Judy Schreiber - February 1, 2013
Becoming Aware of Death
And uh, [pause] the rest of my time there, in terms of time and in terms of space and where I was, is that courtyard where that pig sty was. Uh, playing there and going through the entry, going out through the entry of the courtyard uh, there were two other places that I clearly remember, actually three. One was the little hill across from what turned out to be the crematorium, which I didn't know it.
Uh-huh.
And that's where I began to see dead bodies.
Uh-huh.
And that I think traumatized me big time, because I developed this uh, awareness or consciousness of some sort about death.
Uh-huh.
At age 3, that was recurring and caused me a lot of um, anxiety, severe, severe anxiety. Particularly a number of times in my childhood, after the war, when I was like eleven. I think they were basically like melt downs.
Uh-huh.
Break downs, but I didn't--my parents didn't know how to categorize them.
Mm-hm.
They were so, they were so uh, displaced themselves that they had no um, I think that they had no real awareness...
Mm-hm.
Of what had happened to me there.
They were wrapped up in their own...
Wrapped up in their own thing and uh, I feel uh, and there was resentment on my part as I look back on it, as I was growing older, because I, I felt like I had been somehow destroyed and it kept raising up out of me with anxiety, that's how it manifested itself. And I could not explain it to anyone, I could not tell anyone what was happening. Uh, I remember when I went away to sleep away camp for the first time. And I think I was uh, elevenish or so uh, I went to Tamarack, I think.
Mm-hm.
It was fresh air camp then, it wasn't called Tamarack. But I, I have such a clear memory uh, being about eleven and we stayed in these cabins and at night when it was time to go to sleep I became utterly and totally petrified, cause' I was away from my parents over night for the first time somewhere else. And I had such anxiety, and you cannot tell an eighteen year old camp counselor I'm having severe anxiety and I keep thinking about death, what do I do?
Right.
It was unexplainable.
Yeah.
And I knew it was unexplainable, even at eleven I thought, they're gonna think I'm nuts, they, and they wouldn't know what I'm talking about anyway.
Mm-hm.
So what I did was I could not sleep in the bed, because it was dark in there and there was girls in these cots, in these uh, bunk beds. I had to--I finally, I don't remember how I did it, but I ended up having them allow me to sleep in the, in the front part of the bathrooms where the lights are on all night.
Uh-huh.
I took my pillow and my blanket there, and I guess it must have assuaged, you know, some of my anxiety.
Yeah.
But I had incidents like that when I was in the fifth grade and we lived in Charlevoix, on Charlevoix street in, in Detroit. Uh, I remember I had a, I don't remember how long it lasted, an attack of these, this type of anxiety again, where I would run home at 3:30 after school. Now, this didn't go on forever, I mean, it was weeks, maybe it was a little longer. I was so anxious that I would run home right after school and get into my pajamas in anticipation of the night...
Wow.
Coming. And it all, my mother would like yell at me, what the hell are, what am I doing getting into pajamas. And I had, by then I had tiny, little sister and I had a little brother. And I just remember fear that overwhelmed me and I could not articulate even, what the fear was about.
Mm-hm.
Because I, either I thought that my parents would not understand or maybe at that time I lacked the ability to articulate it, I, you know what, I don't know. I just know that when I had these episodes of intense overwhelming anxiety and fear, they just, they knocked me down uh, big time.
Mm-hm.
And I feared them coming on even when I didn't have them.
Hm.
Because there was like an anticipatory fear, um.
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