The mad, the bad, and the sad.

He sits back in his chair and sighs slowly, almost as if to say he’s satisfied with the feeling of the seated position after a long day’s work. He chooses a particular armed chair in the room, one that is bathed in sunshine in the mornings. He stares off to the right, past where I’m seated and looks out the window as a story unfolds of a life that has been only mildly uncovered. His placid expression and the valleys of aged skin reveal a story of their own before a word is even spoken.

He is 675235. He is a descendent of Florence Nightingale. He is Athol James Briden, who says his “memory isn’t as bad after all”, as he pulls together pieces of his life on this warm summer morning in March.

The softness of his words flows gently around me. The story of his youth began in Mastodon, New Zealand, where he decided he someday wanted to be a nurse. But a job at the local printers took precedence as becoming a male nurse was rare in his time.  

“I was working as a compositor at the same time I worked for Saint John ambulance,” he says.

After six years of arranging letters and tinting his fingers with black ink, Briden left his position as a compositor and applied for a nursing course. During this time he participated in compulsory military training. His eyes narrow, “Since there wasn’t enough for the medical course, they put me on cooking call.”

This where he received the name 675235.

“I’m private Briden 675235,” he says, lowering his voice as men often do when they speak about the armed forces. “And that’s all the information I’m allowed to give. Any other information might be helpful to the enemy.”

But although Briden obeyed his commands, he was persistent in his pursuit to engage in the medical field. Determination – and perhaps the Nightingale gene – paid off when he was finally accepted into a nursing program. After completing his course, it was clear to him that nursing was where he belonged. But his ambition and persistence did not go unrecognised.

He looks over at me and tries to hide a smile that if he let it, could consume his entire face.

His employers quickly saw his true quality. “I regret to this day burning the letter. It was a flowery kind of letter, congratulating me for sticking to it. I was the ideal kind of person and they sought the whole country for people like me.” This was only the beginning of his large appetite for following his dreams.

“In those days, when I told people that I was a nurse, everyone looked at you as if you were gay,” he said. But Briden was more than just a nurse when he began his career in 1954. He was a psychiatric nurse. And 38 years after his father told him; That’s not the job for you’ Briden reminisces about a career that changed his life forever.

His soft voice suddenly becomes louder as he describes an angry patient: “I can still hear him roaring, even now in my memory. Oh man, did he roar!” One patient was brewing beer in a toilet bowl, while another slept with a pig and was convinced he was the father of the newborn piglets.

“The old saying ‘expect the unexpected’ certainly applies to psych nursing,” he says. “I’ve had pots full of urine thrown at me, seen staff get killed by patients, and had a part of my cheek bit out.

“I once nursed a man who killed five women. He killed them because every time he had sex with them, he couldn’t get an erection and they laughed at him.”

But regardless of the story, the reason, the scenario, he continued to treat his patients like human beings. His voice softens again as he begins to unveil another piece of his story. His elbows bend slowly as he reaches for the arms of the chair. With a tight grip on the arm, he raises himself up and continues talking as he ducks into another room. Returning moments later, he holds a book in his frail, leathered hands. The small book with its worn edges and faded pages reveals its own unspoken journey taken.  He opens it to a certain page dated November 17, 1852. My eyes immediately become a magnet to the signature written.

Florence Nightingale.

“I don’t think anyone I worked with ever found out that I was related,” he said. And this tiny book full of prayers contained evidence to a family lineage that is not mere coincidence.

“Is it born in a person that some of these traits carry on? I never gave it much thought.”

His humility does not seem to match the epic story belonging to a person whose family once owned half of Piccadilly Square in the centre of London. Suddenly his quiet home with few modern day gadgets becomes humble and beautiful, as he hides his fame behind a life of service.  

His curiosity about his family tree was quickly dulled when he asked his father for further details. His father told him: ‘You came into this world with nothing; you go out of this world with nothing. I’m not going to help you out with that’. And as he places the small book back into its box, I realise that his modest approach to this notoriety must be another trait passed on from generation to generation.

Briden was quick in his decision to make a family of his own. Five days after meeting his wife Pam, he asked her to marry him. A delicate voice, apparently belonging to Pam, filters from another room: “I thought he was just joking!”

He chuckles quietly as Pam Briden intercedes and he glances her way with an immeasurable beam.

The story of the speedy proposal was quickly overtaken by the sadness of another.

“We had two boys and a girl, Mary Jean.” But 11 ½ weeks after Mary Jean was born, she passed away from a hole in her heart that wouldn’t close.

“Someone at church said ‘I know exactly how you feel’,” and Briden suddenly seemed angry:  “I told him ‘if you knew how I feel, you’d know I’d smash your face in’.”

Carrying a pain so strong led him to a career in grief counselling.

The consistent beat of the ticking clock across the room seems to go silent as he frowns. “There are only six words you can say at a time like that. ‘I’m sorry; I know you’re hurting’. Full stop.” Shortly after learning those words, he was asked to attend and speak at an international grief conference in Russia.

“When I was in Siberia, a lady asked the interpreter that I had if she could come and see me at 11:30 at night. She was the wife of a Mafia boss. She wanted to know what she could do because she was being abused. She had a little girl about three, maybe four. I told her that if she didn’t get out of the relationship, she would end up killing herself and her daughter. The translator told her what I said and she went white as a sheet. Her reply was, ‘that’s what I was thinking of doing’. I don’t know what ever happened to her.”

Briden turns and looks at me with kind eyes. He explains that everyone faces grief, even if it’s losing a house, a car, or a possession.

“Every time we invest we put ourselves in a position where we are more likely to get hurt,” he says.

Today, you might find Briden going through his stamp collection, dusting off his decoupage, or writing poetry. His small white Dell computer, tinted brown from age, goes unused.

“I saw what happened to one of my neighbours when he got a computer and the Internet, nothing ever got done outside.” His newly acquired pacemaker is the only piece of modern technology he adheres to. Disappointment floods his face when he says his heart problems have kept him from his garden.

“I’ve been asked to write a book and if I did I’d call it The Mad, The Bad, and The Sad.” And although I’ve only known him for a short time, this is a book I know I’d enjoy reading.