My great grandfather lived and died a patient at The Ridges Lunatic Asylum. From what I have been able to piece together from those who knew, and were willing to talk about him, he was admitted and released sporadically throughout his life. He drowned in a bathtub after enduring an electric shock treatment. He was buried in such haste that the family, until recently, had no idea where he was laid to rest. This poem depicts the moment in which he was found.



The wind carries whispers,
families, memories and remnants of lives.
I feel them all.
I am walking, searching, stalking,
criss-crossing among the cold stones.
Row after row of faceless numbers roll over me.
976, 977, 978.
The ground screams of lost love.
They echo on the wind,
and carry me closer.

I know you but,
you’re foreign to me.
Your name I recognize but,
your face is lost to me.
I’ve heard stories,
Was it genetics?
Will it haunt me?
979, 980.
Questions swell and choke me.
Will it haunt me too?

981
Reunited as if we’d actually me before
Recognition floods over.
I found you!
I found you tucked away from the world.
Forgotten by so many,
remembered by so few.
I can almost hear you whisper,
“You found me”.

-Hannah Travis