Is there a line separating sanity from insanity? What causes delusions (false beliefs), or auditory hallucinations (hearing things others cannot)? If your child said, “the devil told me to do bad things,” what would you do? These questions will be answered by the hero of today’s story, a six-year-old boy named TJ. from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
“Brush your teeth, TJ,” his mother Marie ordered as she made his peanut butter and jelly – PB & J — sandwich for school. She cut the outer crust off two pieces of bread, smeared on PB & J, stuck them together and sliced the sandwich horizontally, making two perfectly equal rectangles. She sealed the sandwich into a plastic bag, and along with an apple, can of orange juice and two napkins, packed everything inside his lunchbox.
“Here, son.” TJ snatched the lunchbox and dashed outside where his sisters, Helen, 14, and Pam 13, waited for the school bus. After her children climbed into the bus, her mind traveled back in time to April 16, 2011, on Paques (French for Easter) morning, when Theodore Jacob “TJ” had been born.
After her second daughter, Pam, was born, her physician warned her, “Marie, your diabetes (Marie had severe, type I diabetes) almost took your life. No more children.” TJ was her miracle child.
Marie and her husband, Louis Dumas, lived in their home which sat on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, just south of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They raised their children in a vibrant Cajun culture, which had its own French dialect, cuisine, folklore and popular music called Zydeco. They adhered to the “Joie de Vivre,” French for “Joy of Living,” which balanced work with family time. As devout Catholics, they attended church.
Marie also blended her own Cajun folklore into her parenting. She scribbled two words on a scrap of paper which spelled out, “Devil, and Die.” “TJ, do not think these words or say them aloud, if you do, bad things will happen.”
The Dumas House Party:
After church, relatives arrived with Creole/Cajun dishes such as seafood gumbo, chicken jambalaya (a rice dish seasoned with hot chili peppers), shrimp creole, red beans and deep fried boudin (pork sausage and rice.)
Marie and Louis prepared boiled crayfish and desserts — bananas foster and bread pudding with vanilla whiskey sauce.
After the meal, furniture was moved out of the living room, making space for the Dumas Zydeco band. Zydeco is a musical genre known for its bluesy vocals, keyboard accordion and washboard, which added unique percussion sounds.
TJ (fiddle), Louis (accordion), Marie (vocals), TJ’s sisters (guitars) and grandpa (washboard), opened with two Zydeco classics: “My Toot Toot,” and “The Snap Beans ain’t Salty.”
These festive Sunday afternoons were TJ’s happiest moments. Unfortunately, they were short-lived.
Part II -— Bad news, family moves:
Marie sat her family down at the kitchen table: “The railroad has merged with another one and your father’s job has been eliminated. They’ve offered him a new job in Indiana.”
In a whirlwind move, the Dumas family relocated to Indiana. Their new home overlooked the Wabash River. For the first time, tension became a part of their daily existence. Marie’s health took a sudden turn for the worse.
Behind his parent’s closed door, TJ overheard and misperceived fragments of an argument: “Die, hospital, pain, TJ is the problem.” That night, while in bed, TJ heard a deep, gravelly voice inside his head: “Say my name, Devil! Say Die, Die!”
The next day, his mother was hospitalized for severe diabetic and kidney problems. TJ believed he was the reason she got sick. Before he left for school, his father gave him his lunchbox and said, “I made your lunch, after school I’ll take you to see your mom.”
At school, he withdrew into silence. At noon, he sat down at the lunch table and opened his lunchbox. When he saw his PB & J sandwich, he froze. Instead of two perfectly equal rectangles, the bread had been cut diagonally into two triangles. The voice inside his head screamed, “Die-angle! Say my name, Devil!” TJ threw his lunch box across the room.
Office visit two weeks later:
Dr. Wilson greeted TJ and his family, but before he spoke, Mr. Dumas said, “We’ve made the decision to move back to Baton Rouge.”
Dr. Wilson replied. “How about some more good news? I’ve reviewed all of TJ’s tests and you do not have a psychotic disorder.”
“You mean I’m not insane,” TJ asked? “Correct, what you have is a common, but rarely identified childhood disorder.”
“What is it,” TJ asked?
“It’s called Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD,” Dr. Wilson replied.
“I thought PTSD was only for soldiers,” Marie stated. “Yes, Marie, that’s the misconception,” Dr. Wilson replied.
“PTSD can strike anyone. TJ, you believed that if you said, heard, or saw the words, “DIE or DEVIL,” you’d make your mother sick or possibly die. While under this stress, you took the words diabetes, dialysis and diagonal, all of which start with the same sound -— DIE — and used it as proof that you’d made your mother ill.”
Marie burst into tears. “My fault! I told him not to say the words, Die or Devil -— I caused his PTSD.”
“No,” Dr. Wilson replied, you didn’t cause his PTSD.”
TJ and his family became educated about trauma and with treatment, TJ would fully recover.
Eight years later, Dr. Wilson received this letter: “Dear Dr. Wilson, here is my album, “The Devil’s Lunchbox,” which won a Grammy Award for best Zydeco/Cajun music category award. Thanks, TJ.”
The content of this article is for educational purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for treatment by a professional. The characters in this story are not real. Names and details have been changed to protect confidentiality.
Author’s note: Today’s story was based on an event from my own childhood, when my mother began to have bouts of severe clinical depression. I was in first grade when I went to get my lunch for school and saw this on the kitchen counter: the peanut butter jar was open, and two pieces of bread were next to it. My mother was too ill to finish making my sandwich. Like TJ, I falsely believed I was the cause of her sickness. Even though I now realize it was not my fault, I will never forget my profound sadness that I could not help my mother.
Reference: https://wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Louisiana_Creole_cuisine&oldid-755353894
Dr. Richard Elghammer contributes his column each week to the Journal Review.
