Memory lost; life returned
Published: March 16, 2005
Some of Bonnie Lockwood’s senior patients at a Saginaw County assisted living facility take prescription drugs for memory loss.
So does she.
She’s only 45.
The Chesaning woman says the reason is one of the final beatings she suffered two years ago at the hands of an abusive husband, until finally she fled.
“Ever hear of Aricept? I take the same medicine as the people with Alzheimer’s,” Lockwood says.
“I have some trouble remembering numbers and dates. Sometimes I start to talk and then I forget; it’s like somebody shut the light out. I always have read a lot of books, and I used to have a mirror memory, but now, don’t ask me to repeat what I’ve just read.”
Dr. Debasish Mridha of Saginaw Township wrote in a patient referral letter that Lockwood “suffered asphyxiation after strangulation” and “postconcussive syndrome,” causing “mild forgetfulness.” He prescribed Aricept.
Lockwood says she didn’t call authorities after beatings she endured during a 15-year relationship
“I didn’t think the police could do anything,” she says.
Her 37-year-old husband never was charged with a crime against her. Instead, he is in prison at the state’s West Shoreline Correctional Facility in Muskegon Heights because a Shiawassee County Circuit Court judge sentenced him in August 2003 — five months after she left him — on a charge of criminal sexual conduct, second degree, with a mentally disabled relation.
Lockwood has campaigned publicly against domestic violence. She spoke during an October 2003 candlelight vigil at the Saginaw County Governmental Center, and appeared on television late last year to promote awareness of the Underground Railroad shelter.
The Saginaw News sent two letters to her husband at the state prison, the second by certified mail, inviting him to tell his side of the story. He did not respond.
Striving to succeed
Lockwood washes residents at the care facility and helps dress them. She lifts them from beds and wheelchairs and conducts activities. She gives them hugs and tells them jokes. She describes them as “family.”
She remains determined to achieve a registered nurse’s license, despite her obstacles.
Lockwood’s advocate with Saginaw’s Underground Railroad shelter is Lisa Delgado Cardinalli, who says brain injuries and memory losses are common among abuse victims.
“Sad to say, there is a lot of abuse to the head,” Cardinalli says.
Lockwood says she previously suffered broken teeth and bruises.
“His favorite thing was strangling me, picking me up around my neck with one hand and hitting me with the other,” she says. “I had bruises, but he always hit me where the marks wouldn’t show.”
Her husband’s maximum sentence is 15 years and the minimum is 19 months, which makes him eligible for parole in a few weeks.
Lockwood and Cardinalli are pleading with the Michigan Parole Board to keep the man in custody. In the meantime, they are preparing a safety plan for the day — sooner or later — when he is released.
“Plans can vary, based on the situation,” Cardinalli says. “We give people (recycled) cell phones to call 911. If there’s a door knock, we tell you to turn off the light behind you before you look through the peep hole so you won’t be seen. You should have code words with relatives and friends. If you have children in schools, you need to let the schools know.”
Gradual control
Despite her memory troubles, Lockwood doesn’t forget the most important dates: Sept. 27, 1988, when she married. March 17, 2003, when she finally fled her home. April 22, 2003, when she checked into the Underground Railroad with her two teenage children for a three-month stay.
Today she has a full plate. She lives in a secret apartment, cares for her children, works her full-time job, takes classes, attends counseling and returns to the Underground Railroad as a volunteer. She also is striving to finalize a divorce and to contact the parole board.
Like so many battered women, she says she looks back and asks how she wound up in a controlling relationship.
She remembers herself as a shy teenager at Durand High School who “hardly opened my mouth.” She dropped out to care for two younger brothers, leaving her with even more of an enclosed life.
She was employed in a Corunna discount store during her middle 20s when she met her future husband, eight years younger.
“He was good-looking, he would open the car door and things like that, but after we were married he became mean and nasty,” Lockwood recalls.
Examples:
t He might open the car door, but if she wanted to drive someplace herself, he needed to know exactly where. Then he would check the odometer, before and after, to verify she hadn’t strayed.
t He belittled and rejected her pleas to return to school.
t If she talked on the phone with one of her few girlfriends, he sat nearby and listened.
He demanded she wear loose sweatsuits so that other men would not turn their heads.
“Looking back,” she says, “at first the mental abuse was worse than the physical abuse. I wasn’t allowed to do anything.”
More and more violent
Physical aggression gradually entered the picture, Lockwood says.
She remembers him first showing his anger not with a blow to her, but by repeatedly slamming a puppy outdoors against their rural Chesaning home until the animal died, she says.
Until the late 1990s, Lockwood says she endured about one “serious” beating per year and that her husband would try to hide the assaults from the children.
“The last five to six years were when he became almost sadistic,” she says.
“He would break anything that I liked, from TV sets to knick knacks. He threw so many plates that on the wall near the woodstove, food was baked on. For a while he would apologize, but then he wouldn’t even do that.”
As beatings grew more severe, Lockwood says she would black out in pain and later regain consciousness, “like when you’re swimming under water and coming up toward the surface.”
On the night she suffered the memory damage, she felt like she “died a few seconds and came back to life.”
She says he also threatened suicide when he didn’t get his way. A police report indicates that shortly before he went to prison, he doused himself with gasoline and threatened to set himself on fire.
“I told myself that he’ll do anything to get me to come back, but that there was no way I was coming back,” Lockwood says.
Step by step
When Lockwood and her children arrived at the Underground Railroad, Cardinalli and other staff first made sure the family had the basics of clothes and personal items.
Lockwood was prepared. For five years, she hid clothes and canned food in her van for emergency escapes.
Next came counseling for all the family members.
Lockwood soon went job-hunting and found work at a memory care facility. Door buzzers have numerical code pads to prevent Alzheimer’s patients from walking out, but in her case they also offered protection in case her husband — before he went to prison — discovered where she worked.
For the Underground Railroad, she passes out cards at health clinics, places posters on bulletin boards in stores and helps with fund raising.
She invites domestic violence survivors to attend group sessions at 6:30 p.m. Wednesdays at the shelter (755-0413), saying stress-relieving laughter often prevails over tearful sadness.
“We have a blast, and we all feel better when we get done,” says Lockwood, who follows with a series of one-liners.
“I want a divorce so bad, the last time I was at the courthouse, I was ready to break into the judge’s office and write one for myself. I’m like, ‘Where’s the rubber stamp?”‘ she jokes.
Still, the humor doesn’t diminish her determination. She worked during the 1990s at a sister-in-law’s Ann Arbor home for the terminally ill. She hopes to own her own one day.
“Because of what I’ve been through, I have a very strong desire to protect people,” Lockwood says. “Sometimes at work, I’m overbearing. I have a strong will.
“I want to tape record everything that happened during my marriage, back to the first day, and write a book about it. I want people to be aware of what happens in these situations. Maybe I can help somebody else.”
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