Riding the Insomnia Express

Riding the Insomnia Express

I have suffered from insomnia since the age of about four years old, when the minister of our local United Church convinced me that all my cursing and swearing would lead me straight to hell, where unimaginable torment awaited.

Going To Hell – Robert McBryde

I am now a wretched, sleep-deprived widower in hell.

I recently lost my darling wife to glioblastoma, a devastating, sudden-onset form of brain cancer.

Celebration in Honour of the Life of Anne Schlenker McBryde (May 16, 2026) “I love you all the time/ And I’ll love you forever.”

This loss and the year of caregiving leading up to my Anne’s death have been hell on earth.

Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus:

Mephistopheles: “Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it. / Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God / And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, / Am not tormented with ten thousand hells / In being deprived of everlasting bliss?”
Mephistopheles: “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed / In one self place, for where we are is hell, / And where hell is must we ever be…”
Faustus (Later in the play): “All places shall be hell that are not heaven.”