PURE LOVE ON THE TRAIN TRACKS

"Ours is a pure love," he explained after I asked him if they were planning to get married,  "One day, we will be allowed to marry.  But until then, we will still be together.  I will take care of her forever."

My husband, a lawyer, had represented the partner of the man mentioned above to ensure that she received a fair hearing in Mental Illness Court.  People were brought to a particular holding area in the Dallas Courthouse until the hearing was conducted.  They had been deemed by their families or by police to be potentially harmful to themselves or others due to a mental illness.  I was a caseworker for the court, recently having received a master's degree in psychology.  My job was to find community resources to prevent a 90-day commitment to a state institution for the mentally ill.  Sometimes, I could not find adequate help for those suffering from severe hallucinations and/or delusions.  Often, those with severe mental illness were unable to care for themselves.  This was usually the distinction between finding a community placement versus a state institution placement.

My husband and I met in this very same courtroom. He represented a client withunning up and down both arms.  There were fresh bandages on both of her wrists when I met her.  I found her to be very engaging and not at all depressed,, but the scars were a dead giveaway to something deeper than what appeared on the surface.  Her story was a sad one.  She had grown up in foster care and had been a repeat runaway.  She had been molested by quite a few of her foster fathers.  As an adult, she supported herself through prostitution.  I asked her what she needed to be happy.  She wanted out of the life she was currently living.  I worked with a church to provide her a place to live in return for her doing housecleaning for the church and making herself available to others to clean houses for a living.  It was great to see her turn her life around.  You don't see this very often,, but you keep trying anyway.

Our client,, who was adored, probably had an I.Q. in the upper 60s.  She was a lovely young woman with an engaging smile.  Her developmental delay, coupled with deafness, resulted in being unable to take care of herself.  Her partner was deaf, too.  He was probably had a borderline IQ.  His one goal in life was to take care of her.  He felt very proud to not only have her as his partner but to be able to care for someone besides himself.  They had been found living on the streets when the police brought her into the holding area.  I'm sure they felt he could take care of himself,, but the roads were just too dangerous for her.

This aging brain doesn't remember their names. I can't let them remain nameless, so I'll honor their memory by calling them Jerry and Sally.

It was challenging,, but I finally found them a place to live.  The judge agreed not to commit her when I explained Jerry's heartfelt promise to take care of her and keep her out of harm's way.

And you have to wonder about a system that wouldn't allow individuals with mental retardation to marry back then.  Yet, someone like me was free to marry numerous times only to have each one fail due to marrying for the wrong reasons.  Intelligence is overrated.

Jerry and Sally walked hand in hand everywhere they went. Taking a bus was costly and a struggle to make themselves understood,, so they walked when they needed to get somewhere.  They stayed in a run-down place close to downtown Dallas and would walk a few miles north of downtown Dallas to see me about once a  month.

One day, they were walking on the railroad tracks when a train ran over them. They never heard the sound of the train whistle nor the train's blaring horn. The engineer kept saying that he sounded the horn as soon as he saw them in the distance, but they never got off the tracks.

I wonder if they could feel the vibration of the oncoming train as they walked along, and they purposely let the train run over them. Or maybe they were too busy talking or singing. Life was very hard for them.  Maybe they just gave up.  I know that when I last saw them, they were very much in love and happy.  His purpose in life was to take care of her.  It made him feel good to do so,, and she loved him for it.  If they had to die, I hope they were laughing, singing, and holding hands when it happened.

Forty years have passed since they died, but I think of them from time to time...especially when I think about what 'pure love' means.  That's when Jerry and Sally come to mind.





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