Leonardo Da Vinci Pilot Projects (2001 - 2004) – True Stories
Maria
Maria was born in Trieste, in April 1933. She was the second child of a couple
who ran a “trattoria” in a working-class area. She grew up with her younger sister
Bruna, whom she was very bound to. They were both meant to experience
hospitalisation. Maria was first committed to a mental home in 1954. She underwent
seven first-aid electroshocks. Her conditions worsened and she was taken to
Bologna (“Villa Verde” mental home), where she spent forty-five days, during which
she underwent ten more electroshocks and thirty insulin comas.
When she came back from Bologna, Maria seemed to have improved but once at
home she started expressing the hate she felt for her parents. She believed they
were responsible of her commitment to the mental house and of her mental state. At
home she would cry, shout and break glasses and furnishings. The situation got so
hard to manage that her relatives decided to commit her to the Provincial
Psychiatric Hospital in Trieste. At that time, Maria was only twenty-two. She will stay
in the mental hospital till the ‘70s. Four long hospital admissions, one after the
other, the first of which lasted fourteen years.
The document attesting Maria’s first definitive commitment to the Provincial
Psychiatric Hospital in Trieste dates back to 31-03-1955, when she was diagnosed
with schizophrenia. Afterwards, she was diagnosed with depression and later
anxiety syndrome. Despite the different diagnoses, Maria was treated with the same
drugs
every
time.
She
underwent
the
usual
psychotrope
drug
therapy,
narcoanalysis and several pyretotherapy sessions. Maria’s experience in the mental
home ended in the early seventies, when the Psychiatric Hospital of Trieste closed
down.
...she is sitting in the large living-room, detached from the group, smoking a
cigarette, with a fixed gaze on her face. Cigarettes seem to set the pace of
her day.
At first sight, she looks like a middle-aged lady, but if you better look at her
you wouldn’t guess her real age. She looks like a child who had grown up too
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Leonardo Da Vinci Pilot Projects (2001 - 2004) – True Stories
fast. Her face and body seem those of a child. She has shiny short black hair.
No sign of grey hair. She sits smoking, silent and isolated from the others.
She would eventually come out of her mental reality and observe what is
around her with a vivid and sparkling look. Sometimes she would smile,
sometimes she would look puzzled...
Here is what happened when I first met Maria, on a morning of nearly
seven years ago. Maria and I had something in common. We were both
strangers to the Mental Health Service. I had just been transferred from the
General Hospital to the Mental Health Department. Similarly, she was a
newcomer in the Service.
I was asked to take her to the bus stop, which is quite far from the Service.
I introduced myself and tried to involve her in a conversation... Maria would
answer in monosyllables, not answer at all or, at times, give sudden and
delayed replies to my questions. She kept on repeating her name and asking
for mine.
During the following days, this strange and unusual relationship, made of
very few words, grew richer. Even though she did not speak, I could guess
from her behaviour that she liked my company. Despite her shabby look,
Maria was very charming and elegant. She is very good-hearted, but you
need time to know her. We started going out together to have a coffee or to
give a look at the shop-windows. I found out she loves handbags and
colourful clothes. As soon as she finds something she likes, her eyes start
sparkling.
As we started shopping together to renew her poor wardrobe I realised
that, despite her painful and deprived life, Maria had preserved a taste for
beautiful things.
I wanted to know more about her past. I read her long medical record, full
of documents, certificates etc. I talked to the senior nurses, many of whom
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Leonardo Da Vinci Pilot Projects (2001 - 2004) – True Stories
were there when the psychiatric hospital was still open. Little by little, I
managed to reconstruct Maria’s long and troubled life. When I tried to talk to
her about it, she strongly refused to tell me about all those years. It was
probably too painful for her...
I began to better understand some details of her behaviour. I could see her
growing up and becoming a woman locked up both in the mental house and
at home. How was her life in that long period, how did she spend her days,
whom did she know and who stood by her? Young Maria did not have a job,
nor a companion or a love, she did not know the world. The only world she
had learned to know was the psychiatric hospital with the strict rules one
should conform to, its slow pace, its monotonous days and where memories
were the only treasure one owned. The future is not contemplated. The
present means treating and taking care of bodies that matter just because
they are ill and socially dangerous.
After the mental home closed down, Maria went to live with her uncle. He
was the last link to her family and the person in whom she found, or better,
wished to find protection and support she needed so much. On the other
hand, living together meant something different for her uncle. To him, she
was the holder of the flat they lived in, the beneficiary of both her father’s
pension and her own disability pension, as well as a young woman to exploit.
The nurses who used to work in the old Psychiatric Hospital went regularly
to visit her at home during the following year. Maria was then cared for by two
local Mental Health Centres.
Her uncle did not guarantee his niece a
comfortable and serene environment. He neglected her home and expected
her to offer him housekeeping and “other kinds” of services that Maria was
unable or simply didn’t want to provide.
As years passed by, Maria became a rather lonely woman. She started to
steal small amounts of money and to spend the night on the street.
During those last years, despite his old age, her uncle kept on trying to
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Leonardo Da Vinci Pilot Projects (2001 - 2004) – True Stories
manage Maria’s life and money, making her live in a neglected, morally and
mentally degrading environment.
At that point, due to her situation, the Service decided she should spend a
day-hospital period at the Centre and then involve her in the “flat-sharing
group” project...
... that was when our relationship began and when I decided to help her.
The first thing I had to do was gain her trust, so I discreetly devoted my
days to her, alternating my monologues with the long silences we shared
sitting one by the other or strolling through the city. The first time I took her
home, I got breathless for the strong smell of pee and dirt. Maria shared a
dark, dirty bedroom with her uncle. It was divided in two parts with an old
wardrobe, which was her only form of privacy. Since the flat was very cold,
she had to keep her clothes on when sleeping. There was no heating nor hot
water. The only note of gaiety was Maria’s handbag collection. She owned
about sixty handbags. When we arrived at the Centre, the first thing I did after
breakfast was getting her to have a warm shower and new clothes. We had
decided to wash them at the Service in order to gradually take them to her
future flat. Maria started enjoying taking care of herself, wearing decent and
clean clothes, going to the hairdresser and hearing the compliments from the
nurses and the other users for her new hairstyle. Every time this happened,
Maria would remain silent, but a childish happiness was visible in her eyes. A
colleague and I, who were supervising Maria, started showing her the
advantages she would get by leaving her flat and uncle. We took her to see
the new flat, meet her future flat-mates and have a coffee with them almost
every day. We showed her the clean and well-furnished single room she
would be living in.
And the big day came, at last. On that morning, equipped with big black
sacks and plastic bags, we went to Maria’s place to take her to her new
accommodation once and for all. We gathered her few things and collected all
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Leonardo Da Vinci Pilot Projects (2001 - 2004) – True Stories
her beloved handbags. A total of sixty-five! She opened a drawer and took
out a black and white photo showing two beautiful girls standing under a tree,
wearing two neat white shirts and black skirts, their black hair gathered in a
ponytail. She put it under her coat, holding it tight as her most precious
treasure. My colleague explained that the picture showed Maria posing with
her beloved sister, who died very young. While leaving her desolate
accommodation, Maria asked if she would be allowed to see her uncle from
time to time. These were the first words she said since we arrived; her
question revealed all her difficulty in parting from her uncle, who had been a
significant, though negative, presence in her life.
Once in her new house, we helped her put her clothes in the wardrobe and
her handbags on some shelves. She put the photo into a frame.
Seven years have passed since that day. Due to health problems, Maria
has been living in a home for the elderly. Her uncle died about one year after
she left. I do not know if she has ever known about his death.
Maria never completely integrated in the flat-sharing group. She was a
loner who seldom left her own reality to share some moments with the others.
The same happened in our relationship which went on with long silences,
looks and smiles.
I had not seen Maria for two years up until the other morning. Driving to
work, I passed by the home and noticed a coach taking some inmates out for
a day-trip. It was then that I spotted a black, shiny pageboy haircut. I stopped
to look more carefully and realised it was her. Our looks crossed and for a
moment I thought she was waving at me...
Rossana De Santi
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