The flowers were artificial, but that seemed fitting enough. Wiggins' journey through the state's mental health system has been unreal, too.

Wiggins, who turned 64 last month, is the man suffering schizophrenia whose path from state psychiatric hospital back into the community I have followed for nearly three and a half years. All of it has been driven by reforms that put the care of some of our most fragile people into assorted private hands and cast the system into disarray.

I haven't updated Wiggins' situation since July because it has been in a holding pattern.

Earlier this year, the state had threatened to cut the number of hours Wiggins is given with a daytime "community worker" from 28 hours per week to 12 hours, or even fewer.

In July, Wiggins' sister Louise Jordan appealed the decrease.

While the state reviews his care plan, his hours are frozen and his future is in limbo.

Thanks to state reforms, he has gone from having a single county agency handling every aspect of his care, and a single social worker coordinating it all, to a situation where five private firms are providing different pieces of his care -- psychiatric services, nursing, nighttime supervision -- with no one coordinating the care.

Meanwhile, Wiggins' physical health has suffered, and his mental stability has wavered. His mumbling has intensified, and he has begun shredding books and flushing pages down the toilet -- a habit from long ago. Change is difficult for someone like Wiggins.

We met at a field of flowers "planted" outside Rex Hospital in honor of those suffering mental illness, and those who work on their behalf.

The annual flower display, put together by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is intended to conjure Vincent van Gogh's famous paintings of irises. He also suffered severe mental illness.

Dignitaries, from state Rep. Deborah Ross to psychiatrist and philanthropist Dr. Assad Meymandi, spoke about the failures of the state's mental health reforms.

Funny, everyone seems to acknowledge the problems. The solutions remain elusive.

The next day, Wiggins sent me an e-mail message from the clubhouse for the mentally ill he attends in Cary -- a place he will no longer be able to visit if his community worker's hours are cut.

He wrote that he'd been working on his resume, and he included a copy of it as an attachment. He seemed right proud.

Its stated objective: to get Wiggins a job farming. (He has never held a job.)

His education: grade school. (He was first hospitalized as a teen.)

His life experience: working in a garden and working on a farm.

But it was the list of his activities that got to me: "Playing cards, walking the mall, feeding the birds and ducks, smoking, seeing Louise ... playing with fireworks, working with chemistry sets ... ceramics, playing games, cleaning up, making my bed."

The list reflects poignantly Wiggins' life: 44 years inside state psychiatric hospitals, two years out in the promise of the community -- and a lifetime inside his own troubled mind.

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