The Schopenhauer Cure(45)
“Strange. Like you wanted to board, but at the same time you didn’t want to,” said Rebecca.
“I sure didn’t try hard to board.”
“Maybe you were too scared to board?” asked Gill.
“Did I tell you all that I was in love?” said Julius.
A hush fell upon the group. Dead silence. Julius looked around, mischievously, at the puzzled and concerned faces.
“Yes, in love with this group, especially when it works like it’s working today. Great stuff, the way you’re working on that dream. You guys are something. Let me add my guess—I’m wondering, Bonnie, if that train isn’t a symbol for me as well. That train reeked of dread and darkness. And, as Stuart said, it offers nourishment. I try to do that. But you’re frightened of it—as you must be frightened of me or what’s happening to me. And that last car, the skeletonlike caboose: isn’t that a symbol, a prevision, of my deterioration?”
Bonnie stammered, got tissues from the box in the middle of the room, and wiped her eyes, “I…uh…I…I don’t know how to answer—this whole thing is surreal…. Julius, you floor me, you knock me out the way you talk about dying so matter-of-factly.”
“We’re all dying, Bonnie. I just know my parameters better than the rest of you,” said Julius.
“That’s what I mean, Julius. I always love your flippancy, but now, in this situation, it kind of avoids things. I remember once—it was during that time that Tony was doing weekend jail time and we weren’t talking about it—that you said if something big in the group is being ignored, then nothing else of importance gets talked about either.”
“Two things,” said Rebecca. “First, Bonnie, we were talking about something important just now—several important things—and, second, my God, what do you want Julius to do? He is talking about this.”
“In fact,” said Tony, “he even got pissed that we heard it from Philip rather than from him personally.”
“I agree,” said Stuart. “So Bonnie, what do you want from him? He’s handling it. He said he’s got his own support network to help him deal with it.”
Julius broke it off—it had gone far enough. “You know, I appreciate all this support from you guys, but when it’s this strong then I begin to worry. Maybe I’m getting loose, but do you know when Lou Gehrig decided to retire? It happened one game when everyone on the team gushed compliments about how he fielded a routine ground ball. Maybe you’re considering me too fragile to speak for myself.”
“So, where do we go with this?” said Stuart.
“First, let me say to you, Bonnie, that you’re showing a lot of guts by jumping in and naming the thing that’s too hot to touch. What’s more, you’re absolutely right: I have been encouraging some…no, a lot of denial here.
“I’m going to make a short speech and lay it all out for you. I’ve had some sleepless nights lately and a lot of time to think about everything, including what to do about my patients and this group. I haven’t had any practice at this. No one practices endings. They only happen once. No textbooks are written about this situation—so everything is improvisation.
“I’m faced with deciding about what to do with the time I have left. Look, what are my options? Terminate all my patients and end this group? I’m not ready to do that—I’ve got at least a year of good health, and my work means too much to me. And I get a lot out of it for myself. Stopping all my work would be to treat myself as a pariah. I’ve seen too many patients with fatal illness who’ve told me that the isolation accompanying their illness is the worst part of all.
“And the isolation is a dual isolation: first, the very sick person isolates himself because he doesn’t want to drag others down into his despair—and I can tell you for a fact that’s one of my concerns here—and, second, others avoid him either because they don’t know how to talk to him or because they want nothing to do with death.
“So, withdrawing from you is not a good option for me and, what’s more, I don’t believe for you either. I’ve seen a lot of terminally ill people who underwent change, grew wiser, riper, and had a great deal to teach others. I think that’s already starting to happen to me, and I’m convinced that I’ll have a lot to offer you in the next few months. But if we’re to keep working together, you may have to face a lot of anxiety. You’ll not only have to face my approaching death, but you may be confronted with your own. End of speech. Maybe you all have to sleep on this and see what you want to do.”
“I don’t need to sleep on it,” said Bonnie. “I love this group and you and everyone in it, and I want to work here as long as possible.”
After members echoed Bonnie’s affirmation, Julius said, “I appreciate the vote of confidence. But group therapy 101 underscores the daunting power of group pressure. It’s hard to buck group consensus in public. It would take superhuman resolve for any of you to say today, ‘Sorry, Julius, but this is too much for me, and I’d rather find a healthy therapist, someone hale enough to take care of me.’
“So, no commitments today. Let’s just stay open and keep evaluating our own work and see how everyone feels in a few weeks. One big danger which Bonnie expressed today is that your problems start to feel too inconsequential to discuss. So we have to figure out the best way for me to keep you working on your own issues.”