There’s an HBO show I loved watching called In Treatment in which Gabriel Byrne plays a psychotherapist named Paul Weston. The show was adapted from an Israeli series, and structured so five episodes aired throughout the week, with each half-hour covering one patient’s session.
I was impressed by how In Treatment was able to tell such intricate stories with two actors in a mostly static setting, and I also liked the setting. Paul’s office had a comforting peacefulness that offset the internal turmoil of his patients. I felt drawn to the idea of processing my internal darkness with an experienced guide, and the show made me wonder about my own fear and shame.
Then Mindy died, and a few months after that I went in search of a therapist because I could pay the cost and I was angry and bewildered and sad and I didn’t want Lana to suffer because of the turbulence of my feelings. I wanted someone who knew the terrain, and could provide a weekly touchstone as I charted and survived in the wilderness of grief.
I also didn’t want a counselor through church because I wasn’t sure how much church was part of my problem or not. I wanted to talk about church and faith and God objectively. I asked my friend Andrew for recommendations and he came back with a list of names and I looked up the first, Peter, a psychoanalyst who specialized in grief and who, like Paul Weston, shared the first name of an apostle.
I scheduled a session, and for the last seven years we met nearly every week until our final session last Wednesday.
The path between our house and the therapy office varied. If I was late, I took the freeway. On slower days, when I was ahead of time or planning on lunch, I retraced the scenic green route along Terwilliger where I used to ferry Mindy to OHSU. This was reliable in sparking a reflective mood.
Most of the time I followed Barbur into downtown: past the historic synagogue where my neighbor was a rabbi; between the workplaces of two close friends; by the University Club (site of our wedding reception) and the historical society and the art museum and the Central Library; and finally to wherever I’d park under the elms along Taylor Street. Usually this was in front of First Baptist, where Mindy and I were married. My appointments were across the street from the church, a serendipity I discovered on my first appointment.
The building housed dentists and medical offices and a diner downstairs which changed ownership a few times but didn’t necessarily improve, and there was a table in the lobby where I’d sit and eat khao man gai from the Nong’s cart on Alder and watch folks file in. Sometimes I’d elevator up and other times I took stairs to the sixth floor, where there was a tenant placard with the names Bollerman and Batterman, which made me happy every time I noticed.
Some days early in grief I was so lonely for a listening ear I’d arrive early as possible just to sit in the waiting room. There was a sound machine which filled the space with a whoooooosh and a framed picture of divergent railroads in the Gorge, and Ansel Adams’ famous photo of Half Dome, and a stack of up-to-date New Yorkers which I sometimes read to get away from my phone. I entered that waiting room in every sort of state. In early years, the state was usually rough.
At 1 o’clock, Peter opened the door and welcomed me inside and we sat in chairs across from each other and for 45 minutes I could talk about whatever I felt. I could complain or yell or lament the pains and mysteries of being a solo father and a young widower and a frustrated writer. There was always more to explore when our time was up.
Sometimes I wondered if I was healing at all, if the work was endless and fruitless. I kept going, though, because I appreciated Peter’s understanding, and I kept sharing my thoughts and learning more of myself and my repeating themes through the lens of an accepting outside eye. Over time, I knew the grief was easier to bear because Peter, and many others, were lifting with me, distributing the weight of the pain across a broader surface like a snowshoe.
One trope I hear sometimes is “My therapist says…”, which strikes me because the usage is so similar to “The Bible says…” or “My teacher told me…,” a way to borrow on higher authority or set culpability anywhere but ourselves.
I certainly found myself asking Peter for advice through the years, wanting a diagnosis or prescription or solution to issues quickly fixed. This wasn’t his style, though. When I asked for solid ground, or subtly tried to glean his opinion on a subject, he’d usually smile and turn the question back toward me, effectively asking why I needed clear answers. Because sometimes I wanted direction from authority is why!
I asked at the end why he so stubbornly avoided spelling out ways I could get better, and he said he’d learned early in his career that giving advice to patients doesn’t work. The answers have to be reached internally for us to honor them. The conclusions and discoveries I arrived at through therapy were my own, and I’m grateful Peter was savvy enough to listen and allow for my own exploration.
There were other places I mapped the wilderness, like books on grief and Dougy Center groups and Refuge at Imago Dei and through all these and many other everyday conversations and considerations, I built out my methods of mourning, and adapted to living with a jagged wound. In all this, my therapy work was central. My path was smoother, my writing improved, and Lana’s last seven years were more anchored due to the good work we accomplished in Peter’s office.
On my first commutes to therapy from our current house, one early building I passed was the Hillsdale Baskin Robbins. Scooping ice cream at the B&R near Mall 205 was my first job with a W-2, so passing by my earliest work institution on the way to exploring my past felt fitting. That Baskin Robbins in particular was a comfort when we first moved, familiar ground Lana and I could walk to for a treat. Through life, deaths, moves, and therapy, at least there was Daiquiri Ice.
A few weeks after that, I left for therapy and turned up onto Capitol Highway to find a backhoe punching though the ice cream parlor’s roof, the freezers absconded, the pink and blue interior still adorned with the same posters of sundaes and scoop-starved urchins which stared down at my 16 year-old self, forearm-deep in tubs of Bordeaux cherry and mint chocolate chip.
What I felt when I saw that building destroyed was, Everything is always changing.
Outside of public school, there’s no appointment I’ve kept more diligently than therapy. While most of my sessions were at the office building on 11th and Taylor, I also FaceTimed in from Phoenix and Oahu and the Rockies and the Santa Rosa Plateau. I went through new heartbreaks, joys, and faced fresh fears and shame. For the last year, our sessions were online, and I sat in a chair in my bathroom because that’s the most soundproof room in the house. All through that, Peter was a steadfast presence.
Now he is retired, his career as a psychoanalyst complete. I am glad for however he harnesses his post-therapist days, proud to have been a patient, and I pray great fulfillment for his restful years.
For me, this is new grief at a relationship lost, one I’m still in the early stages in grieving. As losses go, a professional retirement is sweeter than most. I knew the end was coming and I’m glad we had time to process and say goodbye and prepare for my next steps.
Still, now there’s a new stretch of wilderness to navigate, this time without the caring guide who helped me survive the first time around. This loss is different, though. I know I have the tools I need. I’m well-trained for the terrain.
For that, I have Peter to thank.
Last Wednesday at 1:48 I filed back out onto 11th to the hum of a city stirring to life after quarantine, away from the whoooooosh of the noise machine and the tender connection of men conversing in earnest. As usual, I was dazed at the clamor of the world and the tidal emotions, so recently surfed, settling down to low waves within me, the depths stirred up.
I turned the key on the van and pulled into traffic on Taylor Street, west toward the freeway entrance to 405 southbound, where I passed over the final stop on my weekly Memory Lane.
That onramp was where we sat as a family along the Starlight Parade route, where Tyler and I explored the freeway medians and stayed up late with our city most every year in the glorious late sunset, cheering for costumed runners and flashy floats and Royal Rosarians and feasting upon cotton candy.
However rattled I was upon exiting therapy, the spot along the parade route was always one last updraft because it was also home to one of my most glorious moments, the time as a high schooler when an impossibly cute clarinet player from a Vancouver-area marching band fell out of formation after we made eye contact. Everyone around us saw, and I fell in love-at-first sight, and sometimes I still wonder about Clarinet Player and what might’ve been. This was probably something I should’ve explored in therapy.
Then the turbulence was forgotten as the opening acoustic strums of Feist’s “1234” were opening and that on-ramp is so long you can really step on the pedal with enough time to slow and merge with other drivers if need be.
Old teenage hopes are alive at your door
Left you with nothing but they want some moreOh, uh, oh, you're changing your heart
Oh, uh, oh, you know who you are
And I thought about how this is the song we played loud to get Lana to sleep on road trips, and the Silver Surfer zippered into traffic, and Mt. Hood shined as I tracked the lanes onto I-5 and followed the freeway back home.
Sounds like Peter worked in the same building where our licensed marriage and family therapist worked for many years, before moving his office to his home in the suburbs. I am anticipating his retirement any time now. Your post helps me not be afraid of losing his expertise.
I literally read this through tears. Your gift of prose is simply beautiful. I’m sorry that you’ve lost your trusted advisor, but I’m quite sure that you are going to be just fine. Thank you for sharing your journey, once again.