From Beyond the Veil

About the Book

This book is a collection of poems by Roberta Schneider compiled by her daughter, Josi Frost.

About the Author

Roberta Lynne Billups Cramer Schneider was born on January 9, 1950, in Ellensburg, Washington. She was the second eldest of four sisters. Her mother passed away when Roberta was only eight years old, leaving her father to raise four girls alone. There really wasn’t “foster care” back then, or that was where they would have been placed. Family or friends would step up and take care of kids that needed it. The sisters were split up for a time, but they remained close. Roberta spent some of her school years in Tucson, Arizona. After high school, she married Neal Cramer. They had a child in 1969. They moved to West Covina, California, for a short time, and by 1974, the family relocated to Richmond, Indiana. Roberta continued to mentally decline until a diagnosis of schizophrenia was rendered. Right round 1977, Roberta took her daughter by Greyhound bus to Buena Vista, Colorado. She and her daughter moved to Salida, just thirty minutes away. She spent decades in and out of the state mental hospital in Colorado. Roberta was unable to raise her only child, and the regret is a recurring theme in her journal writing. Schizophrenia is very tricky. It is difficult to diagnose and difficult to treat. Most mental health professionals seemed to be guessing at treatments. Roberta went through electroshock therapy and many other treatments. More often than not, she was overmedicated with psychotropic medicine that caused her to be lethargic and unresponsive. Visits with family were very difficult. By the end of her life, at one time or another, she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, multiple personality disorder, and schizoaffective disorder, just to name a few. Roberta had the most steadfast friends, the kind most people only dream about having. They were angels sent to keep her company on her journey. Her big sister was her champion. Oftentimes, those closest to someone with mental illness are the easiest and safest target. Big sister Sue always made sure Roberta had what she needed, whether it was clothes in the hospital or a guardian for her daughter, and she paid a heavy price for that dedication. Much of Roberta’s journal directs anger and bitterness toward Sue and paints her as an aggressor. It just wasn’t true. Roberta’s friends would come over and check up on her and bring her paper or pens or just sit and chat with her. They could not know how much that would mean to her. Roberta passed away in August of 2013 at sixty-three years of age, bent and broken from the ravages of her meds. Her last mental break was truly terrifying to her, and after the medical workers had calmed her, she passed away one day later in the hospital. She was calling for her mom in the end, a woman she had not seen since 1958, which would be proof enough for me that death is just a doorway to a better place. Rest in peace, sweet poet.