The Schopenhauer Cure(84)
“Julius,” said Tony, “I been wondering. You okay with the response to what you revealed?”
“Well, we didn’t get very far. Let me think about what happened. You told me how you felt and so did Pam, and then she and Philip got into it about his not having feelings about my revelation. And, Tony, I never really answered your question about ‘why now.’ Let me go back to that.” Julius took time to gather his thoughts, keenly aware that his self-revelation, or that of any therapist, always had double implications: first, whatever he got out of it for himself and, second, the modeling that it set for the group.
“I can tell you that I was not about to be deterred from revealing what I did. I mean, almost everyone here tried to stop me, but I felt bullheaded, absolutely determined to continue. This is very unusual for me and I’m not sure I understand it fully, but there’s something important there. You inquired, Tony, whether I was asking for help with it—or maybe asking for forgiveness. No, that wasn’t it; long ago I forgave myself after spending years working on it with my friends and with a therapist. One thing I can tell you for sure: in the past, I mean before my melanoma, I would never, not in a thousand years, have said what I said in the group today.
“Before my melanoma,” Julius continued. “That’s the key. We’ve all got a death sentence—I know you all pay me well for such cheery pronouncements—but the experience of having it certified, stamped, and even dated has sure caught my attention. My melanoma is giving me a strange sense of release that’s got a lot to do with my revealing myself today. Maybe that’s why I’ve been yearning for a cotherapist—someone objective who can make sure that I continue acting in your best interests.”
Julius stopped. Then, he added, “I noted that none of you responded earlier when I commented on how you were taking care of me today.”
After a few more moments of silence, Julius added, “And you’re still not.You see, this is why I miss having a cotherapist here. I’ve always believed that if there’s something big that’s not being talked about, then nothing else that’s important can be worked on either. My job is to remove obstacles; the last thing I want is to be an obstacle. Now, it’s hard for me to get outside myself, but I feel you’re avoiding me, or let me put it this way, avoiding my mortal illness.”
Bonnie said, “I want to discuss what’s happening to you; but I don’t want to cause you pain.”
Others agreed.
“Yep, now you’ve put your finger right on it. Now listen hard to what I’m going to say: there’s only one way you can hurt me —and that is to cut yourself off from me. It’s hard to talk to someone with a life-threatening illness—I know that. People have a tendency to tread gently; they don’t know the right thing to say.”
“That’s right-on for me,” said Tony. “I don’t know what to say. But I’m going to try to stay with you.”
“I sense that, Tony.”
“Isn’t it so,” said Philip, “that people fear contact with the afflicted because they wish not to be confronted with the death that awaits each of them?”
Julius nodded. “That sounds important, Philip. Let’s examine it here.” If anyone but Philip had said this, Julius would have been sure to ask whether they were expressing their own feelings. However, at this stage, he wanted only to support Philip’s appropriateness. He scanned the group, awaiting a response.
“Maybe,” said Bonnie, “there’s something to what Philip said because I’ve had a couple of recent nightmares of something trying to kill me, and then there was that nightmare I described—trying to catch that train which was falling apart.”
“I know that under the surface I’m more fearful than usual,” said Stuart. “One of my tennis chums is a dermatologist, and twice now in the last month I’ve asked him to check out one of my skin lesions. Melanoma is on my mind.”
“Julius,” said Pam, “you’ve been on my mind ever since you told me about your melanoma. There is something to what I’m being told about my being tough on men, but you’re the main exception—you are the dearest man I’ve ever known. And yes, I do feel protective of you. I felt it when Philip put you on the spot. I thought—and still think—it was callous and insensitive of him. And the question of whether I’m more conscious of my own death—well, that may be there, but I’m not aware of it. I can tell you that I’m on the lookout for consolatory things I might say to you. Last night I read something interesting, a passage in Nabokov’s memoir, Speak, Memory, which described life as a spark between two identical pools of darkness, the darkness before we were born and the darkness after we die. And how odd it is that we have so much concern about the latter and so little about the former. I somehow found this enormously reassuring and immediately tagged it to give to you.”
“That’s a gift, Pam. Thank you. That’s an extraordinary thought. And it is a reassuring thought, though I’m not quite sure why. I’m more comfortable with that first pool, before birth—it seems friend-lier—perhaps I imbue it with promise, the potential of things to come.”
“That thought,” said Philip, “was also reassuring to Schopenhauer, from whom, incidentally, Nabokov undoubtedly lifted it. Schopenhauer said that after death we will be what we were before our birth and then proceeded to prove the impossibility of there being more than one kind of nothingness.”