A Halloween Night That Changed How I See Mental Illness
An unexpected encounter taught me a lesson about kindness, compassion, and the prejudices we don't always realize we carry. It was an October evening when I went to visit my mother at her senior living apartment building. As I walked through the parking lot, I noticed the building manager, whom I knew well, hurrying toward the entrance. At the front door, a security guard was speaking with an Asian woman. The manager approached them, exchanged a few words with the guard, and then asked the woman to follow her upstairs. Since I was heading inside anyway, I followed along. The woman appeared to be in her sixties or seventies. She was dressed in comfortable clothes, with an elegant scarf draped around her shoulders. What caught my attention, however, was what she was carrying. In one hand, she held a broom. In the other, a long-handled dustpan. Upon closer inspection, I realized that she had wrapped clothing around the dustpan's handle, turning it into a strange, humanlike figur...
