I thought I was a poet. Teaching was to be temporary before I became a full-time writer. What the world needed from me most, I thought, was my poetry—a mix of jagged angst and lyrical melancholy. I sent off fragments of my soul, and I always included a self-addressed stamped return envelope. This proved handy because it became clear that the world wanted no part of my young soul. Pathetic-looking return envelopes containing my shunned poetry and accompanying rejection slips soon cluttered my desk.

I had an idea. I would start my own poetry magazine. The project was simple. I rented a safe deposit box at the local post office and placed an ad in the now-defunct Saturday Review. I invited poems for Voices, the name I chose for my very small magazine. I was publisher, editor-in-chief, and—it was the early ’70s—typist. An artist friend of mine created the cover art, so all I had to do was gather poems, retype them, and provide editorial commentary. A local printer would do the rest.

The results of my ad astounded me. I soon had dozens of poetry-packed envelopes stuffed into my PO box. Forget grading that stack of essays—sophomoric opinions about The Scarlet Letter from, well, sophomores. I was more eager to get into the heads of some fellow poets, while being careful in my role as editor-god. Some of the writing was distinctively bad and easy to reject, but much of what I retrieved was earnest, well-written, and worthy enough for any reader. This is great, I thought.

One envelope arrived from Florida and contained several pieces by Jyl Obenschain. Her biography said she was 24, like me. I liked her poetry, and Jyl’s simple imagery reminded me of some of my own efforts. I selected one poem for publication:¹

Nothing comes of the flower
That does not bloom for beauty
As the aching thorns of life
Become rich with ice
As finely tuned as angel strings
Plucked gently with the noon sleep on the road
Or sleep by the fire
It is heat enough for both of us

I replied to Jyl to say her poem would be included in Voices. A week later another envelope from Florida showed up in my box. This time it was from Jyl’s sister Jan who informed me that Jyl had died. She had been murdered on December 18, 1973.

The letter gave no other details of the crime. I learned from her sister that Jyl had worked part-time at a local halfway house and had been a promising artist who painted with watercolor. Jan wrote that Jyl “was an extremely creative, sensitive person who wrote reams and utilized the canvas—oils, paper/pastels as a release for her revolving positive and negative feelings.”²

Stunned, I sat there at my desk and held the letter in my hand for a while. I later noticed the date of the postmark on Jyl’s mailed submission: December 18, 1973.

The incident shook me. I felt out of my depth and very young. These are real people, I thought. I had invited them into my little life to share parts of themselves—and now one had died.

The coincidence with the postmark date bothered me, too. I even imagined Jyl being killed as she returned home from mailing her poems to me. I wondered who murdered her and why. The halfway house—was it some sort of drug rehab? Was the killer one of her clients? What did Jyl’s sister mean by “revolving positive and negative feelings”? Despite my gnawing questions, I never followed up by writing back and asking directly. After all, that would have been intrusive and callous—and I figured it was none of my business.

I dedicated the inaugural issue of Voices to Jyl Obenschain: 1949-1973. I included the little I knew about her among the biographical sketches of writers whose work I published that month. When the issue came out, I sent Jan two copies of the magazine with words of sympathy. There would be a few more issues of Voices, and then the small enterprise would fold because I had accepted a teaching job in Australia, my new adventure.

My stint as a magazine publisher was over, and life unfolded in a new country. My adventure over the years would include some of the usual dappled things: I would become a father of two beautiful children. Then I would divorce. Then I would fall in love and marry again, adding more adventures with my new wife. We explored exotic faraway places before being grounded abruptly. After a courageous ten-year struggle, my wife—my hero—would die of breast cancer. Then I was alone.

One night, nearly 40 years after I published Jyl’s poem, I was wide awake with grief. This was not unusual. My wife had been gone nearly a year, yet I’d often be up late with unutterable sadness. I was still trying to figure it all out. My friends and children suggested grief counselors, but I thought nobody else understood. Yes, at first, people had done all the well-meaning things. Then, gradually, they kept pushing my wife out of the picture. They meant no malice, but people would come by without mentioning her name. I knew it wasn’t their fault. OK, you have to use the past tense—but say her name once in a while! It was outrageous to think that somebody could be forgotten.

This was just some of the stuff that kept me up at night.

I’ll never know why, but there, hunched over my computer in the middle of the night, I googled Jyl Obenschain’s name. I had never done this before. And why now? The last time I had thought of Jyl, the verb “to google” did not exist. Soon her name landed on the screen in several references. I began to read Jyl’s story.

Florida couple Jack and Maxene Obenschain had three daughters: Jackie, Jyl, and Jan.  Their mother, Maxene, had written a book years after Jyl’s death. Maxene’s book, Possessed Mentalities, was about schizophrenia and the toll it took on her family. Maxene Obenschain-Kleier, by then in her mid-80s, wanted the world to know her family saga and to understand more about the disease. She especially wanted readers to learn that schizophrenia is a general term for a variety of mental disorders. The book detailed how people with the illness experience urges, and how sometimes actions of schizophrenics fall under the control of their illness.

At the time Jyl had written her poems and sent them to me, she, like her sister Jackie, had already been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Jyl’s condition was comparatively mild, I learned. Jackie’s illness was worse.

On December 18, 1973, Maxene, a teacher, returned home to find Jyl’s blood-soaked and lifeless body on the floor. Jackie, Jyl’s older sister, had stabbed Jyl thirty times. No drug-crazed addict from the halfway house. No robbery gone wrong. Just two sisters at their family home while their mother was at school with her students, preparing for the Christmas season.

There was just Jyl in the kitchen making coffee near the antique pine breakfast table and Jackie, whose voices inside her head must have told her to reach for a kitchen knife. Later, Jackie appeared before her shattered mother who was kneeling protectively near Jyl’s body. Jackie apologized before the police came for the arrest.

 

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A determined Maxene Kleier knew what she had to do.

What Maxene did is to stand by her daughter Jackie. She became a lifelong advocate for changing the judicial system, a system that had initially charged Jackie with murder. Maxene never once held Jackie accountable for Jyl’s death. Maxene’s exhaustive research, along with enlisted experts, argued the view that the illness was responsible for this terrible crime—not Jackie. Florida courts eventually found Jackie not guilty by reason of insanity. Though she admitted to stabbing her sister, for a long time Jackie didn’t believe Jyl was dead. She was committed to a Florida facility for the mentally ill.

Maxene offers blunt advice: “Don’t let a moment destroy you. People cling to moments and make other moments miserable … Life is full of sad happenings.”³

It was in this spirit of forgiveness and instruction that Maxene spent her life after Jyl’s death. She visited her daughter Jackie frequently, spoke regularly to her by phone, and even invited Jackie to contribute to the book. When the book came out in 2005, Jackie wrote her mother and said, “I stayed up all night reading the book. I am so sorry, Mom. Please forgive me. I just hope I never cause anyone pain like that again. I love you.” ⁴

 

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I stopped reading. It was no longer the middle of the night. It was early morning half a world and a lifetime away. Jyl’s story—the one that had begun so many years before and that was somehow part of my own — had dislodged me from my personal sorrow for a while. I had been reading for hours. One last Google search provided a postscript. After 40 years of living with schizophrenia and a few months after the publication of her mother’s book, Jackie Obenschain passed away in 2006 in the Florida facility that kept her and others safe. She was 59 and had died of cancer.

The glow from the morning sun soon filled my study where I had spent the night. The thunderous cadence of waves rolling up my street from the Bass Strait was more muted now that morning had come. Another family’s unhappy tale had obscured my own and had occupied my night, but before starting my new day I would record Jackie’s words from her mother’s book:

“Clouds rain, evaporate, and exist as clouds like our hearts. We try to be happy but our hearts are vulnerable to thousands of things that make our hearts rain. There will be joy when our hearts become the sky. There will be joy because we will not feel what makes clouds rain.”⁵

_______

¹ Jyl Obenschain, “Nothing Comes of the Flower”, Voices Poetry Magazine, Vol. 1 (1973).
² Letter from Jan Obenschain to Michael Riordan, 1973.
³ Maxene Kleier, Possessed Mentalities (iUniverse, 2005), 223.
⁴ Kleier, Possessed Mentalities, 226.
⁵ Kleier, Possessed Mentalities, 224.

Michael Riordan is a Chicago-born retired teacher and professor of English, Writing, and Film Studies. He was also co-founder and CEO of Creative Action Now, a Singapore-based English language school and educational consultancy. His writing has appeared in Snapdragon Journal, 50Something, Living Now, Insight, and GT Magazine (Australia). “Horse Horse Tiger Tiger,” a story set in Shanghai, was awarded First Prize for nonfiction in this year’s Ageless Authors spring writing competition. An enthusiastic traveler, Riordan has taught in the U.S., Australia, Singapore, and China. He now resides in Arlington, Texas.

Photo by Christopher Beloch on Unsplash