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The Mike File: A Story of Grief and Hope
In The Mike File, Stephen Trimble grapples with his brother's heartrending life and death and looks behind doors he’s barricaded himself in.
In 1957, when “Stevie” was six and Mike 14, psychosis overwhelmed Mike. He never lived at home again and died alone in a Denver boarding home at 33. Journalists used Mike’s death to expose these “ratholes” warehousing people with mental illness.
Detective story, social history, journey of self-discovery, and compassionate and unsparing memorial to a family and a forgotten life, The Mike File will move every listener with a relative or friend touched by psychiatric illness or disability.
In 1957, when “Stevie” was six and Mike 14, psychosis overwhelmed Mike. He never lived at home again and died alone in a Denver boarding home at 33. Journalists used Mike’s death to expose these “ratholes” warehousing people with mental illness.
Detective story, social history, journey of self-discovery, and compassionate and unsparing memorial to a family and a forgotten life, The Mike File will move every listener with a relative or friend touched by psychiatric illness or disability.
- GenresMemoir
Audible Audio
First published September 28, 2021
2 people are currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Trimble
44 books12 followersAs writer, editor, and photographer, Stephen Trimble has published 25 award-winning books during 45 years of paying attention to the landscapes and peoples of the Desert West. He’s received The Sierra Club's Ansel Adams Award for photography and conservation and a Doctor of Humane Letters from his alma mater, Colorado College. In 2019, he was honored as one of Utah’s 15 most influential artists.
Trimble speaks and writes as a conservation advocate and has taught writing at the University of Utah. He makes his home in Salt Lake City and in the redrock country of Torrey, Utah. Environmental historian James Aton has said: Trimble's books comprise one of the most well-rounded, sustained, and profound visions of people and landscape that we have ever seen in the American West.
Trimble speaks and writes as a conservation advocate and has taught writing at the University of Utah. He makes his home in Salt Lake City and in the redrock country of Torrey, Utah. Environmental historian James Aton has said: Trimble's books comprise one of the most well-rounded, sustained, and profound visions of people and landscape that we have ever seen in the American West.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 2, 2021
I haven’t cried so much over a book in a very long time. This is a must read for every teacher who has ever had “that kid” in the classroom, for every police officer or sheriff who has had one of those late night calls for “that guy or gal” whom they have no option for but jail, for that mother, daughter, brother, father, wife, sister, spouse who tries desperately to get “help” but slams into continual walls of rejection and red tape and soul-sucking voids of true helplessness in a system that breeds helplessness. This. Book. Is. For. All of us.
Thank you forever, Steve Trimble.
Thank you forever, Steve Trimble.
October 18, 2021
We probably all knew someone like Mike Trimble. A big, awkward boy who seemed a little off, who missed social cues and failed tests, who acted out in anger and frustration, who grew from pitiable to scary or just sad and lost.
My smalltown next-door neighbor was also named Mike. Teachers immediately held him back for his own good, marking Mike as the kid who “flunked" kindergarten and consigning him t0 the slow lane. He was in my class the next year, and played a role in an early playground mishap that broke my nose and ensured that Mike and I would not remain playmates.
We lost contact after my family moved to another town, and I forgot all about Mike except for once using his last name as an alias to escape a liquor store owner who caught my drunken teen self trying to shoplift. I can look back at my rejection of Mike with some regret, but it’s nothing like the complicated anguish and insight Stephen Trimble brings to The Mike File: A Story of Grief and Hope.
Through the years-long and decades-late process of compiling what he called the Mike File, Trimble resisted dealing with his grief and guilt over Mike’s marginalization and lonely death at 33 in a Denver SRO “rathole.” While this story demanded his considerable skills as journalist and researcher—interviewing, combing scant records, and piecing together the world in which his brother lived—Trimble could only reconstruct so much of it.
Especially when he maintained a writerly distance from Mike’s life.
The author’s wife, after reading many drafts, finally calls him on it. The book will not succeed as the tragedy of Mike’s life nor as the filtered and neutered reactions of the Trimble family. “This story isn’t about ‘we,’” she tells Stephen. “It’s about you!”
"Stevie" was the seven-years-later fresh start for his mother and second husband, too young to really bond with his half-brother or to understand him. He was the good son. The hope of the family. The kid who would surely overcome his less challenging limits.
Teenaged Mike, for whatever his mental and emotional deficits were, sees it clearly: "You love Stevie more than me. You put me in school with retards. Everyone yells at me. Everyone tells me I'm messed up."
Mike is yelling, pinning his mother against the wall. This moment that opens the story is so impactful for Stevie because Mike’s strength and rage are threatening, but also because Mike speaks the truth. His desire for love, not his anger, expresses who he longs to be. We glimpse his humanity and the possibility his life contained.
Unclear and unknowable now is what made Mike different. Schizophrenia? Incarceration? Epilepsy? Reaction to medications? Brain damage?
Mike’s flashes of normalcy and desire are at least as heartbreaking as his mental health struggles and periods of hospitalization. Would he have fared differently had he been born into a different time and set of circumstances? It’s too late for Mike but not for Stephen to find his own resolution.
Trimble imagines an alternative fate for his brother—one that involves Stephen and the best of what we know works for improving mental health. Redemption can happen, he suggests. But not if we look away and depend on underfunded and wasteful systems to stand in for authentic human connection.
At 144 small-format pages, The Mike File can be read in a day, and I recommend that approach, better to follow the fragmented record and trace Stephen Trimble’s journey from blank memory to dawning of hope. Trimble's brief but painstaking account leaves room for one’s own self-assessment and reflections loss and failure of empathy.
After finishing the book, I searched for my own childhood Mike. Did I remember him correctly, or is that 60-year-old memory distorted by my old self-absorption? What I found was inconclusive; it's enough for me to know he is alive, a registered Republican, and residing with his wife and family. I hope it's enough for him.
My smalltown next-door neighbor was also named Mike. Teachers immediately held him back for his own good, marking Mike as the kid who “flunked" kindergarten and consigning him t0 the slow lane. He was in my class the next year, and played a role in an early playground mishap that broke my nose and ensured that Mike and I would not remain playmates.
We lost contact after my family moved to another town, and I forgot all about Mike except for once using his last name as an alias to escape a liquor store owner who caught my drunken teen self trying to shoplift. I can look back at my rejection of Mike with some regret, but it’s nothing like the complicated anguish and insight Stephen Trimble brings to The Mike File: A Story of Grief and Hope.
Through the years-long and decades-late process of compiling what he called the Mike File, Trimble resisted dealing with his grief and guilt over Mike’s marginalization and lonely death at 33 in a Denver SRO “rathole.” While this story demanded his considerable skills as journalist and researcher—interviewing, combing scant records, and piecing together the world in which his brother lived—Trimble could only reconstruct so much of it.
Especially when he maintained a writerly distance from Mike’s life.
The author’s wife, after reading many drafts, finally calls him on it. The book will not succeed as the tragedy of Mike’s life nor as the filtered and neutered reactions of the Trimble family. “This story isn’t about ‘we,’” she tells Stephen. “It’s about you!”
"Stevie" was the seven-years-later fresh start for his mother and second husband, too young to really bond with his half-brother or to understand him. He was the good son. The hope of the family. The kid who would surely overcome his less challenging limits.
Teenaged Mike, for whatever his mental and emotional deficits were, sees it clearly: "You love Stevie more than me. You put me in school with retards. Everyone yells at me. Everyone tells me I'm messed up."
Mike is yelling, pinning his mother against the wall. This moment that opens the story is so impactful for Stevie because Mike’s strength and rage are threatening, but also because Mike speaks the truth. His desire for love, not his anger, expresses who he longs to be. We glimpse his humanity and the possibility his life contained.
Unclear and unknowable now is what made Mike different. Schizophrenia? Incarceration? Epilepsy? Reaction to medications? Brain damage?
Mike’s flashes of normalcy and desire are at least as heartbreaking as his mental health struggles and periods of hospitalization. Would he have fared differently had he been born into a different time and set of circumstances? It’s too late for Mike but not for Stephen to find his own resolution.
Trimble imagines an alternative fate for his brother—one that involves Stephen and the best of what we know works for improving mental health. Redemption can happen, he suggests. But not if we look away and depend on underfunded and wasteful systems to stand in for authentic human connection.
At 144 small-format pages, The Mike File can be read in a day, and I recommend that approach, better to follow the fragmented record and trace Stephen Trimble’s journey from blank memory to dawning of hope. Trimble's brief but painstaking account leaves room for one’s own self-assessment and reflections loss and failure of empathy.
After finishing the book, I searched for my own childhood Mike. Did I remember him correctly, or is that 60-year-old memory distorted by my old self-absorption? What I found was inconclusive; it's enough for me to know he is alive, a registered Republican, and residing with his wife and family. I hope it's enough for him.
September 29, 2021
A remarkable memoir of grief, failures of mental health systems, and family, THE MIKE FILE is a rare book that takes a lifetime to write.
The care and containment of Trimble's research is a remarkable foil against the boundless, generous imagination with which the book ends. Both the reality and the could-have-been are crucial, brave work.
Despite the self-critical and often bleak recollections, there is joy in sharing a story which has shaped and impacted a life in treacherous ways. Cathartic writing takes a great effort and a long time. This book has the power to help inform and evolve an old relationship with the author's brother Mike and his parents. This publication is a great service to them all.
The care and containment of Trimble's research is a remarkable foil against the boundless, generous imagination with which the book ends. Both the reality and the could-have-been are crucial, brave work.
Despite the self-critical and often bleak recollections, there is joy in sharing a story which has shaped and impacted a life in treacherous ways. Cathartic writing takes a great effort and a long time. This book has the power to help inform and evolve an old relationship with the author's brother Mike and his parents. This publication is a great service to them all.
May 28, 2022
Steve Trimble has written an honest, heartfelt, and thoroughly researched history--a tragic one--of his half-brother, Mike. Mike was apparently misdiagnosed in the 1950s and 60s and ended up spending time in various treatment centers where life went horribly bad for him. Trimble looks with clear eyes at his relationship with Mike, his parents' decisions, and the state of mental health institutions in Colorado at the time. This is a departure from Trimble's usual subjects of indigenous cultures and the environment, but he brings all his usual skills of research, style, and empathy to his subject. Highly recommended.
February 8, 2023
Definitely a different perspective on mental institutions and care of those with mental illness.
"we can't all pull ourselves up by our bootstraps"
Resources recommended:
Louise Hay self help books
The Caretakers by Dariel Telfer
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
American Psychosis by E. Fuller Torrey
American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System
"we can't all pull ourselves up by our bootstraps"
Resources recommended:
Louise Hay self help books
The Caretakers by Dariel Telfer
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
American Psychosis by E. Fuller Torrey
American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System
October 24, 2021
A stunning true story about the painful life of the author's brother who suffered from mental illness, as well as about the arduous journey of their parents. Besides the intensely personal family history, the book details the horrors of mental health care in the 50's and 60's, and points to how far we still have to go today to take care of those with mental illness. Brilliantly researched and written.
December 9, 2022
A first person account of his half brothers struggle with mental illness. A thoughtful well written account that reveals how folks who are not quite well enough to function in our society are dealt with both by the well intended public health administrators and family. Disturbing and thought provoking.
December 12, 2022
This is a highly personal account of a half-brother's trials and tribulations with the dismal mental health system in the 1950's and 60's. It is well written and leads to introspection both on the part of the author and reader.
October 22, 2021
An extraordinary work
A personal journey to compassion through guilt and loss. And a scathing commentary on the mental health industry as it was and still largely is.
A personal journey to compassion through guilt and loss. And a scathing commentary on the mental health industry as it was and still largely is.
Read
August 21, 2023True story of author's mentally ill older brother. A very sad story.
January 28, 2024
Excellent deal life story and tribute by one brother to another who got lost in the shuffle.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews