2006 Awards

“Time goes by and the rain pours down.
I watch as it falls from the sky to the ground
I hope and pray one day I’ll be fine.
I have so much to live for;
I keep this in mind.
I am very pretty and sometimes smart.
I have a caring family and a loving heart.
I must surround myself with those who care,
And people I know will always be there.
The rain has ended and the sun is out.
There is so much beauty and a lot to think about.
Every rain has its end; this is the message that I send.”

As a writer and aspiring author, Amy, who lived in Anniston, filled hundreds of pages with poetry and short stories documenting every thought, fear and feeling that raced through her mind, words that her family now hopes will help others.

“I am alone with this mind of mine,” Amy writes in “Alone,” one of many poems she wrote.

Yet Amy did not leave a suicide note.

There were no last words.

No answers.

No goodbyes.

Though no one will ever know exactly what she was thinking that Wednesday morning, the reason Amy killed herself is painfully clear to those who knew and loved her.

“We’ll always wonder, but really we know,” says Jim Keat, Amy’s adoptive father and the only father she ever knew. “It was the illness. The ‘why’ doesn’t really matter. Knowing won’t make it any easier.”

When it came six years before, the diagnosis that would come to rule Amy’s life was something of a relief for both her and her family. Finally, after more than a year of fear and worry, Amy had a name, a medical explanation for her wildly unpredictable behavior.

Amy was bipolar.

Enemy within

A mental illness commonly known as “manic depression,” bipolar disorder effects upwards of 2.3 million people — about 1 percent of the population — in any given year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

It can strike anyone, men and women, at virtually any age — from early adolescence to adulthood and beyond. Patients with bipolar disorder suffer from extreme mood swings, ranging from abnormally elevated moods or “mania” to deep depression. In many cases, there may also be a “mixed state,” which includes elements of both mania and depression at the same time.

The manic state is often characterized by sleep deprivation, an inability to focus, anxiety, irritability, hyperactivity, destructive or uncharacteristic behavior, increased talkativeness, racing thoughts and distractibility.

To those on the outside, mania may sound enviable for all its implied activity, but it’s actually a nightmare, says Dr. Christopher Randolph, the Anniston psychiatrist who first diagnosed Amy as being bipolar when she was 17.

“When people think of mania they imagine a near euphoria, a sense of being ‘on top of the world’,” Randolph says. “But this is not the case at all. People in the manic stage are miserable because they can’t keep up. They can’t accomplish one thing without leaping to the next. They become far too driven.”

Depression is the other end of the spectrum, Randolph explains, when patients lose almost all motivation by simply feeling “numb.”

“Looking at these two polarities, people who are bipolar can also have these symptoms at the same time,” he says. “In this mixed state, they can feel depressed, hopeless and worthless — but at the same time cannot seem to slow down, to breathe and to collect their thoughts.

“(Amy) had great difficulty with her moods cycling rapidly … going from one state to the next almost without warning.”

When asked about the severity of Amy’s condition, Randolph, after a long pause, spells it out starkly.

“I’d have to say the case speaks for itself,” he says. “Amy had a very, very rough time.”

Statistics show that suicide for bipolar patients is a terrible reality.

According to the Institute of Mental Health, the mortality rate of the disease is two to three times higher than that of the general population. About 10 to 20 percent of individuals with bipolar disorder commit suicide, and nearly one-third of all patients admit to at least one suicide attempt.

“That’s the awful truth of this disease,” says Anniston’s Martha Horn, who has been bipolar for more than 26 years. “People who are bipolar pretty much only have two options — take their medicines and see their therapist or kill themselves.

“That’s the only way to fight this thing and win.”

“Amy was very dedicated when it came to controlling her moods,” says Schuyler Keat, Amy’s older sister by 13 months who lives in Tuscaloosa. “She had to deal with her illness every hour of every day. She read numerous books on bipolar disorder so that she could learn more about how to prevent an ‘episode.’ Being bipolar became a part of who she was, but she never wanted it to define her as a human being.

“I believe that her struggles involved more than a person without mental illness could ever understand.”

But the medications that kept her were almost as bad as the illness itself, Jim Keat says.

“She always took her medicine,” he says. “But she also worried about the effects it had. She really didn’t like the way they made her feel … lost and detached.”

Amy’s episodes tended to be manic more than depressed, her family says, but when either would occur, it was as if a switch were flipped in Amy’s mind. She became a completely different person.

“I would hardly recognize my own daughter,” Judith Keat says. “You could tell something was wrong. She normally had very high moral standards — no drinking, no drugs. But when an episode hit, she’d do and say things that the Amy we all knew would never do.

“And when she came back, when it was all over … she’d be horrified at what she’d done.”

Even Amy’s twin brother, Robert, who lives in Biloxi, Miss., didn’t know the depth of suffering that she endured. Her death leaves a huge hole in his life, he says, and a lingering feeling of guilt.

“We had an electricity, especially when we were younger,” he remembers. “Whenever it was the worst of day, she’d always turn to me.

“That’s why this has all been so rough. Because this time … I wasn’t there.”

Dealing with it

There is no cure for bipolar disorder and, while stress can often incite episodes, they may occur spontaneously. An ever-evolving regimen of medications and routine psychiatric care are the only measures for controlling the unstable and unpredictable mood swings, according to the Institute of Mental Health.

In the years following her diagnosis, Amy, by all accounts from friends and family, was devoted to her treatment and staying on her medications. She would often go long stretches of time, years even, without a single episode — manic or depressed.

And yet, during the course of her illness, Amy was hospitalized in Birmingham three times.

According to experts, bipolar disease runs in families. More than two-thirds of people with the disorder have at least one close relative with it or with major depression, indicating that the disease has a genetic component, according to the National Institute for Mental Health.

“There is proof that bipolar disorder is hereditary,” Judith Keat says. “But I’ve read lots and lots of studies that show that twins don’t always share this. For some reason, one can have it while the other doesn’t.”

One reason that she was “skeptical” about doing a feature on Amy’s illness was the question of bipolar disorder and its links to heredity.

“We don’t want everybody to think that maybe Amy’s brother or sister could also be sick,” Judith explains. “But we’re not the least bit worried about either of them.

“And we haven’t seen any reason to think that Robert might share Amy’s illness.”

Experts say that the twin of a bipolar person, unless they’re identical twins, doesn’t have a huge chance of developing the disease and, consequently, of truly understanding what their twin is going through.

According to the Institute for Mental Health, identical twins have a 70 percent chance of both twins developing bipolar disease. Fraternal twins like Amy and Robert have only a 23 percent chance of both twins developing it.

Having endured the stress and pressures of both basic training and active duty in the Air Force, Robert, who studies engineering and works in satellite communications in the military, doesn’t worry that he might also be bipolar.

“I’ve been through a lot and traumatic events can trigger it,” he says. “I think I’ve got a touch of depression, but I function just fine.”

‘Destiny’

It was around noon on March 15 and Jim Keat had just returned from lunch to his Anniston office, where he works as an insurance claims adjuster. The phone rang; on the other end was a Talladega County sheriff’s deputy.

“You need to come home,” was all the deputy would say.

Keat did as he was told. Returning to the home in Coldwater he shared with his wife Judith — their four children are grown and out of the house — Jim was met outside by several deputies. They tried to break the news of Amy’s death as gently as they could, but both Jim and Judith were devastated.

Yet in the days and weeks since their daughter’s funeral, each have discovered a number of painful blessings. Some were packed away in boxes filled with poetry and journal entries that detailed a beautiful, yet tortured soul.

“I knew Amy wrote, I just didn’t realize how much,” Judith says, sitting at a kitchen table stacked with sympathy cards from friends and strangers alike. “She documented everything about this awful disease — how she felt, how others treated her, her hopes, her dreams. Everything.

“This, in some way, was her gift to us. It was her way of letting us in, of helping us understand.”

Judith hopes to one day publish a collection of Amy’s poetry and other writings.

“I feel like I’ve got to do something,” she says, forcing a tired smile. “Amy wasn’t embarrassed. She wasn’t ashamed. It wasn’t her fault she was bipolar. It wasn’t something she caught.

“And still people ostracized her because they didn’t know any better. That’s who this book will be for.”

Within her writing, Amy often confronted the enemy that lurked deep within her own mind.

“God, whatever’s in my destiny/just help me to keep my sanity,” Amy wrote in the poem “Destiny.” “Getting though every single day/is all I want and all I pray.”

Even in death, Amy’s words resonate. Such confessions have helped Jim understand why his daughter didn’t leave a note behind. Everything anyone needed to know had already been written.

“Amy said all she needed to say, so I don’t really regret that there wasn’t a note,” Jim says quietly. “She fought this thing as long as she could. She wanted out.

“To me, it was Amy’s way of letting us know that she was at peace with herself and with everybody else.”

‘Alone’

But Amy still suffered. Friends turned their backs on her, the aspect of her illness that caused her the most pain. It was a betrayal she mentioned often but most poignantly in an entry dated June 11, 2004, titled, “Confessions of the Heart.”

“Why things happen the way they do … I really don’t know, but I have to teach myself not to care. It’s just so hard, and it hurts when I lose ‘friends’ over something that I have no control over. I am only 22 years old, but I have the maturity of someone a lot older. I have been through so much in my life that I’ve had to mature a lot faster than others.

“Writing is one of my favorite things to do. Writing a book is my dream. I want others to understand that not all people with a chemical imbalance are ‘crazy.’ I am a woman with a lot of heart. By this, I mean that I care about anybody and everybody, but sometimes I don’t get it in return.

“… In fact, I care too much about things at times. … All I want is to make my life the best it can be.”

Losing and scaring away supposed friends was a constant theme in much of Amy’s writing. As a young woman who was, as her mother says, was “beautiful on both the outside and the inside,” the rejection stirred many emotions, as she conveyed in “Alone.”

“I sit and think too much on the past/And all the friendships that did not last.

I know that those ‘friends’ were not real; it makes me sad this way I feel.

I will take my heart and share it elsewhere/With others I know will care.”

One friend who did not turn his back was Patrick Sanshu.

“A lot of people abandoned Amy, especially when they found out she was bipolar, and I know that really hurt her,” says the 23-year-old from his home in Tuscaloosa. “She had a mental disorder … a disease. It couldn’t be helped or avoided.

“It would’ve been nice if everyone could have seen through the illness to the wonderful, caring person Amy really was. But a lot of people couldn’t.”

However, a lot of those friends returned for Amy’s funeral.

After the service, walking among the crowd, speaking with those who knew and loved Amy, Robert Childers, pastor of Grace Episcopal Church where Amy was a lifelong member and who officiated her funeral, felt a “tremendous sense of loss” among those gathered to mourn Amy’s death.

But there was something else lingering in the stillness.

“There was also a sense of regret of, ‘We just didn’t know’,” Childers says. “I knew there were those who turned away or simply disappeared from Amy’s life, and that’s not to necessarily to place blame. It’s difficult to be confronted with the thought of ‘It could be me …’

“It’s scary, especially at that age, to find out you are not invincible.”

‘Something snapped inside my head’

The story of Amy Keat’s life and death offers no easy answers. There are no happy endings.

But there is a beginning, a moment when her illness first took hold and refused to let go, no matter how hard she struggled against its ever-tightening grip.

It was the summer of 1998 at a church camp in Nauvoo. For several nights, Amy had difficulty sleeping. Soon she began wandering off by herself.

Her sister Schuyler, who shared a cabin with Amy that summer, remembers when she first noticed something was wrong with her little sister.

“One night during the evening chapel service, we were singing a hymn,” Schuyler says, “and she closed her eyes, held her hands up in the air and started swaying back and forth. That was not at all like Amy.”

What Amy was experiencing was her first “manic” episode. Years later, after being diagnosed as bipolar, through the lens of hindsight, Amy wrote of that summer when she was 16.

“Something snapped inside my head. I became ‘high.’ I felt like I was capable of anything, that I could do anything. I broke a few rules, but I didn’t know about things I did that were wrong. I just didn’t care.

I was a ‘free-bird.’

Everyone at camp thought I was on drugs. It wasn’t long before my parents were called to pick me up.

They didn’t have a clue what was ‘wrong’ with me … Nobody did. Little did I know what was ahead of me.”

Before being called to camp because of Amy’s strange behavior, neither Jim, Judith, nor Schuyler, nor her stepsister Heather, not even her twin brother Robert, had any clue that Amy was mentally ill.

“She had lived a completely normal life up to that point,” Judith Keat says. “She was a typical teenager.”

“She’d lost a little weight,” Jim says of that summer. “But other than that, there were no signs. No warnings. No clues. No change in personality. Nothing.

“It’s like she left home as one person and came back as somebody else — somebody we didn’t know.”

When Judith arrived at camp to take her daughter home, she barely recognized Amy, who appeared frantically “giddy” and “laughing inappropriately.” Her conduct was so bizarre that Judith was certain Amy had been “drugged.”

“That just wasn’t my child,” she insists. “I was terrified by what I saw.”

Immediately Jim and Judith took Amy to Regional Medical Center, where doctors “performed every test imaginable,” including CAT scans and drug screens, all of which came back negative, Judith says.

It would be almost a full year before the Keats found out exactly what was wrong with Amy.

“As a family there was a sense of relief in finding out Amy was bipolar,” Jim says. “It gave us a place to start, to learn what we could do to help and prepare.

“Finally, we knew what to call Amy’s … condition. We had a name and from there we could begin to understand. But, of course, none of us truly did.”

From that summer in 1998 until her March suicide, the Amy Keat most people knew — trusted neighborhood babysitter and Habitat for Humanity volunteer — seemed to be gone more than she was around.

“I don’t think there was ever a time when we got the old Amy back,” Jim says. “She was always loving and caring. But after that first episode (at camp), we lost Amy.”

Though she kept what Pastor Childers called the “sweet, child-like quality that made her a truly gentle soul,” Amy’s youth was consumed by fear. She, as well as those close to her, worried constantly about if and when another episode would take hold, knowing there was little they could do to stop it.

“Being bipolar changed Amy’s life and it changed our entire family’s lives,” Schuyler says. “Amy so wanted to be ‘normal,’ but she knew from the moment she was diagnosed that her life would never be the same.

“Amy was still Amy the majority of the time — kind, loving, sensitive, selfless, compassionate and brave. But it was those few times during the severe episodes that made it difficult for everyone.”

Last days

In Jim Keat’s mind, Amy will always be the little 10-year-old girl with big brown eyes and electric smile who danced at the wedding of him and her mother.

Jim and Judith began dating when Amy was five. Through the years, Amy, whose father died when she was a baby, kept a special place in her heart for Jim.

“I want you to be my daddy,” she said to him soon after they first met.

Though their bond was immediate, it would be several years before Jim officially adopted Amy, Schuyler and Amy’s twin brother, Robert. Amy wasn’t shy about being part of a new family that also included Heather, Jim’s daughter from a previous marriage.

“That day, at the wedding,” Jim says, choking back the tears, “Amy was just ecstatic. ‘I got a Daddy! I got a Daddy!’ she shouted. It was one of the happiest days of my life.”

The saddest days would come 13 years later in the living room of his Coldwater home, where sheriff’s deputies told Jim about Amy’s suicide.

“It was a horrible, horrible shock,” he says.

Two days before her death, as she so often did, Amy dropped by Jim’s office. It was only a few days after violent storms ripped through the area, and Jim was obviously busy with insurance matters.

“Dad, looks like another manic Monday,” she said, sitting in his office.

“Baby, all Mondays are manic around here,” Jim answered.

They both laughed. Then Amy stood up, hugged Jim goodbye and kissed him on the cheek.

“I’ll see ya later,” she said, walking out the door.

It would be the last time Jim would see Amy alive.

“She just seemed so wonderful,” he remembers. “Probably, over the last couple of weeks, she was the best she had been in a very long time.”

Judith saw Amy the next day when she dropped by the house for a quick visit. She washed her car and some clothes and talked proudly of her mother’s upcoming graduation from physical therapy school.

In short, there was nothing particularly remarkable about the visit or Amy’s mood.

“Amy said she loved me and was gone,” Judith remembers. “That’s why this has all been such a shock. She seemed so happy, so content. We don’t really know what happened. All we know is that it must’ve been … impulsive.”

When she heard of Amy’s suicide, disbelief was Schuyler’s first reaction.

“It seemed like I was in some kind of dream world, like it wasn’t really happening,” she says. “After all, I had just seen Amy a couple of weeks before and she was happy and fine. The first thing that came to my mind was that Amy could not and would not do something like that.

“To this day, it is still difficult to comprehend.”

Amy, it seems, grew tired of fighting. She wanted freedom from the clutches of an inescapable illness.

In the wake of such a loss, it’s hard not to focus on the stigmas of mental illness and suicide, allowing the images to forge an unfair legacy. But if any good can come out of Amy’s death, it will be found in the words and insights she left behind.

Amy Keat deserves to be remembered for who she was, her family and friends say, not for what she had.

“She was put here for a purpose — to show people that mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of,” Judith says. “This is what Amy would have wanted.

The book of Amy’s writings hopefully will fulfill that wish, her mother says.

“It was her dream. I only wish she was here to see it.”