Janet was a long time poster on this forum - very smart, comical, and insightful about the cult and our time in it. She has asked me to post this email she sent me to the forum. If you would like to email her, you can reach her at: mensabrains@webtv.net

I know she would appreciate hearing from people who know her.

Marianne

This is what she sent me:

for those of you who knew my son personally, this is going to come as a
shock. for those of you who only know me thru the internet, i felt i
needed to tell everyone so you'[ll know the context with me from here on
out.

my son Stepan was a wonderful, warm, lovey, sensitive, earthy young man,
who loved cosmic thinking and spiritual loftiness. he followed every
earth-saving pursuit we have going. he loved animals and people and the
trees and deep, rich conversations. he cherished the social network of
friends he had in highschool, and strained to get back together with
them, tho the years and the burdens of adulthood pulled them further and
further away from him. Stepan was a brilliant student in school and a
varsity athlete in football, until a mental illness began to emerge when
he was around 16. He knew something was happenning to him. He tried to
tell us he felt something going wrong in his brain, but we didn't
understand  what he was trying to tell us. By the time he was 18, he was
diagnosed as full blown schizopenic with a side order of bipolar. He
remained a generous, warm, loving, cosmic boy even with the disorder. He
loved driving, loved all kinds of music, all kinds of reading materials
and random, eclectic things he would find along his way thru the world.
He liked the meds his doctors tried him on. He loved that they made him
have deep, rich sleep and vivid dreams. If he went off his meds it took
him about 8 weeks to deteriorate to the oint where the whole world could
agree and see that he needed to be caught and hospitalized, and he took
those hospitalizations with equanimity and acceptance. Always came home
wanting to do better, to be better, and would look back and see how
foolish his behavior had been in 20 20 hindsight. It took him a while,
but he'd eventually see what he had done and apologize for it sincerely.
He wanted to work. He was  intent on getting off his disability checks
by going into a noble effort like converting cars to run on water, or
air, or hydrogen--anything but polluting fuels. He enrolled in auto
school, twice, to learn how to do the conversions. He tried massage
school, but panicked and pulled out at the thought of clients suing him
for possible sexual harrassment false charges. He owed the massage
school 800 dollars for dropping out. He bought a 2002 GMC truck and then
gradually realized what the payments were going to require of him, but
he was game to try. He was doing all right.
He dreamed of marrying one of the girls he'd loved in high school, and
sent them presents of things he'd find in his wanderings. He kept in
touch with the guys he treasured most from their time in high school
together--Eric Sapp, the deep intellectual who went to Yale Law School
and became an environmental lawyer and married a woman from Iran.  James
Shortway, the buddy who joined the Army and became a sniper hunting for
Bin Ladin in afghanistan.  His buddy Ali, the saudi arabian son whose
family owned a business in New York City and an apartment where Stepan
always went to visit when he was in the City. He treasured these fellows
like jewels he'd found and kept.

Stepan had come to stay with me out here in 97, newly diagnosed and hard
for the whole family to handle. I found us a big old victorian house in
venice beach with a lot of yard around it, and took on the task of
roping him in and showing him how to live with a mental illness. I
myself have dealt with  having clinical depression for decades, and knew
the terrain all too well. It was a wild ride at first, but he tamed down
and learned to spot his symptoms and recognize how they came out. He
took his meds, he saw his doctor regularly, he completed all the arrays
of paperwork that came with wanting to do anything while on
disability--going to school, getting a job, buying a car, moving cross
country. He handled going to jail for a week, he handled being the
target of identity theft and straightened that out.he was a high
functioning patient.

For reasons we can't make out,  he left the world over the weekend. He
had gone to live on the atlantic coast to spend time with his father,
something he had yearned for since he was 3. His father had married and
bought a big house by the seaside on the coast of connecticut and
finally could have a place for his son to come and stay with him. Stepan
got stepsisters in the bargain--- college age,  who welcomed him into
their activities. It seemed there was finally a family: his Dad, a
stepmom, sisters and a brother, a dog, a new truck, going back into
school, a big house, his old friends within visiting reach....

but friday night, his dad and stepmom went out to visit dad's sister and
spent the weekend. all seemed normal. Stepan was home by himself with
everything to call on. everyone was within easy reach.

his father and stepmom came home sunday night in a pitch black
thunderstorm and went straight up to bed on the second floor. they
didn't look in on him and even if they had, and found his room empty,
they wouldn't have thought anything of it; he might have gone out with
his stepsister's crowd to some event.

when the sun came up today, monday, they looked out their upstairs
bedroom window and thought they saw him sleeping, out in the yard in the
hammock.  last night's thunderstorm made that seem very strange, but
stepan did odd things sometimes. they went down to see what was up. they
were going to take a picture to show him later.

later is never going to come.
from all appearances, Stepan got himself a flare gun from somewhere.
Might have bought it, might have found it.

While he was home alone with no one else there, he laid in the hammock
and tried two shots into the air--
and then put the flare gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.


he's gone.

his father called me this morning to tell me the news.
the state of connecticut is taking over, looking into seeing whether the
kid had taken drugs,  looking to see if there are any markers in his
bloodstream, and doing an autopsy.  i asked for them to shave his  head
and save me all his hair in a ziploc bag, to remember him by.

the talk is about cremating him.

i am in a state of suspended functioning. the grief hasn't hit me yet.
this is typical of me. i'm shaky, but functioning. i don't collapse
until much later, after the pressure is off. i function straight thru
the emergency like an automaton, and don't feel emotions until later on.

for those of you who knew him, and only knew of him---i wanted you to
know.  i will send out a second mailing with a link to a photo page of
him and me in our backyard, so you can see what he looked like.

janet in venice
janet schwartz

for my son
stepan david hurlburt
oct 6, 1978-
aug 15th, 2005

stepan was too cosmic and loving for this tired old world to understand.
i know he was a gift from God, he was the unexpected answer to a prayer
i sent up, and i can understand why he might have gone back. the world
didn't know what to make of him.