He couldn’t help himself. “I don’t forgive you,” Dave told his dad. He hated himself for saying this, regretted it the second it came out. But after all the pain his father had put him through and all the work he’d done to create a good life for himself and his family, he’d be damned if he was going to soothe his father now with a sugary lie. He’d spent his childhood lying about how he felt. Still, Dave wondered, what kind of person says this to his dying father?
Dave had started to apologize, but his father interrupted him. “I understand,” he said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t forgive me either.”
And then the strangest thing happened, Dave told me. Sitting there holding his father’s hand, Dave felt something shift. He felt, for the first time in his life, genuine compassion. Not forgiveness, but compassion. Compassion for the sad dying man who must have had his own pain. And it was that compassion that allowed Dave to speak authentically at his father’s funeral.
It was compassion, too, that helped me help Rita. I didn’t have to forgive her for what she’d done with her children. As with Dave’s father, that was up to Rita to reckon with. We may want others’ forgiveness, but that comes from a place of self-gratification; we are asking forgiveness of others to avoid the harder work of forgiving ourselves.
I thought of something Wendell had said to me after I’d listed my own regrettable missteps that I took great pleasure in punishing myself for: “How long do you think the sentence for this crime should be? A year? Five? Ten?” Many of us torture ourselves over our mistakes for decades, even after we’ve genuinely attempted to make amends. How reasonable is that sentence?
It’s true that in Rita’s case, her children’s lives were significantly affected by their parents’ failures. She and her children would always feel the pain of their shared pasts, but shouldn’t there be some redemption? Did Rita deserve to be persecuted day after day, year after year? I wanted to be realistic about the considerable scars they all bore, but I didn’t want to be Rita’s warden.
I can’t help but think about her evolving relationship with the hello-family girls next door; what if she had been able to offer her four children what she offers them?
I put the question to Rita: “What should your sentence be, as you approach seventy, for the crimes you committed in your twenties and thirties? They were significant crimes, yes. But you’ve felt remorse for decades, and you’ve tried to make repairs. Shouldn’t you have been released by now, or at least out on parole? What do you think is a fair sentence for your crimes?”
Rita considers this for a moment. “Life in prison,” she says.
“Well,” I say. “That’s what you got. But I’m not sure that a jury that included Myron or the hello-family would agree.”
“But the people I care most about, my kids—they’ll never forgive me.”
I nod. “We don’t know what they’re going to do. But it doesn’t help them in any way for you to be miserable. Your misery doesn’t change their situation. You can’t lessen their misery by carrying it for them inside you. It doesn’t work that way. There are ways for you to be a better mother to them at this point in all of your lives. Sentencing yourself to life in prison isn’t one of them.” I notice that I have Rita’s attention. “There’s only one person in this entire world who benefits from you not being able to enjoy anything good in your life.”
Rita’s forehead becomes a series of lines. “Who?”
“You,” I say.
I point out to her that pain can be protective; staying in a depressed place can be a form of avoidance. Safe inside her shell of pain, she doesn’t have to face anything, nor does she have to emerge into the world, where she might get hurt again. Her inner critic serves her: I don’t have to take any action because I’m worthless. And there’s another benefit to her misery: she may feel that she stays alive in her kids’ minds if they relish her suffering. At least somebody has her in mind, even in a negative way—and in this sense, she’s not completely forgotten.
She looks up from her tissue, as if considering the pain that she’s carried for decades in an entirely new way. For maybe the first time, Rita seems to see the crisis she has been in the midst of—the battle between what Erik Erikson called integrity and despair.
Which, I wonder, will she choose?
42
My Neshama
I’m at lunch with my colleague Caroline.
We’re catching up, talking about our practices, when Caroline asks if the Wendell referral she gave me a while back ever worked out for my friend. As an aside, she says that our call brought back memories from when she and Wendell were in graduate school together. A classmate of theirs had a massive crush on him, but it wasn’t reciprocated, and Wendell actually started dating another—
Whoa! I stop her. I can’t hear this. The referral, I admit, was for me.
Caroline looks shocked for a second, and then she laughs and iced tea begins spurting from her nose. “Sorry,” she says, wiping her face with a napkin. “I thought I was referring a married guy to him. I just can’t imagine you with Wendell.” I understand what she means. It’s hard to envision somebody you know as the patient of somebody else you know, especially if you knew that person back in graduate school. You know too much about both of them.
I tell her I was ashamed back then—about my breakup, my book fiasco, my health issues—and she shares her own struggles with trying to conceive a second child. Near the end of our lunch, she also tells me about a difficult patient and how she had no idea during the initial consultation how difficult this patient would be—how abrasive, demanding . . . entitled.
“I have one too,” I say, thinking about John, “but over time, I’ve come to like him quite a bit—to care about him deeply.”
“I hope mine works out that way,” Caroline says. Then, an afterthought: “But if not, could I send her to you? Do you have the time?” I can tell from her tone that she’s kidding—mostly. I remember talking to my consultation group early on about John and his enormous ego and constant put-downs. Ian had quipped: “Well, if it doesn’t work out, just make sure you refer him to somebody you dislike.”
“Oh, no,” I say now, shaking my head. “Don’t send her to me.”
“Then I’ll refer her to Wendell!” Caroline says. And we laugh.
“So,” I say to Wendell the following Wednesday morning. “I had lunch with Caroline last week.”
He’s silent, but his magnet eyes are on me. I start telling him how Caroline felt about her patient and how sometimes I feel that way about patients, how every therapist does, but still, I say, it bothers me. Are we judging people too harshly? Do we not have enough empathy?
“I can’t pinpoint why,” I continue, “but I’ve felt strange about that conversation all week. It makes me uncomfortable in a way it hadn’t at lunch, and—”
Wendell’s brow is furrowed, as though he’s trying to follow my train of thought.
“I think as a profession,” I say, attempting to clarify, “we can’t keep it all inside, but at the same time—”