Ancestry Magazine

After I married my husband, I realized his family was different. Oh, I don’t mean different in the way we sometimes describe our new in-laws, as in, “they open their presents on Christmas Eve and we open them on Christmas morning,” or “they make cornbread stuffing and we make white bread stuffing with chestnuts.” No, I mean different.

As the newest member of this large, upper middle-class, highly educated family, I quickly learned that politics and religion were only discussed if I wanted to hear about their opinions. I didn’t.

And then there was the one subject that no one mentioned at all, ever. It was their biggest family secret and I was warned never to bring it up.

 

Many years later, I did.

 

The secret went something like this: in 1934 my husband’s grandmother, Colice Sayer, was forcefully removed from her home and involuntarily committed to the St. Lawrence State Mental Hospital in Ogdensberg, New York.

 

I soon learned there was much more to the story. Colice Sayer was a wife and mother of four children when she was committed. Her crime? She threatened to kill her husband, Edgar, if he didn’t stop having affairs with other women.

 

Concerned for his safety, Edgar asked their family doctor to send Colice to the state hospital. It seems Edgar had a reason to be concerned—he was a man who had frequent affairs and who spent most of the family money on himself and his girlfriends.

 

So, as a result of the anger directed towards her husband, combined with an exhibited desire to protect herself and her children, Colice was legally committed to the mental hospital. She spent the remaining 43 years of her life either there or in supervised homes.

 

Colice, however, was not crazy. You see, Edgar didn’t want her but he also didn’t want a divorce. He wanted to be financially free of Colice and he wanted to play around. Institutionalization at taxpayer expense was just the ticket.

 

Easily Put Away

During Colice’s commitment hearing the family doctor, a local judge, Edgar, and Edgar’s brother and sister-in-law met in the doctor’s office to discuss her case. Colice was not notified of the hearing, was not allowed to speak in her own defense, and was never given an opportunity to refute the charges. In fact, at the time of the hearing, Colice was in town shopping.

 

Colice’s diagnosis was officially listed as “involutional melancholia,” or as we would say today, “depression related to menopause.” And yet all of this might have never been known had Colice herself not written about it.

 

In the 1930s there was little that could be done to treat mental illness. Writing was the main form of therapy for cases such as Colice’s, as it was hoped that self-knowledge would emerge from mental confusion through writing.

 

Colice wrote letters, notes, and poetry, filling numerous diaries during her four decades of confinement. She mailed notebooks and diaries to her children for safekeeping, away from the prying eyes of other patients and staff. She also hoped her family would read her writing and feel compelled to obtain her release.

 

They didn’t.

 

Society’s Take—Then

At the time, mental illness was a terrible scourge on the family. Friends would avoid someone whose family member had been institutionalized. Some of Colice’s children became fearful for their prospects if the truth about their mother was to get out. My mother-in-law was rejected by two different young men whom she had dated after each learned her mother was in a mental hospital.

 

As a result, no one talked about Colice. In time, it became as if she scarcely existed.

 

Unlocking the Secret

Several years ago I was in search of a topic for my doctoral dissertation. I was also intrigued by the possibility of learning more about the family secret. So after dinner one evening, I sat down with my mother-in-law and asked if she would talk to me about her mother and perhaps let me use this story for my dissertation. To my amazement, she agreed. My mother-in-law went to the back closet and brought out a zippered notebook full of diaries and letters her mother had written and gave them to me.

 

My sister-in-law also surprised me by giving me notes, poetry, and journals loosely packed in an old paper grocery sack. From even a few minutes spent with the documents, it was clear few if any had ever been read. My mother-in-law asked her siblings to talk to me. I was fortunate enough to conduct in-depth interviews with three of Colice’s four children.

One morning during the holidays, I asked my mother-in-law why she allowed me to learn about Colice. She gave a look born of untold thoughts and memories and said she wanted others to know what her father had done. She wanted them to know how he had destroyed her family.

 

Learning the Realities

What I learned, in addition to Colice’s tragic story, is that successive generations suffer as a result of the loss of someone who is so central in the life of a family. Generations of Colice’s descendants are affected by actions Edgar took over 70 years ago—and they don’t even know it.

 

Most of them never even met Colice.

 

Colice’s children achieved a measure of happiness and fulfillment, but they passed to their own children destructive lessons that each of Colice’s grandchildren still confront daily. In the years since I learned about Colice and the effects her institutionalization had on her family, I have observed instances of excessive self-sufficiency, emotional distance, powerlessness, and the inability to connect with others on a deep emotional level. I saw that these children had learned to accept parental domination, obedience to family myths, and a pervasive fear of being known. Because of these traits and an unwillingness to learn and change, even today, 72 years following Colice’s commitment, this family is indeed “different.”

 

 

Melissa McIntire Sherrod, RN, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Texas Christian University. She has recently published an article in the Western Journal of Nursing Research entitled, “Colice’s Story and the Effects of Generational Loss.”