Wednesday, July 4, 2012

A Blanket Statement


"He just wanted it to matter.  It was a profound thing to hear from a teenager.  I never heard that from anyone else in my life, not even my parents who lived well into their eighties," Sharon recalled as she sat on an exceedingly uncomfortable chaise lounge in the office of her doctor.

Dr. Riley was a renowned psychiatrist, known for his work with grieving parents and children.  Families came from all over the country to seek his advice, mainly because he had suffered his own loss as a young parent.  Sharon figured that a firsthand shrink somehow justified the need to see a shrink at all.  Seeking psychiatric care had always been frowned upon in Sharon's family.

"He sounded like an old soul," said Dr. Riley.  "Is that how you would describe him?"

"I don't know that I could describe him very well," Sharon said as she wiped her eyes and wept into her forearm.

"Sharon, this is supposed to be a sanctuary.  You don't have to be ashamed to cry in front of me," he said to her.

"I'm not afraid to cry," she quickly responded.  But Sharon's tears were immutable and inimitable because they were tears of guilt.  "I'm not afraid, Dr. Riley.  I'm not ashamed.  I'm inconsolable."

"At a certain point, Sharon, you have to come to terms with the fact that this is not all okay," he pointed out.

Sharon stopped her crying upon hearing this.  She was baffled by his oversimplification of the matter.

"I don't understand," she said.  "I know that none of this is okay.  You know that I know that, right?" she asked of him, as if she needed his approval.

"I know that you know that, Sharon.  But that isn't what I am saying to you," he answered.

"What are you saying?" Sharon asked.

"I'm saying that at a certain point in the wake of this tragedy, you have to go beyond that.  You have to recognized that this isn't okay.  And then you have to be okay with that.  You have to be okay with not being okay," he clarified.  "That's the only way to get past this."

"I might never get past this, Dr. Riley," she said.  New puddles coated the bottom of her lids each time she blinked at him.

"I know that, Sharon.  That is a very real--"

"Do you?  Do you know that?  Because sometimes I think that you do and then you ask me questions or you make statements that I would call blanketed.  I don't--"

"Blanketing this was never my intention and you know that, Sharon.  I'm not going--"

"Do you really know what I mean, though?  A teenager--a child--walked into traffic and it was my car that put him to his death.  My car.  Not yours," she said as she took a very public possession of her own private hell.  "My car.  And I have to live with that everyday."

"Yes, you do.  And you don't have to listen to a word I say on the matter.  But it is my job to sit here and say what it is that I think will help.  That much I know.  I know that when my entire family died around me in our car accident, when I was the sole survivor of that situation and I wanted nothing more than to die along with them, I know that I got very possessive of my grief.  That I believed no one had the kind of grief I had--"

"They didn't.  You were right," she agreed.  "They still don't.  That's yours and no one else's."

"Yes, it is, Sharon.  But this isn't a prized possession.  This is a plague.  All I'm telling you is the sooner you grasp what everyone else seems to call the 'new normal,' the better off you'll be.  And yes, I know, 'better off' is a silly, nonsensical term given the circumstances.  Clearly no one is better off here."

"He was just a kid.  How could he have wanted to die so young?  I'm almost mad at him.  He was selfish to give me his last words.  I have no one to tell them to," Sharon said.

"You can tell them to me.  You are telling them to me," Dr. Riley pointed out.

"There was no one left," she whispered to herself, trying to say something more but giving into her tears again.  "There was no one."

"You were helpless," said Dr. Riley.

"Desperate.  I was anointed witness to the very deathbed I had made," she said to him ruefully and in hopes of evoking something more.

Dr. Riley knew the kind of guilt, the analysis of a single moment that she would experience for many years to come, but there was nothing he could do to mend her broken heart.

"Sharon, you probably knew him better than anyone.  And in the end, in our final days, we will clasp hands with strangers, with our wilting neighbors, and we will quote Shel Silverstein just before the reckoning, just before the fissures start to fissure."


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