Tell me Why the Sky is So Blue Today

Via Cosmic Variance, I woke up to this story today. People have asked why I blog so openly about my experiences with bipolar disorder. This is the reason why. Please read the entire story about this brilliant young man, and the sad, tragic loss of his life.

Rutland Herald: Rutland Vermont News & Information

“Please don’t shoot me,” the young man reportedly said before he started running. The policeman saw Brodie jump into a marsh between the road and the river. He heard him complain the water was cold. He saw him get out, only to run toward the icy Connecticut. He heard a loud splash.

“I shined my flashlight out and could make out the shadow of John and the rippling of the water,” the policeman wrote. “I then heard John say ‘Help me, help me.’ His voice sounded very weak and in distress. I told John to come back to my voice and my flashlight. A few moments later, I did not see John at all.”

Authorities would not find Brodie’s body until five days later. Arena Israel read the short newspaper story on the drowning of a man described as “reclusive.” The Brattleboro woman recognized him as the meditator in the blue mechanic’s jacket who sat beside her at a local Buddhist center. She started making phone calls.

Brodie, she discovered, had parents in Maryland and a brother, sister-in-law and niece and nephew in California. He took the supermarket job to escape the complexities of physics, he told friends, only to find his mind spinning with questions about bagging efficiency. Israel also learned the probable cause for his late-night ride.

“John was a brilliant, creative, and deeply spiritual person who lived a rich, full, and courageous life in spite of his struggles with bipolar mental illness,” she wrote in a letter to the editor several days later.

Bipolar disease, once called manic-depression, is a brain condition that causes unusual shifts in a person’s emotions and energy. Brodie had taken medication for it when he was diagnosed while studying in Canada several years ago. But seeking an alternative to mainstream medicine, he eventually stopped.

Brodie’s obituary appeared in the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun.

“John Hartley Brodie, 36, a theoretical physicist, accidentally drowned on January 28, 2006 near Brattleboro, Vt., where he was residing,” it began.

“Boy, could John carry a great conversation. We covered anything from politics to philosophy, spirituality, world affairs and, of course, very heavy mind-bending physics and math,” friend and fellow physicist Stephon Alexander wrote in a letter read aloud. “I honestly can’t help but express anger and frustration about his not elevating to his rightful stature in his field. But I knew that John was not about that stuff, he wasn’t in it for the ego trip. He did physics because it gave him joy.”

The locals told stories about the humble soul who padded around his apartment barefoot, who telephoned a mental health advocate a week before his death seeking help for his condition.

“If Jesus Christ was walking among you today, would you recognize him?” John Wilmerding of Brattleboro said. “I think John challenges us now to grow beyond our own boundaries, to realize each other as great souls.”

But returning home, people started talking, telephoning, typing more newspaper letters. Why didn’t Brodie take his medications? Why didn’t the homeowner who heard the doorbell let it go rather than calling police? Why didn’t the patrolman deal with the situation differently?

Brodie lived to explore different questions. At the service, someone read a poem he once wrote his father:

“Tell me why the sky is so blue today
I love you as I said before and anyway
Can you see above the lumine of the sky
When we will see each other at the end of time.”

Outside the meetinghouse, the sun shone, a breeze blew. Inside, a copy of Israel’s letter to the editor sat on a table.

“For me, John is an example of a type of endangered human species,” she wrote. “May we as individuals, and as a community as a whole, come to respect and value the more courageous, vulnerable and gifted among us before it’s too late.”

I didn’t know John, obviously, but I knew those dark, lonely places he visited before his death, and the brilliant, brilliant places his mind could reach in those manic moments. I think about my sister and nephew and their much more difficult struggle with this disease than I have had. And all I can think is, “It could have been me, so easily…”

Dear john I knew you
About as well as anyone
We were the wild ones
So sure those days would never end
Now they’re only memories my friend

Dear john I’ll see you
Some day again

There’ll be a celebration
When all will be revealed
We’ll have a reunion
High on a hill

Dear john how are you
God know it’s heaven where you are
Find some peace there
May it never end

Dear john my heart knows
We’ll meet again
Dear john I’ll see you….
Some day again

— tommy shaw, Styx