Nothing Was the Same (16 page)

I sat for a long time, looking out on the rocks of the Big Sur, which I had known long before I had known Richard. I started to write. I wrote about the durability of love and hope, about a man I had been with for nearly twenty years, a man who had been my husband, colleague, and friend. I wrote about fearlessness and grace and the power of love. I poured my heart into my writing, and when I walked on the beach at Big Sur Richard was with me there. He was with me in the quietening of my mind. Richard was with me in Big Sur, and he would be with me when I left Big Sur. It would not be the journey we had reckoned on, but it was what we had. We both were inclined to look yonder.

Acknowledgments

I owe much to the kindness of others. My greatest debt is to my family and friends; within that group, I am particularly indebted to “The Snowflake Club”: Jeremy Waletzky, Robert and Mary Jane Gallo, Jeffrey and Kathleen Schlom, Silas Jones, and my brother, Dean Jamison. All have been unbelievably kind to me, as they were to Richard before he died. I once tried to thank them for everything they had done but could not find the words. Instead, I borrowed Byron’s tribute to his friend John Hobhouse: “To one[s], whom I have known long, and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril—to friend[s] often tried and never found wanting.” I have been blessed, as Richard was, by these friends, whom we never found wanting. I will always owe a deep-felt debt to Thomas O’Connor, as well, who helped me to shape the beginning of this book, and supported me throughout my writing of it.

I am particularly grateful for the friendship and support of Raymond De Paulo, M.D., and Adam Kaplin, M.D., Ph.D, colleagues in the Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry, and to Hopkins surgeon Jacek Mostwin, M.D., D.Phil., whose discussions with me about medicine, literature, and life I value more than I can say.

I would like to thank others who provided friendship and/or who read earlier versions of this book and made helpful suggestions: Joanne Althoff, Robert Barnett, Samuel Barondes, Larry Blossom, Keith and Brenda Brodie, James Campen and Phyllis Ewen, Robert and Alice Crawford, Jacqueline Davies, Douglas Dunn, Robert and Kay Faguet, Christina and Antonello Fanna, Stephen Fried and Diane Ayres, Charles and Peggy Gosnell, Donald Graham, William Graham, Ara Guzelimian, John Harper, Charles and Gwenda Hyman, Stuart Kenworthy, Helen Kindle, Athanasios Koukopoulos, Wendy Lesser, Heidi Jamison, Marshall, Linda, Danica, and Kelda Jamison, Walter Johnson, Phillip Mallett, Andreas Marneros, Paul McHugh, Christopher Mead, Sallie Mink, Alain Moreau, John Julius Norwich, Clarke and Wendy Oler, Robert and Elaine Packwood, Regina Pally and James Korb, James Potash, Harriet Potik, David and Jo Ann Reiss, Norman Rosenthal, Jerilyn Ross and Ronald Cohen, Barbara Schweizer, Sabrina Serrantino, Richard and Jill Side-man, Karen Swartz, Bety and Carlos Tramontana, Per Vestergaard, Jim and Liz Watson, Peter Whybrow, and Kin Bing Wu. Joanne Leslie, who is like a sister to me, was close to Richard as well. Her participation in the rites of Richard’s burial was particularly meaningful to our family.

Richard received excellent medical care from his internists in Washington, Drs. David Patterson and Bryan Arling; Dr. Kenneth Baughman, his cardiologist at Johns Hopkins (now at Harvard); and Drs. Richard Ambinder and David Ettinger, his oncologists at Johns Hopkins. His medical and nursing care at Hopkins was uniformly excellent, which made a difficult situation less difficult. Dr. James Watson was kind enough to get us in touch with the late Dr. Judah Folkman at Harvard, whose generosity with his time and whose treatment protocol almost certainly extended Richard’s life by many months.

This book would not have been possible without the incomparable help of William Collins and Ioline Henter. Most particularly, I could not have written this book or managed my life without the help and friendship of Silas Jones. I am grateful for financial support from the Dalio Family Foundation, the Dana Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

I, like many nonfiction writers, have been concerned about the damage done to the credibility of autobiographical writing by those who have written fraudulently about their lives. I have provided my editor at Knopf with extensive documentation for what I have written in
Nothing Was the Same
. This documentation includes copies of Richard’s letters to me and mine to him, which are quoted from in this book; relevant contemporaneous accounts of events portrayed, as well as excerpts from journals and letters, correspondence from colleagues, friends, and the public; copies of public records; and copies of Richard’s lectures and writings that are quoted in the book. In deference to privacy, I chose not to write about Richard’s former wife and his children.

Carol Janeway, my editor at Knopf, has been a close friend and an excellent editor; she was a good friend to Richard as well. I am very appreciative of the help of David Nee, also at Knopf, and that of my copyeditor, Sibylle Kazeroid.

My mother, Dell Jamison, died before I finished writing this book. She believed that the most important thing in life is not the cards that one is dealt, but how one plays them. She was, by far, the highest card I was dealt.

Permissions Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Faber and Faber Ltd.: Excerpt from “The Apple Tree” from
New Selected Poems
by Douglas Dunn. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Henry Holt and Company, LLC and The Random House Group Ltd.: Excerpt from “Reluctance” from
The Poetry of Robert Frost
, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, copyright © 1934, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 1962 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC and The Random House Group Ltd.

Iain Antony Macleod and The Joseph Macleod Estate: Excerpt from “Love Song” by Joseph Macleod (Adam Drinan)
(Poetry Scotland
, 1949). Reprinted by permission of Iain Antony Macleod and The Joseph Macleod Estate.

National Library of Scotland: Excerpt from “Song” by William Soutar. Reprinted by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

A Note About the Author

KAY REDFIELD JAMISON is Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She is codirector of the Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Center and a member of the governing board of the national Network of Depression Centers. Dr. Jamison is also Honorary Professor of English at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is the author of the national best sellers
An Unquiet Mind
and
Night Falls Fast
, as well as of
Touched with Fire
and
Exuberance
. She is the coauthor of the standard medical text on bipolar illness,
Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression
, and author or coauthor of more than a hundred scientific papers about mood disorders, creativity, and psycho pharmacology. Dr. Jamison is the recipient of numerous national and international scientific awards, as well as a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship.

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright © 2009 by Kay Redfield Jamison
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by
Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,
and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon
are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Frontispiece photograph by D. T. Jamison;
page 203:
Big Sur, California
, painting by Alain Moreau

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jamison Kay R.
Nothing was the same : a memoir /
by Kay Redfield Jamison. — 1st ed.
p. ; cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-27313-0
1. Jamison, Kay R. 2. Wyatt, Richard Jed, [date]—
Health. 3. Hodgkin’s disease—Patients—United States—Biography.
4. Psychologists—United States—Biography.
5. Psychiatrists—United States—Biography. 6. Psychiatrists’ spouses—United
States—Biography. I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Jamison, Kay R. 2. Wyatt, Richard Jed, [date]
3. Neoplasms—psychology—United States—Personal Narratives. 4. Adaptation,
Psychological—United States—Personal
Narratives. 5. Attitude to Death—United States—Personal Narratives.
6. Grief—United States—Personal Narratives.
7. Psychiatry—United States—Personal Narratives.
8. Spouses—psychology—United States—Personal Narratives.
RC644.J36 2009
616.890092—dc22
[B]    2009011096

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