The sun has burnt the man’s skin into a dark brown colour. Parched, he cuts a lone figure in the courtyard. A skeleton composed of reeds, the man sweeps the leaves and with the rake, he pushes the shriveled leaves into the dustpan. Only the sound of “sch sch” breaks the silence.
This man, Lin’s mother tells her, could have been a professor.
In The Sound of Sch, Danielle Lim recounts her mother’s journey to care for her brother, the man who sweeps the dried leaves. Called Ah Gu, he has schizophrenia. For thirty years, Mum brought him food, fetched him to the hospital and searched for him when he got lost.
More than a testimony to the sacrifice of caregivers, The Sound of Sch unravels the fibers of the present to reveal the reality confronting a family when their eldest son, older brother and uncle is diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Should the elderly mother listen to the doctor’s advice of treating her son in the Woodbrigde hospital or seek help from bomohs who promise a cure? Will the family nucleus fall apart when an ill relative requires constant supervision? What will the neighbours think when they see Ah Gu, the man who sweeps the leaves, walk out of the flat, trailing after policemen as handcuffs clasps his wrist?
Relying on auditory motifs- the sound of Ah Gu’s rake scrapping the fallen leaves into the dustpan or the sizzle of garlic whenever Mum throws chopped garlic into the wok- The Sound of Sch seems to say “shh, pause and listen to the story behind every face”.
When Ah Gu puts on his brown slippers, faded and old, the sound of them sliding across the cement floor evokes a narrative that tells his story. Although solitary in his illness, he is not alone in the struggle against schizophrenia.
According to the book, about one in hundred people suffer from schizophrenia. But about one third of them recover after treatment.
However, The Sound of Sch does not privilege hope. Instead, hope is almost absent from the book.
Is there hope when your eldest son is struck with mental illness? Is there hope when strangers whisper “mad” when the “mad” man was once an intelligent and young man with a bright future ahead of him? Is there hope when your mother swallows a bouquet of pills to ease the migraines attacking her?
What meaning can be found in a grandmother’s suicide, an uncle’s illness and a mother’s battle to care for her sick brother?
Answering that question, The Sound of Sch suggests that true meaning can only be found in moving forward where a synaptic chain of responses is released to illuminate the present- the answer is found in the response.
More than a chronicle of mental illness, The Sound of Sch echoes a family’s poignant journey of responding to the lemons life throws and is deserving of a read.
The Sound of Sch may be found at BooksActually, Booktique, Books Kinokuniya, MPH, and here