magdelena. It would bide well for all humans to deal with their fellows

more personally.

I look back at my early years at Sugar Loaf and think of Dr. Avery and his words about reality: "There is no such thing as real, Stewart. Real is subjective, and therefore not real at all. The only thing that is genuine, authentic, is what can be measured. Facts, in other words. Forget real. It's as ubiquitous as there are people on earth." Now, after my stay at Sugar Loaf, I shake my head at the words reality and normal. For what I've learned is that each of us experiences his own paradigm and reality and is therefore perfectly normal UNTO HIMSELF. And to me that means that the subjective and objective are actually the same.

And now, farewell. Good-bye to all of you who have taken the time to visit Sugar Loaf through this collection and see, vicariously at least, into the hearts and souls of a few of your brothers and sisters. Long live Tommy MacInvey.