MichiganRadio

Steve Luxenberg's Quest DETROIT, MI (Michigan Radio) - It all started with Luxenberg's mother, who was in a lot of pain at the end of her life.

"She suffered from anxiety and depression," says Luxenberg. "She spent two weeks in a psychiatric ward because they were monitoring some medications. It was a very routine thing but she saw it in terms that I didn't understand at the time. She kept repeating to me Steven you have to take me out of here I can't stay here.'"

That day, his mother had a wild look in her eyes and Luxenberg could not understand her franticness as he left her at the hospital.

But before that episode, Luxenberg's family got a surprising phone call. A social worker helping his mother had come across a report. In the report his mother, Beth, mentioned she had a disabled sister. Then after Luxenberg's mother died, a note arrived from the cemetery where his two grandparents are buried. The note asked if they wanted to purchase flowers for the three graves.

As far as Luxenberg understood his mother had no siblings. So Luxenberg began digging around using his journalism skills. Luxenberg works as an associate editor at the Washington Post. So Luxenberg started visiting places like this neighborhood in northwest Detroit.

"What we're essentially seeing is a vacant lot with lot overgrown grass," Luxenberg explains. That empty lot once held the apartment building where his mother, Beth, lived with her parents Hyman and Tillie Cohen, and her disabled sister.

Luxenberg discovered his mother's name was not Beth. It was actually "Bertha." And that his mom had a sister, Annie.

Annie born with a deformed leg. She was what was then called "slightly retarded."
At age twenty-one she was institutionalized into the biggest mental hospital in the area, Eloise.

At one point, Eloise housed ten-thousand patients and Annie Cohen was one of them. But now the place is just a handful of crumbling, creepy buildings. There's a small museum on the property. It's got plates and cups used by patients, and devices used on patients, things like leather restraints.

Steve Luxenberg is studying a photo in the museum.

"The things that really remind of Annie are photos like this one," he says, "which shows a typical ward with beds next to each other, so one bed melts into the next. In a way that says you have no privacy if you're in this kind of a ward."

At that time there was a big social stigma surrounding people with mental illnesses. Luxenberg thinks the reason his mother erased her sister, and also changed her name, was to create a blank slate and a new identity. A woman not tainted by mental illness in the family.

Luxenberg says the hardest part of his research happened when he asked a therapist to look at Annie's old records. The therapist turned the tables on him and asked why he was on this quest. As he answered he began to cry. He realized he was reliving his mother's pain.

"I want put this pain away," he said. "I want to deal with that pain of seeing my mother in a psychiatric ward begging me to take her home."

Luxenberg wrote a book about his aunt and his mother's secret, called "Annie's Ghosts." He wanted to restore Annie's identity and understand where his mother was coming from. As for his mother's secret, he said he does not judge her. Nor does he wallow in her choice.


knorris@umich.edu
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