Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  She could find no suitable words to describe the bitterness of her isolation, a period she often referred to as her Garden of Gethsemane. Once she brought me a lithograph drawn by her daughter in which several highly stylized silhouette figures are stoning a saint, a single tiny crouching woman whose frail arms cannot protect her from the hail of granite. It still hangs in my office, and whenever I see it I think of Paula saying, “I am that woman, helpless before the onslaught.” It was an Episcopal priest who helped her find her way out of the Garden of Gethsemane. Familiar with the wise aphorism of Nietzsche, the Antichrist, “He who has a ‘why’ can put up with any ‘how,’” the priest reframed her suffering. “Your cancer is your cross,” he told her. “Your suffering is your ministry.” That formulation—that “divine illumination,” as Paula called it—changed everything. As she described her acceptance of her ministry and her dedication to easing the suffering of individuals stricken with cancer, I began to understand my assigned role: she wasn’t my project, I was hers, the object of her ministry. I could help Paula but not through support, interpretation, or even caring or fidelity. My role was to allow her to educate me. Is it possible that someone whose days are limited, whose body is infiltrated with cancer, can experience a “golden period”? Paula did. It was she who taught me that embracing death honestly permits one to experience life in a richer, more satisfying manner. I was skeptical. I suspected that her talk of a “golden period” was overdone, her typical spiritual hyperbole. “Golden? Really? Oh, come now, Paula, how can there be anything golden about dying?” “Irv,” Paula chided, “that’s the wrong question! Try to understand that what’s golden is not the dying but the full living of life in the face of death. Think of the poignancy and preciousness of last times: the last spring, the last flight of dandelion fluff, the last shedding of wisteria blossoms. “The golden period is also,” Paula said, “a time of great liberation—a time when you have the freedom to say no to all trivial obligations, to devote yourself wholly to whatever you most care about—the presence of friends, the changing seasons, the rolling swell of the sea.” She was deeply critical of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, medicine’s high priestess of death, who, failing to recognize the golden stage, had developed a negativistic clinical approach. Kübler-Ross’s “stages” of dying—anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance—never failed to arouse Paula’s ire. She insisted, and I am certain that she was correct, that such rigid categorizing of emotional responses leads to a dehumanization of both patient and doctor.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  It was clear to both Inger and me that the alert nuns were instinctively scanning and “triaging” for the refugees, particularly children, who were the most disoriented and in shock. The nun closest to that person would move swiftly, though noninvasively, to that dazed individual and take him into her arms. We watched, with tears streaming down our faces, as the nuns gently held and rocked each one, seemingly whispering something into their ears. And we imagined what they might have been saying—in all likelihood something similar to what the FBI agent had told Elian. However, in stark contrast to what these images were portraying, the BBC commentator pronounced that “these unfortunate souls would be scarred for life,” implying that they would be sentenced to live forever with their traumatic experience. He was missing the point graphically being made by the body language of the nuns and the refugees who were fortunate enough to be enfolded in the goodness of these compassionate women. This powerful scene illustrates just what it takes to help people thaw, come out of shock and return to life—to set them on their journey of recovering and coping with their misfortune. The work of my nonprofit organization, the Foundation for Human Enrichment, whose volunteers responded in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the United States, was a more immediate and personal example.131 Here again, it was the weaving of the most immediate and direct physical contact, together with the simplest of words spoken at the right moment, that helped people move out of shock and terror so that they could retain their sense of self, thereby beginning the process of dealing with their terrible losses. In all of these examples, the brain stem’s reptilian and rhythmic needs, the limbic system’s need for emotional connection, and the neo-cortex’s need to hear consistent calming words converge were all met. We are reassured that whatever we are feeling now, it will pass. A counterexample was clearly illustrated when the world saw graphic images of dozens of dead and mutilated women’s and children’s bodies carried out of bombed Beirut buildings in the dreadful 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. Following the televised photos, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke mechanically in legalese, instead of words of compassion and sorrow, only compounding an already dreadful report. With these visual and auditory images, a metaphorical metal spike is launched, searing through the cingulate gyrus, splitting the (once) triune brain into contradictory shards reminiscent of Phineas Gage. What a pity, when gentle, kindhearted words could have been offered instead, imparting a sense of hope and help unknown already on its way. The preceding chapters have all skirted around the phenomenon of instinct. However, in this chapter, we have no longer neglected this lodestar, finally giving instinct its due.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  While instincts are still routinely drawn upon to explain animal behaviors, we have somehow lost sight of how many human behavior patterns (though modifiable) are primal, automatic, universal and predictable. For example, as the World Trade Center towers crashed to the ground, instinctually driven people ran until their feet were bleeding. They ran for their lives like their ancestors who were chased by the predatory cats on the ancient Serengeti. They then regrouped, seeking the safety of their dens and communities, as they walked in an orderly fashion, over bridges leading to each of the five boroughs. When we collapse in grief at the death of a loved one, we share this innate response to loss with the other highly developed mammals. Jane Goodall’s description of the matriarch Flo’s death and the subsequent self-starvation of her young male offspring in the tree above her corpse is one such example. ‡ Yet another comparable instance of a grief response comes to mind with the listless pets we frequently return to after what seemed to us a short weekend away from home. Road rage and sexual fixations are disturbing manifestations of other instincts—in these cases, instincts gone awry. Grief, anger, fear, disgust, lust, mating, nurturing of young and even love (as well as all the action patterns that go with them) are universals among humans. All bear a remarkable resemblance to similar behaviors in mammals. Charles Darwin, more than any other human being, clarified the essential connections between the human and other animal species. Aside from discovering the evolution of form and function, he further recognized the similarities of movements, action patterns, emotions and facial expressions shared by mankind and animals. Darwin’s masterworks addressed the continuity of emotional expressions among mammalian species. He was struck not only by the similarities in physiological and anatomical structures, but also by inborn, instinctive behaviors and emotions across species. In The Descent of Man Darwin writes, Man and the higher animals … have … instincts in common. All have the same senses, intuition, sensation, passions, affections and emotions, even the more complex ones such as jealously, suspicion, emulation, gratitude and magnanimity; they practice deceit and are revengeful; they are sometimes susceptible to ridicule, and even have a sense of humor; they feel wonder and curiosity; they possess the same faculties of imitation, attention, deliberation, choice, memory, imagination, the association of ideas, and reason … though in very different degrees. 113 The omnipresence of instincts dazzles us in mating rituals such as the stunning display of feathers by the male peacock. This provocative announcement is as successful in attracting mates as it is beautiful. These two outcomes are, arguably, one and the same. Most mating rituals begin with an initial phase of “flirting,” followed by a sequence of strutting. This strutting demonstrates not only the male’s physical prowess, but also something less tangible.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) Wherefore one believing woman touches the Lord, whilst the crowd throngs Him, because He, who is grieved by divers heresies, or by wicked habits, is worshipped faithfully with the heart of the Catholic Church alone. But the Church of the Gentiles came behind Him; because though it did not see the Lord present in the flesh, for the mysteries of His Incarnation had been gone through, yet it attained to the grace of His faith, and so when by partaking of His sacraments, it merited salvation from its sins, as it were the fountain of its blood was dried up by the touch of His garments. And the Lord looked round about to see her who had done this, because He judges that all who deserve to be saved are worthy of His look and of His pity. 5:35–4335. While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further? 36. As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. 37. And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James. 38. And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly. 39. And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. 40. And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying. 41. And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. 42. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment. 43. And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat. THEOPHYLACT. Those who were about the ruler of the synagogue, thought that Christ was one of the prophets, and for this reason they thought that they should beg of Him to come and pray over the damsel. But because she had already expired, they thought that He ought not to be asked to do so. Therefore it is said, While he yet spake, there came messengers to the ruler of the synagogue, which said, Thy daughter is dead; why troublest thou the Master any further? But the Lord Himself persuades the father to have confidence. For it goes on, As soon as Jesus heard the word which was spoken, he saith to the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid; only believe.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  If I could just kiss him, he said, his voice stripped now and small, if I could kiss him just once, that would be enough, I wouldn’t want anything more. I looked at him then, wondering if he meant what he said, if he was really so new to desire that he could believe it. I don’t think so, I said, speaking for the first time since he had started his story, my voice raw, I don’t think that’s how it works; it was a ridiculous thing to say, I knew it even as I spoke. Whatever, G. said, still not looking up, it doesn’t matter, he didn’t give me a chance. I told him that I loved him but he didn’t understand me, or he pretended not to understand, I had to explain it, and once I started speaking I couldn’t stop, after being silent for so long I spoke too much. But it didn’t matter what I said, I only made things worse by talking. He didn’t welcome it at all, and he hadn’t had any idea; I guess I thought he had known it somehow, that he was all I thought about, the only thing, the only thing I cared about. But he was surprised, really surprised, and he didn’t welcome it, he turned away when I kept talking. He wasn’t cruel to me, he was gentle, he was even kind, but he didn’t pretend we could go on as we had. We would stop being friends, he said, he said he was sorry; he didn’t want me to suffer, and it was the quickest way to end suffering, and anyway he couldn’t be comfortable with me now. I was crying then, G. said, I don’t think he had ever seen me cry before, I couldn’t stop. Why did you tell me, he said, I’ve lost something too, you’ve taken something from me too. And I had, I realized, I had ruined so much, for him and for me. I was wrong to tell him, G. said, I shouldn’t have said anything, along with everything else now I’m so sorry for what I said. But there’s nothing I can do, I have to live with it, like I have to live with everything else I feel. He paused, and then, But what if I can’t bear it, he said, looking up at me, finally catching my eye, and though at first I thought the question was rhetorical I realized it was genuine, I needed to have something to say.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It was for this excitement I had come, something to draw me out of the grief I still felt for R.; he had left months before, long enough for grief to have passed but it hadn’t passed, and I found myself resorting again to habits I thought I had escaped, though that’s the wrong word for it, escaped, given the eagerness with which I returned to them. I made a bundle of my clothes, balling my pants and shirt and underthings in my coat, and I held this in one hand and my shoes in the other and stood, still not entering, my skin bristling both from cold and from that profounder exposure I felt. Ne ne, kuchko , he said, using for the first time the word that would be his only name for me. It’s our word, bitch, an exact equivalent, but he spoke it almost tenderly, as if in fondness; no, he said, fold your clothes nicely before you come in, be a good girl. At this last something rose up in me, as at a step too far in humiliation. Most men would feel this, I think, especially men like me, who are taught that it’s the worst thing, to seem like a woman; when I was a boy my father responded to any sign of it with a viciousness out of all proportion, as though he might keep me from what I would become, a faggot, as he said, which remained his word for me when for all his efforts I found myself as I am. Something rose up in me at what he said, this man who still barred my way, and then it lay back down, and I folded my clothes neatly and stepped inside, closing the door behind me. It was a comfortless room. There was an armoire of some sort, a table, a plush chair, all from an earlier era. These spaces are passed from generation to generation; people can spend their whole lives amid the same objects and their evidence of other lives, as almost never happens in my own country, or never anymore. And yet it was impossible to imagine friends or family gathering there. I stood for a moment just in front of the door, and then the man told me to kneel.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  She also felt guilty for not having been a good enough wife. As a result of psychotherapy, she underwent many changes: she became softer, more considerate and affectionate. “How unfair to Jack,” she said, “that I should be able to give more of myself to another man than to him.” Again and again I challenged such statements. “Where is Jack now?” I asked. She always answered, “Nowhere—except in memory”—in her memory and in the memory of others. She had no religious beliefs and never posited the persistence of consciousness, or any other form of afterlife. So I pestered her with reason: “If he is not sentient and does not observe your actions, how then can he be hurt by your being with another man?” Besides, I reminded her, Jack had, before he died, explicitly expressed his wishes for her to be happy and to remarry. “Would he want you, and his daughter, to drown in sorrow? So even if his consciousness did still exist, he would not feel betrayed; he’d be pleased by your recovery. And either way,” I’d wind up, “no matter whether Jack’s consciousness survived or did not survive, such concepts as unfairness and betrayal had no meaning.” At times Irene had vivid dreams of Jack’s being alive—a common phenomenon in bereavement—only to awaken with a thud to realize it was but a dream. Other times she would weep bitterly about his being “out there” suffering. Sometimes when she visited the cemetery, she wept at the “awful thought” of his being locked in a cold casket. She dreamed of opening her freezer and finding a miniature Jack, his eyes wide open, staring at her. Methodically and relentlessly, I would remind her of her conviction that he wasn’t out there, that he no longer existed as a sentient being. And reminded her as well of her wish that he could observe her. In my experience, every bereaved spouse suffers from feeling that his or her life is unobserved. Irene held on to many of Jack’s personal effects, often rummaging through the contents of his desk drawers for some memento of him whenever she needed a birthday present for her daughter. So surrounded was she by material reminders of Jack that I worried Irene would become like Miss Havisham in Dickens’s Great Expectations, a woman so caught up in grief (she had been deserted at the altar) that she lived for years in the cobwebs of loss, never taking off her wedding dress or clearing off the table set for her wedding feast. Hence, throughout therapy I urged Irene to turn away from the past, to rejoin life, to loosen her ties with Jack: “Take down some of your photos of him. Redecorate your home. Buy a new bed. Clean out the desk drawers; throw things away. Travel somewhere new. Do something you’ve never done before. Stop talking so much to Jack.” But what I called reason, Irene called treason. What I called rejoining life, she called betrayal of love.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Through her adolescence he had been the protector, the confidant, the mentor every young girl dreams of. But then, in one screeching moment on a street in Boston, Allen was dead. She told me how the police phoned the small house she shared with college roommates, how every detail of that day was frozen forever in her mind. “I remember everything: the ring of the phone downstairs, my chenille bathrobe with rows of small pink and white tufts, the flopping of my fleece slippers as I went down the steps to the alcove next to the kitchen where the telephone hung on the wall, the wooden banister so smooth to my hand. I remember thinking that the wood had been worn smooth by all the Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates before me. And then that man’s voice, that stranger trying to be kind as he told me that Allen was dead. I sat for hours staring out the beveled glass of the alcove window. I can still see the rainbow- colored mounds of sooty snow in the side yard.” Countless times during therapy we were to return to the dream of the two texts and the meaning of The Death of Innocence. The loss of her brother marked her for life. Death exploded her innocence forever. Gone were the myths of childhood: justice, predictability, a benevolent deity, a natural order of things, protecting parents, the safety of home. Alone and unshielded against the capriciousness of existence, Irene struggled to attain safety. Allen might have survived, she believed, if he had had the right emergency medical treatment. Medicine beckoned—it offered the only hope of mastery over death, and at Allen’s funeral she suddenly decided to apply to medical school and become a surgeon. Another decision Irene made in the wake of Allen’s death was to have enormous implications for our work in therapy. “I figured out a way to avoid ever getting hurt again: I would never again have such a loss if I never let anyone matter to me.” “How did that decision play out in your life?” “For the next ten years I made no attachments, took no chances. I knew a lot of men, but I broke things off quickly—before they got serious and before I felt anything.” “But then something changed. You married. How did that come about?” “I’ve known Jack since the fourth grade and somehow had always thought he would be the one. Even when he disappeared from my life and married someone else, I knew he’d be back. My brother knew and respected him. I guess you could say my brother anointed Jack.” “So Allen’s approval of Jack permitted you to take the risk of marrying?” “It wasn’t that simple. It took a long, long time, and even then I refused to marry Jack until he promised not to die young on me.” I appreciated Irene’s irony and looked up with a grin to gather in her smile in return. But there was no smile.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  A few minutes later I reconsidered and turned back to find her. Still at the window, she was placing her discharge medications into a worn petit-point bag on her lap. I watched her wheel away toward the hospital exit, where she stopped, opened her purse, took out a small handkerchief, removed her thick gold-rimmed eyeglasses, and daintily wiped away the tears coursing down her cheeks. I went over to her. “Magnolia, hello. Remember me?” “Your voice sound real familiar,” she said, replacing her spectacles. “Now, you jes’ wait a minute while Ah get a look at you.” She stared at me, blinking two or three times, and then broke into a warm smile. “Doctah Yalom, Ah sure do remembah you. Nice of you to stop and visit. I bin wanting to talk to you, private-like.” She pointed to a chair at the end of the corridor. “Ah see a seat for you over there. Ah carry mah own around with me. Would you wheel me over?” When we had moved and I had sat down, Magnolia said, “You jes’ gonna have to oversight mah tears. Ah can’ stop bawling today.” Trying to hush my mounting fear that the group session had indeed been destructive, I said gently, “Magnolia, do your tears have anything to do with our group meeting yesterday?” “The group?” She looked at me incredulously. “Doctah Yalom, you ain’t forgotten what Ah tol’ you at the end of that meetin’? Today’s the day mah momma died—one yeah ago today.” “Oh, of course. Sorry, I’m a little slow at the moment. Guess too much is going on in my own life, Magnolia.” Relieved, I downshifted quickly into my professional gear. “You miss her a lot, don’t you?” “Ah do. And you remembah Rosa tol’ you mah momma was gone when Ah was growin’ up—she jes’ showed up one day after being away for fifteen years.” “But then, when she came back, she took care of you? Gave you a lot of momma comfort?” “A momma’s a momma. Ain’t got but one of ’em. But you know, Momma didn’t take care of me much—other way around—she was ninety when she passed away. No, it weren’t that at all—it was more jes’ that she was there. Ah don’ know .. . guess she stood for somethin’ Ah needed. You know what Ah mean?” “I know exactly what you mean, Magnolia. I do indeed.” “Maybe it ain’t mah place to say, Doctah, but Ah think you’re like me—you miss your momma too. Doctahs need mommas too, jes’ like mommas need mommas.” “You’re right about that, Magnolia. You’ve got a good sixth sense—like Rosa said. But you said you were wanting to talk to me? “Well, like I already said—about you missing your momma. Dat was one thing. And then about dat group meetin’.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Her office was in her home, and her husband objected to Howard’s intruding on their Sundays and to the amount of Mary’s time and energy he consumed. Howard was a wonderful teaching case, and every year Mary interviewed him in front of medical students as part of their basic psychiatry course. For a long time, maybe five years, she labored on a psychotherapy textbook in which her therapy of Howard played an important role. Each chapter was based on some aspect (heavily disguised, of course) of her work with him. And over the years, Howard was grateful to Mary and gave her full permission both to present him to medical students and residents and to write about him. “Finally the book was finished, about to be published, when Howard (now a journalist stationed abroad, married, with two children) suddenly withdrew his permission. In a short letter he explained only that he wanted to put that part of his life far behind him. Mary asked for an explanation, but he refused to give more details and ultimately broke off communication entirely. Mary was distraught—all those years she had devoted to that book—and eventually had no choice but to bury it. Even years later she remained embittered and depressed.” “Irv, Irv, I get your drift,” said Irene, patting my hand to still me. “I understand you don’t want to go Mary’s way. But let me reassure you: I’m not just giving you permission to write my story; I’m asking you to write it. I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.” “That’s putting it strongly.” “I mean it. I meant what I said about too many therapists not having a clue about treating the bereaved. You’ve learned from our work together, learned a lot, and I don’t want it to end with you.” Noting my raised eyebrows, Irene added, “Yes, yes, I have finally gotten it. It’s sunk in. You’re not going to be around forever.” “Okay,” I said, taking out a notepad, “I agree I’ve learned a great deal from our work, and I’ve put my version of it into these pages. But I want to be certain your voice is heard, Irene. Could you take a crack at summarizing the central points, the parts I mustn’t omit?” Irene demurred: “You know them as well as I do.” “I want your voice. My first choice, as I’ve said on other occasions, is for us to write together, but since you won’t do that, just take a stab at it now. Free-associate—top-of-your-head stuff. Tell me, from your perspective, what was the real center, the core of our work?” “Engagement,” she said at once. “You were always there, leaning forward, getting closer. Just like when I wiped the cappuccino froth from your mustache a minute ago—” “In your face, you mean?” “Right! But in a good way.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I don’t know the flight number. I am desperate . . . scanning the lists of departure flights for some clue—but nothing makes sense— all the destinations are written in nonsense syllables. Then hope appears—I can read one sign over a departure gate: ‘Mikado,’ it says. I rush to the gate. But too late. The plane has just left, and I wake up crying. “That destination—Mikado? What are your associations to Mikado?” I asked. “I don’t need associations,” she said, flicking away my question. “I know exactly why I dreamed of Mikado. I used to sing the operetta when I was a child. There’s a verse in it that will not go away: Though the night may come too soon we have years and years of afternoon. Irene stopped and looked at me, eyes glistening with tears. No point in saying any more. Not for her. Not for me. She was beyond comforting. From that day on, the line “we have years and years of afternoon” reverberated in my mind. She and Jack had never had their share of afternoons, and for that I could forgive her everything. My third advanced lesson, grief rage, proved of great value in other clinical situations. Where in the past I had generally veered too quickly away from anger, attempting to understand and resolve it as expeditiously as possible, now I was learning how to contain anger, how to seek it out and plunge into it. And the lesson’s specific vehicle? That’s where the black ooze comes in. Lesson 4: The Black Ooze At the time of my brother-in-law’s death, when threatening to walk out and asking whether I wanted to be with someone who hated me because my wife was alive, Irene had referred to a black ooze. “Remember?” she had asked. “No one wants to be tarred, do they?” It was a metaphor she had invoked in most of our sessions during the first two years of therapy. What was the black ooze? Over and over, she strained to find the precise words. “It’s some black, hideous, acrid substance that seeps out of me and spreads around me in a pool. The black ooze is vile and noisome. It repels and revolts anyone who approaches me. It tars them too, puts them in great danger.” Though the black ooze had many meanings, first and foremost it signified her grief rage. Hence her hating me for having a living spouse. Irene’s dilemma was awful: she could remain silent, choking on her own fury, and feel desperately alone. Or she could explode in rage, driving everyone away, and feel desperately alone.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  With that, the wife slips past him, goes downstairs and turns on him “with such a daunting look,” and heads for the front door. Puzzled, he asks, “Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?” “Not you!” she answers. Nor perhaps can any man, she adds, reaching for her hat. The farmer, asking to be allowed into her grief, continues with these unfortunate words: “I do think, though, you overdo it a little. What was it brought you up to think it the thing To take your mother-loss of a first child So inconsolably—in the face of love. You’d think his memory might be satisfied———” When his wife remains aloof, he exclaims, “God, what a woman! And it’s come to this, / A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.” His wife responds that he doesn’t know how to speak, that he has no feelings. She watched him through her window as he briskly dug their son’s grave, “making the gravel leap and leap in air.” And after finishing digging, he went into the kitchen. She remembers, “You could sit there with the stains on your shoes Of the fresh earth from your own baby’s grave And talk about your everyday concerns. You had stood the spade up against the wall Outside there in the entry, for I saw it.” The wife insists that she won’t have grief treated in this fashion. Nor let it be lightly dismissed. “No, from the time when one is sick to death, One is alone, and he dies more alone. Friends make pretense of following to the grave, But before one is in it, their minds are turned And making the best of their way back to life And living people, and things they understand. But the world’s evil. I won’t have grief so If I can change it. Oh, I won’t, I won’t!” The husband responds patronizingly that he knows she will feel better for having said these things. It’s time to end grief, he suggests. “[Your] heart’s gone out of it: Why keep it up?” The poem ends with the wife opening the door to leave. Her husband tries to block her: “Where do you mean to go? First tell me that. I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will!—” Enthralled, I read the piece straight through, and at the end I had to remind myself of the reason I was reading it. What key to Irene’s inner life did it hold? I thought first of her initial dream in which she had to read an earlier text before she could read the contemporary one. Obviously, we had more work to do on Irene’s loss of her brother. I had already learned that his death had set off, domino fashion, many other losses. Her home was never the same: her mother never recovered from her son’s death and remained chronically depressed; her parents’ relationship was never again harmonious.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  He knew exactly how she must have felt. Once, fifteen years ago, he had arranged a weekend rendezvous with Judy, an old girlfriend, at a New York hotel. They had spent a lovely night together, or so Ernest believed. In the morning he had left for a brief appointment and returned with a huge, grateful bouquet of flowers. But no Judy. She had left without a trace. Packed her bags and absconded—no note, and no response to his later phone calls or letters. No explanation, ever. He had been devastated. Psychotherapy had never entirely erased his pain, and even now, all these years later, the memory still stung. Above all, Ernest hated not knowing. Poor Artemis: she had given so much to Halston, taken such risks, and in the end been so shabbily treated . Over the next few days Ernest thought occasionally about Halston but dwelled often upon Artemis. In his fantasy she became a goddess—beautiful, giving, nurturing but badly wounded. Artemis was a woman to revere, honor, treasure: the idea of debasing such a woman seemed hardly human to him. How tormented she must be by not knowing what had happened! How many times must she have relived that night, trying to understand what she had said, what she had done, to drive Halston away. And Ernest knew he was in a privileged position to help her. Aside from Halston, I am, he thought, the only one who knows the truth of that night. Ernest had often been awash in grandiose fantasies of rescuing distressed damsels. He knew that about himself. How could he not know? Again and again his analyst, Olive Smith, and his supervisor, Marshal Strider, had rubbed his nose in it. Rescue fantasies played a role both in his personal relationships, where he often overlooked warning signals of obvious incompatibility, and in his psychotherapy, where his countertransference sometimes ran wild and he became overinvested in curing his female patients. Naturally, as Ernest pondered the rescue of Artemis, the voices of his analyst and supervisor came to mind. Ernest listened and accepted their critique—but only to a point. Deep inside he believed that his overinvestment made him a better therapist, a better human being. Of course women should be rescued. That was an evolutionary truism, a species-survival strategy built into our genes. How horrified he’d been long ago when, in his comparative anatomy course, he had found that the cat he was dissecting had been pregnant and was carrying five tiny, marble-sized fetuses in her uterus. Likewise he abhorred caviar, possible only through the slaughter and plundering of pregnant sturgeon. Most horrifying had been the Nazi extermination policy, that had carried the terror to women housing the “seeds of Sarah.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Irene nodded as tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. It was the first time in her three years of despair that she had wept openly in my presence. I handed her a tissue. And took one for myself. She reached out for my hand. We were back together again. How had we grown so far apart? Looking back, I see that we had a fundamental clash of sensibilities: I an existential rationalist; she a grief-stricken romantic. Perhaps the rift was unavoidable; perhaps our modes of coping with tragedy were intrinsically opposed. How does one best face the brutal existential facts of life? I believe that at bottom Irene felt that there were only two, equally unpalatable, strategies: to adopt some form of denial or to live in intolerably anxious awareness. Wasn’t Cervantes voicing this dilemma through his immortal Don’s question, “Which will you have: wise madness or foolish sanity?” I have a bias that powerfully affects my therapeutic approach: I have never believed that awareness leads to madness, or denial to sanity. I have long regarded denial as the enemy, and I challenge it whenever possible in my therapy and in my personal life. Not only have I attempted to shed all personal illusions that narrow my vision and foster smallness and dependency but I encourage my patients to do the same. I am persuaded that although honest confrontation with one’s existential situation may evoke fear and trembling, it is ultimately healing and enriching. My psychotherapeutic approach is thus epitomized by Thomas Hardy’s comment, “If a way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.” And so, from the very beginning of therapy, I spoke to Irene with the voice of reason. I encouraged her to rehearse with me the events surrounding and following her husband’s death: “How will you learn of his death? “Will you be with him when he dies? “What will you feel? “Whom will you call?” And in the same way, she and I rehearsed his funeral. I told her I would attend the funeral and that if her friends would not linger with her at the graveside, I would be sure to do so. If others were too frightened to hear her macabre thoughts, I would encourage her to speak them to me. I tried to take the terror out of her nightmares. Whenever she moved into irrational realms, I could be counted on to confront her. Consider, for example, her guilt for enjoying herself with another man. She considered any life enjoyment a betrayal of Jack. If she went with a man to a beach or a restaurant she and Jack had once visited, she felt she was betraying him by violating the specialness of their love. On the other hand, going to a brand-new spot elicited survivor guilt: “Why should I be alive and enjoying new experiences when Jack is dead?”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  What key to Irene’s inner life did it hold? I thought first of her initial dream in which she had to read an earlier text before she could read the contemporary one. Obviously, we had more work to do on Irene’s loss of her brother. I had already learned that his death had set off, domino fashion, many other losses. Her home was never the same: her mother never recovered from her son’s death and remained chronically depressed; her parents’ relationship was never again harmonious. Perhaps the poem was a stark portrayal of what must have gone on in Irene’s home after her brother’s death, especially the parental clash as her father and mother each dealt with their loss in diametrically opposed ways. This situation is not uncommon after the death of a child: husband and wife grieve in different fashions (characteristically following gender stereotypes: more often than not the female grieves openly and emotively, while the male deals with grief through repression and active diversion). For many couples each of these two patterns actively interferes with the other—that is precisely the reason that so many marriages break up after the loss of a child . I thought of Irene’s connection to other images in Frost’s “Home Burial.” The changing view of the burial plot’s size was a brilliant metaphor: to the farmer it was both the size of the bedroom and so small that it was framed by the window; to the mother it was so large that she could see nothing else. And the windows. Irene was drawn to windows. “I’d like to live out my life in a high-rise apartment staring out the window,” she had said once. Or she imagined moving to a large seaside Victorian house where “I’d divide my time there between staring through the window at the ocean and pacing the rooftop widow’s walk forever.” The farmer’s wife’s bitter dismissal of friends who, after visiting the grave briefly, immediately made their way back to their everyday lives had been a familiar theme of Irene’s in therapy. Once, to make this point more graphic, Irene had brought in a print of Pieter Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus. “Look at these peasants,” she said, “working away, not bothering to look up at the boy falling from the sky.” She had even brought in Auden’s poetic description of the painting: In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Then she described the horrible days of her cancer’s recurrence. That phase was her Calvary, she said, and the stations of the cross were the trials experienced by all patients with recurrence: radiotherapy rooms with doomsday metallic eyeballs suspended aloft, impersonal harried technicians, uncomfortable friends, aloof doctors, and, most of all, the deafening hush of secrecy everywhere. She cried when she told me about calling her surgeon, a friend of twenty years, only to be informed by his nurse that there were to be no further appointments because the doctor had nothing more to offer. “What is wrong with doctors? Why don’t they understand the importance of sheer presence?” she asked me. “Why can’t they realize that the very moment they have nothing else to offer is the moment they are most needed?” The horror in learning of one’s sickness unto death, I learned from Paula, is intensified many times over by the withdrawal of others. The isolation of the dying patient is exacerbated by the foolish charade of those who attempt to conceal the approach of death. But death cannot be concealed; the clues are ubiquitous: the nurses speak in hushed tones, the rounding doctors often pay attention to the wrong parts of the body, the medical students tiptoe into the hospital room, the family smiles bravely, visitors attempt cheeriness. A patient with cancer once told me that she knew death was near when her doctor, who previously had always concluded his physical exam with a playful pat on her fanny, instead ended his exam with a warm handshake. More than death, one fears the utter isolation that accompanies it. We try to go through life two by two, but each of us must die alone—no one can die our death with us or for us. The shunning of the dying by the living prefigures final absolute abandonment. Paula taught me how the isolation of the dying works two ways. The patient cuts herself off from the living, not wanting to drag family or friends into her horror by revealing her fears or her macabre thoughts. And friends shrink away, feeling helpless, awkward, uncertain of what to say or do, and reluctant to get too close to a preview of their own deaths. But Paula’s isolation was now at an end. If nothing else, I was constant. Though others had abandoned Paula, I would not. How good that she had found me! How could I have known then that the time would come when she would consider me her Peter, denying her not once but many times?

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  “And sometimes if we’re really angry at someone, then when something bad happens to them, then we also think that it happened because we wanted it to happen.” Anna looks me straight in the eye. I continue, “And you know, when a bad thing happens to someone we love or hate, it doesn’t happen because of our feelings. Sometimes bad things just happen … and feelings, no matter how big they are, are only feelings.” Anna’s gaze is penetrating and grateful. I feel myself welling with tears. I ask her if she wants to go back to her class now. She nods, looks once more at the three of us, and then walks out the door, her arms swinging freely—in rhythm with her stride. Alex, like several of the children who witnessed the tragedy from the beach, was having trouble sleeping and eating. His father brought him to us because the youngster had barely eaten in the last two days. As we sit together, I ask him if he can feel the inside of his tummy. He places the hand gently on his belly and, with a sniffle, says, “Yes.” “What does it feel like in there?” “It’s all tight like a knot.” “Is there anything inside that knot?” “Yeah. It’s black … and red … I don’t like it.” “It hurts, huh?” “Yeah.” “You know, Alex, it’s supposed to hurt because you love her … but it won’t hurt forever.” Tears cascade down the boy’s cheeks, and color returns to his face and fingers. That evening, Alex eats a full meal. At Mary’s funeral Alex weeps openly, smiles warmly and hugs his friends. Sammy: Child’s PlayYou can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. —Plato Just as neither Vince nor his medical practitioners were able to associate his persistent frozen shoulder with a horrific event, often, children’s symptoms or changes in their behavior can present puzzling questions that baffle parents and pediatric professionals alike. This is especially true when the child has “good enough” parents that provide a stable and nurturing home environment. Sometimes the child’s new actions, although anything but subtle, are a mystery. The bewildered family might not connect the child’s conduct or other symptoms with the source of his terror. Rather than expressing themselves in easily comprehensible ways, kids frequently show us that they are suffering inside in the most frustrating ways. They do this through their bodies. They may act bratty, clinging to parents or throwing tantrums. Or they might struggle with agitation, hyperactivity, nightmares or sleeplessness. Even, more troubling, they may act out their worries and hurts by steamrolling over a pet or a younger, weaker child. For other children, their distress may show up as head and tummy aches or bedwetting, or they may avoid people and things they used to enjoy in order to manage their unbearable anxiety. Parents ask where in the world these childhood symptoms can possibly come from?

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  She cried when she told me about calling her surgeon, a friend of twenty years, only to be informed by his nurse that there were to be no further appointments because the doctor had nothing more to offer. “What is wrong with doctors? Why don’t they understand the importance of sheer presence?” she asked me. “Why can’t they realize that the very moment they have nothing else to offer is the moment they are most needed?” The horror in learning of one’s sickness unto death, I learned from Paula, is intensified many times over by the withdrawal of others. The isolation of the dying patient is exacerbated by the foolish charade of those who attempt to conceal the approach of death. But death cannot be concealed; the clues are ubiquitous: the nurses speak in hushed tones, the rounding doctors often pay attention to the wrong parts of the body, the medical students tiptoe into the hospital room, the family smiles bravely, visitors attempt cheeriness. A patient with cancer once told me that she knew death was near when her doctor, who previously had always concluded his physical exam with a playful pat on her fanny, instead ended his exam with a warm handshake. More than death, one fears the utter isolation that accompanies it. We try to go through life two by two, but each of us must die alone—no one can die our death with us or for us. The shunning of the dying by the living prefigures final absolute abandonment. Paula taught me how the isolation of the dying works two ways. The patient cuts herself off from the living, not wanting to drag family or friends into her horror by revealing her fears or her macabre thoughts. And friends shrink away, feeling helpless, awkward, uncertain of what to say or do, and reluctant to get too close to a preview of their own deaths. But Paula’s isolation was now at an end. If nothing else, I was constant. Though others had abandoned Paula, I would not. How good that she had found me! How could I have known then that the time would come when she would consider me her Peter, denying her not once but many times? She could find no suitable words to describe the bitterness of her isolation, a period she often referred to as her Garden of Gethsemane. Once she brought me a lithograph drawn by her daughter in which several highly stylized silhouette figures are stoning a saint, a single tiny crouching woman whose frail arms cannot protect her from the hail of granite. It still hangs in my office, and whenever I see it I think of Paula saying, “I am that woman, helpless before the onslaught.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Irene was not being ironic; she was stone serious. This scenario was to happen again and again throughout our work. I was the designated voice of reason. I often took the bait: I confronted her irrationality; argued; appealed to her reason; tried to rouse her precise, scientifically honed mind. Other times I just waited. But the result was always the same: she never budged an inch; she never relinquished her position. And I never got used to her dual nature, her extraordinary lucidity flanked by preposterous irrationality. Lesson 2: The Wall of Bodies If Irene’s initial dream anticipated the nature of our future relationship, a dream she had in the second year of therapy was the opposite—a beam directed backward, illuminating the trail we had already traveled together. I am in this office, in this chair. But there is a strange wall in the middle of the room between us. I can’t see you. At first I can’t see the wall distinctly; it’s irregular, with lots of crevices and protuberances. I see a small patch of fabric, red plaid; then I recognize a hand; then a foot and a knee. Now I know what it is—a wall of bodies heaped one upon the other. “And the feeling in the dream, Irene?” Almost always my first question. The feeling in a dream often leads to the center of its meaning. “Unpleasant, fearful. My strongest feeling was in the beginning—when I saw the wall and felt lost. Alone—lost—frightened.” “Tell me about the wall.” “When I describe it now, it sounds gruesome—like a heap of bodies at Auschwitz. And that patch of red plaid—I know that pattern, it was the pajamas Jack was wearing the night he died. Yet somehow the wall is not gruesome—it’s simply there, something I’m inspecting and studying. It might have even allayed some of my fear.” “A wall of bodies between us—what do you make of that, Irene?” “No mystery there. No mystery to the whole dream. It’s just what I’ve been feeling all along. The dream says you can’t really see me because of all the dead bodies, all the deaths. You can’t imagine. Nothing has ever happened to you! You’ve had no tragedy in your life.” The losses in Irene’s life had mounted. First her brother. Then her husband, who died at the end of our first year of therapy. A few months later her father was diagnosed with advanced prostatic cancer, followed shortly by her mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s disease. And then, when she seemed to be making progress in therapy, her twenty-year-old godson—the only child of her cousin, a close lifelong friend—drowned in a boating accident.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  She took them back and, on impulse, stole the letters from Christine as well. A few days later, on an overcast autumn afternoon, she poked them, along with all the rest of the poems she’d written, into the center of a mound of dried sycamore leaves and put a match to it. All that afternoon she sat watching the wind have its will with the ashes of her poetry. From then on a veil of silence fell between her and her father. It was impenetrable. He never acknowledged his violation of her privacy. She never confessed her violation of his. He never mentioned the missing letters, nor did she speak of her missing poems. Though she never wrote another poem, she had wondered ever since why he had kept these pages of her poems and why they were damp. In her daydreams she sometimes imagined him reading them and weeping over their beauty. A few years ago her mother had phoned to tell her that her father had suffered a massive stroke. Though she had rushed to the airport and caught the next plane home, she arrived at the hospital only to find his room empty, the bare mattress covered with a clear plastic sheet. Minutes earlier the orderlies had removed his body. The first time she met Dr. Lash, she was startled by the antique rolltop desk in his office. It was like her father’s, and often during her long silences she caught herself gazing at it. She never told Dr. Lash about the desk and its secrets, or about her poems, or about the long silence between herself and her father. Ernest also slept poorly that night. Again and again he reviewed his presentation of Myrna to the countertransference study group, which had met a couple of days earlier in a member’s group therapy room on Couch Row, as upper Sacramento Street was often called. Though the seminar had started out leaderless, the discussions had grown so intense and so personally threatening that a few months ago they had hired a consultant, Dr. Fritz Werner, an elderly psychoanalyst who had contributed many astute papers to the psychoanalytic literature on countertransference. Ernest’s account of Myrna had provoked a particularly animated discussion. Though praising him for his willingness to expose himself so candidly to the group, Dr. Werner had also been sharply critical of the therapy, especially the T-shirt comment. “Why so impatient?” Dr. Werner asked as he scraped the bowl of his pipe, filled it with acrid-smelling Balkan Sobranie, tamped it down, and lit it. When first invited he had stipulated that his pipe be part of the deal. “So she repeats herself?” he continued. “So she whines? So she makes impossible requests of you? So she’s critical of you and doesn’t behave like a good, grateful patient? My God, young man, you’ve only seen her for four months! What’s that—a total of fifteen or sixteen sessions?