Written as an emotional appreciation for the friends and family who visited every day whilst Ross was comatosed in hospital. This human contact was so important and helped so much with nurturing some small sense of connection and feeling with people who love you. Something positive to lift some of the weight of depression and med deadening, something to give hope of recovery.
Ironically, whilst at the time the NHS quoted the need for as much family contact as possible to aid recovery, they have now closed all the local in-patient facilities in favour of a central facility in Reading. This makes daily visits for people in this area impossible – it seems that the clinical evidence for the benefits of contact is mutable when it comes into contact with policy…
While I was Comatosed
You came and sat with me
While I was comatosed
Dosed up to the eyeballs
Force-fed with meds
You came every day you could
You comforted
And gave me a mantra
To help feel positive
When slurred words were blurring
My spirit was suffering
My protest was supposed to be
My fall back plan I was found guilty
I was out for the count
But you always came
And took me away from the horrible place
On my death-bed
You came and sat beside
While I was comatosed
And kissed my sleeping eyes
When slurred words were blurring
My spirit was suffering
My protest was supposed to be
My fall back plan I was found guilty
Burns night meal with friends, 2019. Ross burns bright, the life and soul. 6 weeks later, we use the anniversary of my dad’s death as an excuse to visit the crematorium together, followed by pub lunch. He is – on edge. After food he becomes vocally aggressive, shouting. I have to leave. That evening he emails. He simultaneously never had a mental health problem (my having him sectioned was abuse) and all his mental health problems were caused by me. Schrödinger’s psychosis.
I spend 2 months putting intense pressure on the local mental health services and finally succeed in persuading them to act. They call to say they will turn up with the team to assess him – on the morning after he burnt down the shed (in which he had been semi-living) in the night and disappeared to, as we later discovered, Bournemouth. I contact the Bournemouth mental health services (local services doing chocolate teapot impressions) and, eventually, he is picked up by the police and taken to Prospect Park hospital in Reading for assessment. Relief is too mild a word. BUT. Fleeting. I’m told that he’s a “trustee”, allowed to come and go as he has promised to be treated in the community. I’m told he will shortly be released into that imaginary community…
Killed his guitar in the woods on new years night, videoed himself painting his room red and dark green, and put up signs like these everywhere.
“Yet to be named” was the last thing Ross achieved before crashing. Re-released as with new band as “Consumed in self”.
Smoked dope for a while, but then tried to give up following some scary symptoms. Wrote “Blame Marijuana”, prescient, but sadly too late…
While I was comatosed
Get him a doctor
Let me be nothing
Going Home
Song of Sickness
Chaos
Hugging Barbed Wire 
then where will you go..
Melancholy 
Don’t Fade