Going to see Dr. Z doesn't so much feel like a doctor's appointment now; it's more like having coffee with a family friend, except we don't drink coffee, and I leave with a script for my anti-depressant in my pocket. He treated Cory for three years, and has been treating me for nearly two. I am always eager to see his smile, and sit in the quiet, calming manner that he naturally exudes. He speaks quietly and slowly, which automatically makes you slow down yourself and your thoughts just to hear what he has to say.
Yesterday, he said this, "I have her painting hanging in my living room, where I see it first thing when I get home at night. It makes me think of her. She was such a beautiful girl..." He trails off here, with a slight bowing of his head, and continues, "...but, how are we doing?" His question is punctuated with a gentle, expectant smile, and I hesitate to say anything to disappoint him.
I hedge around the question, and talk about Cory's birthday instead. He nods gravely when I tell him it would have been her twenty first. I could not consent to the special birthday dinner on her day, but instead compromised with a lunch the day before. Tim and Jake sat together on one side of the booth, as always, with me and the space for my girl on the other. It was difficult.
He asks after my parents and Jake. I fill him in. We trade paperwork hand for hand- my updated health forms and authorization to share for his completion of my FMLA request. He asks how work is going. I tell him I seldom miss anymore, although I did call in the day after Cory's birthday. I still have trouble focusing sometimes, but I tell him that putting on my headphones for a few minutes usually helps get me back on track.
He tells me how happy he is that I am working with families of young children. He says that he thinks I can show true compassion for children with challenging behaviors, rather than thinking they are being willful. I nod eagerly. He says he thinks that the future must contain more complete care for the family unit- as children's growth and development can be greatly compromised when a parent is depressed or ill. I could not agree more. I am not the same parent to Jake that I was to Jake and Cory together. It is a huge effort to remember my responsibility to him on the days I question if life is worth this endless pain. I say to Dr Z, "I can't imagine how difficult it would be if I were a parent with an illness like what Cory had."
He nods vigorously. "Amen."
We go on to update meds. He is pleased to hear I haven't taken sleep meds for about a month. Instead, I've been taking "grief naps" each evening when I get home- an hour, maybe two before dinner. Jake and I tend to eat a little late. Then I still end up in bed by eleven most nights. Sometimes there are nightmares, but the insomnia has gone away for the most part.
"Is it bad to be sleeping this much?" I asked.
"I think it sounds lovely." he grins. "And on the weekends?"
"I just want to sleep all the time. It's hard to get out of bed. And sometimes, I get to dream about her."
He nods, and scratches down a note. "A lot of people through the ages find comfort in looking for their loved ones in other states of mind. The Native Americans used hallucinogens to produce visions and summon their ancestors for advice. Some people now try looking at pictures of their loved one right before bed...the idea being that the brain continues to work on whatever you were last thinking of right before sleep."
I will try that.
"Is it normal-" I began.
"There is no normal." he kindly interjected.
"I just don't understand why I don't feel any better when I'm trying so hard to do the right things. I hate everything." I stated flatly. And I do. I really do.
"Well, I know you may not feel better yet, but you look better, and you are functioning better. In fact, I am quite surprised and pleased that you are doing as well as you are. You had quite a few risk factors- anxiety in your family history, you were very stressed for years before the accident with Cory's illness and caring for her, the way her death occurred, and the closeness of your relationship."
"We were very close." I confirmed.
"Close?" he echoed. "You think of the men who go to war together and make life-long attachments to each other within the experiences they share. You and she were in a war, were you not?"
My throat closed a little and my eyes welled up. I will always feel like I failed her in the end.
"You are working and taking care of Jacob the best you can. You have not been hospitalized. You are actually doing remarkably better than I might have suspected."
Someone has taken this dear man aside and told him the secret to gaining cooperation from someone. You don't told them everything they are doing wrong (i.e. not going to family gatherings, not celebrating the holidays, not socializing, going to work with blatantly dirty hair); you tell them what they are doing right. At this point, he asked me if I was still doing anything "artsy".
I smiled, wishing with every bone in my body that Cory was sitting beside me and this was her appointment and her question from him, not mine.
"Yes, I brought my journal if-"
"Yes, please." he said, and gestured. I handed it to him, and sat with burning cheeks as he slowly went through each and every page. There was a slight feeling of being naked in front of him, but at this point he knew all my secrets, and pretty much everything about me barring my bra size. He had supported me as a single parent going through an unthinkable nightmare, and he had supported me while I discovered first hand the major blows a marriage took after losing a child- differences in grieving styles, financial stress, problems with sex.
This was the man I had once slipped a note about medication side effects to during a session that read simply, "I can no longer feel my vagina." If you aren't confidants after that, I don't know what you are.
He turned the pages silently, stopping to read little bits, and pushing past others. "Beautiful. This is beautiful. There is something uplifting about these faces. There is sadness, yes. But I think sorrow can be a beautiful thing; it is born of a deep, abiding love."
I smiled. Yes, that is just how it is. People may look at my art, and think I am just a sullen, depressed girl who won't help herself feel better, who refuses to accept what has happened, and move on. Well, I am sullen. I am depressed. I make no apologies. Cory meant everything to me, and I will honor those feelings full tilt. Sometimes people say she wouldn't want you to mourn for you. I grin inwardly at this. You didn't know my girl. She would want to know what I meant to her. She'd be a little pouty with me if I WASN'T wrecked in a big way. (Smile).
He thanked me for sharing my journal, and passed it back to me. I told him I had a couple of questions.
"How long will I continue to have the flashbacks?" I asked.
"It is different for every person, but if you think of the war veteran who has seen someone die right before his eyes- he may be fine for years, go through a rough period twenty years down the road, and then they are back. We do not forget. We only develop coping mechanisms. When we become overly stressed, we sometimes forget to use them, or they aren't enough...and things break through. They will likely never go away completely."
This reminded me so much of Cory's analogy of her monsters behind a locked door. It was a constant battle to keep the voices and delusions at bay. The meds helped, but sometimes they broke through anyway. What a way to have to live each day. I don't know how she did it.
I then took a deep breath and confessed, "I haven't been to the cemetery since July. Should I be trying to force myself to go?"
He shook his head back and forth. "No. It is not geography that allows you to honor her. You visit her everyday-" he pointed to my journal, "- in those pages."
Yes, I do.
No comments:
Post a Comment