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I remember starting at McLean in the summer of 1982. I was 27 and had some experience working at the Dr. Solomon Carter Mental Health Center in the South End of Boston and other state programs.

My experience had basically been with severely retarded clients, and kids with criminal backgrounds from the Roxbury and Dorchester sections of Boston. But McLean Hospital was a totally different experience. It was and is a private institution, very well-regarded, and still had the remnants of its Boston Brahmin past.

The unit I first worked on was East House. At that time East House was a high security unit, with a number of quiet rooms, that usually had no vacancies.

As I sat in the conference room waiting for my first staff meeting, I remember a night mental health worker – with a halo of Harpo Marx hair and an arsenal of cornball jokes – bound through the room, his eyes bulging, anxious to get out to the parking lot. Just then a young, muscular Dr. P made a dramatic entrance like a modern day Dudley Do-Right, the sleeves rolled up on his crisp white shirt. He grabbed the phone like it was a barbell. He said something like, “Tell them I have to be in Morocco in the morning, and forward that call to Tangiers to me immediately!” I knew there was something unique about this institution from that day on.

Over the years, I worked on a number of units and encountered many patients and staff who affected me profoundly. I remember one client said to me, “Doug, you are my finest creation.” He then congratulated me for a clap of thunder heard outside the walls of the ward. You see, to him I was a minor deity that he created and he was giving me a pat on the back for a job well-done. For years whenever I would run into him he would look at me with great pride.

I have experienced very withdrawn patients on the units I have worked on come alive in poetry groups that I have run. I have sat hours on end outside quiet rooms checking on the safety of agitated patients – the rise and fall of their chests – answering their questions from their fever dreams the best I could. I have had patients rage at me in anger and come to me for comfort, some balm for their inner torment.

I am grateful to McLean Hospital for many things. The hospital helped pay my tuition for graduate school, it provided a steady job and benefits, not to mention flexible hours that I needed to pursue my writing and publishing.

Back in the day, we used to call McLean “The Mother” because she nurtured her patients as well as her employees. Fredrick Olmsted, the great landscape architect designed these grounds with the thought it would provide a meditative and soothing respite for healing. And despite all the upheavals to healthcare – to a great deal – it still is.

I will miss the folks I have worked with across the hospital. In many cases they have been very supportive and I feel I was part of a family of sorts. I have worked here more than half a lifetime, and have shared a long history with a number of folks. I have learned a great deal about the human condition and how mental illness can affect titans of industry, as well has the homeless on the street. Farewell.

The Director of Residential Services at McLean wrote me a note: “Thank you for your years of service to the hospital, for the many years you worked at the Pavilion and for the time you spent working at other residential programs prior to coming to the Pavilion. I especially appreciate your efforts to help our patients find creative writing outlets for expressing their inner demons.”