"Mental Ward"

     That statement resonates in the back of my mind and brings me back to when I was a young girl of 10 years old.  My family was vacationing in Oahu, Hawaii visiting with my mother and fathers huge extended family.  My mother has 5 brothers, all but one brother,  is deceased.  My father has 19 brothers and sisters,  all but two remain living.  One beautiful bright warm Saturday morning in Laie,  we were going to visit with Aunty Pua at the Hospital.  I remembered hearing in hushed whispers, "Mento Ward" in Hawaiian pidgen language amongst my aunts and uncles.  "You going Mento Wahd go see Aunty?" They knew who she was without saying her name outright.
     The drive was not long,  sitting in the back seat with my brother Doug, sister Laurie and a few cousins along with my mom and dad in the front seat.  I can still relive that day as if it were yesterday.  We were so glad to finally be out of the car as we ran around the parking lot of the Hospital.  Our sound of laughter broke the silence of the trade-winds as the sun beat down on us.  Mom and dad "shushed" us as we walked towards what looked like a Grand Mansion with beautiful white columns and the ocean blue as it's background.  How can this be a Hospital?  I thought it to be of someones home, it was my Aunty Pua's home.  After weaving our way through a myriad of doors,  I remembered coming out of a door onto an open Lanai (patio) looking out towards the ocean and great massive trees spreading branch to branch as if shaking hands and breathing the warm scent of gardenia and plumerias into my body.  That moment of serenity was broken with shrieking and screaming and then laughter but not of children,  they were people like my mom and dad's age.  I turned to see old people, young people,  people rocking back and forth facing a wall or a window,  people chattering on and laughing at the toy rocking horse.  Nurses in white uniforms, cleaning and speaking with their energetic charges.  Frightened,  I quickly searched for my mom and dad who were not too far and was sitting and talking with an elderly woman.  I remembered her face and eyes hanging so low and sad but she was happy to see my parents and us children.  I saw my dad petting her hand and she had her head on my dads shoulder.  This was the Aunty Pua we came to visit.  Fearful,  I stayed close to mom and dad.  I could hear my mom speaking with Aunty Pua in Hawaiian, crying and heartbroken.
     Today these "Mental Wards" have politically correct names now.  Psychiatric is the word most commonly used.  Hospital and facilities to also mark the place or residence of a "Patient" and not Koo-Koo, idiot or Crazy man/woman.  My daughter Pua, has been a resident on the 3rd floor of the Psychiatric Unit at the San Mateo General Hospital for several weeks now.  Her pregnancy was terminated on Thursday Jan 17th in the afternoon.  When I received her conservatorship paperwork from the County of San Mateo to let me know of their procedure known as "Therapeutic Abortion",  my memories overwhelmed me with thoughts on how we used to view the mentally ill and how we used to shut them away, "out of sight, out of mind".  I'm very glad for our progress and cures and how far we have become as an American Nation.  We have moved forward from this stigma that many countries still discriminate against it, ridicule,  lock people away and even put to death.  God Bless America!