I wanted to lead with the dreams, but as the last meeting had been cancelled (COVID alert, false) it was six weeks since we’d sat down together. Some preliminaries were in order; a brief reconnecting chat. But I did launch into the dreams early.
Walking along a medieval road, a statue of Aragon falls and shatters. I know it’s the Tolkien hero despite the statue being grey-black and shaped like a sarcophagus.
It’s a park, a slope of grass with trees—perhaps a forest?—to the left. My old friend Simon who spent the first quarter of the year in hospital, most of it in intensive care, is a few metres downhill, he subsides to the grass. I’m cradling his shoulders, supporting him as he dies. The sun is shining.
I’m standing close behind a large metal building skip, the 4m x 2m steel trays that fill with the debris of renovation or demolition. It’s full; I’m behind it, belly pressing on the cold rim. That’s all.
A semi-smile passes between Don and I. Don’t need a dictionary of dreams for that lot.
I explain that Aragon is the capital ‘H’ hero in Lord Of The Rings. A kind of warrior Christ figure, I say. It’s a gentle joust between us where I take take aim at belief systems as Don canters past, unperturbed. But it’s also kind of true about Aragon, though I’d never thought it before. Healer, leader, fighter. As an archetype, perhaps more Greek than Christian. What resonates with you about Aragon, asks Don. I flash to the scene where the anonymous king enters Gondor and seeks his friends who are gravely wounded. “The hands of the King are the hands of a healer”. Heroism, courage, compassion; they always bring sadness, and do now. I have none of those traits. When I say that, it doesn’t feel self-pitying but when it’s challenged (lovingly, gently) I feel disgust. What a ghastly little grub. I describe the dissolution of a character in Terry Gillian’s Brazil. That’s me, a sack of foetid slop banded by anxiety.
The skip. The debris of a career, of a life. Don and I are the same vintage. He gets the idea of retirement, loss of meaning, dismantling of identity. The existential desert. There’s little to be seen on the featureless plain of remaining life, I say. It’s grey. Later I wished I’d pulled out the quote from Beckett’s Endgame. “Grey! Did you say grey?” demands Hamm of Clov, his servant.
“Light black. From pole to pole.”
I wonder if a career is simply the most effective shield against meaninglessness. Rarely did I feel anxious when sitting with a client, yet elsewhere, often. I wonder about how my butterfly brain was lightly scaffolded by the rewarding task of focusing on the other. I and thou. Now just I, and I am drifting, anchored mostly by the desire to support the boy during his final years of secondary school. Oh, and the immense, unparalleled, and entirely unexpected love I have for him. Paradox for the broken. Full of love, observes Don. He’s clearly less scared of the word than me.
He says something about connection and the healing effects of a bounded therapeutic intimacy. Neuroplasticity. Yeah, right. Like my trauma brain is going to remodel because someone is nice to me. How’s that for bravado? Yet every limping step forward in my life has been the result of some degree of willingness to accept, if not embrace, suffering. Witnessing and holding the suffering of another was at the core of my practice. We teach best what we most need to learn.
Don said something, but I didn’t hear it. It’s like water falling on an upturned axe-blade, I say. Not my best metaphor, but he gets it. Like Teflon. Things slide off, like anything to do with the future. What about with your son? No, it’s different with him. He is the exception to the dyadic lifetime seesaw anchored at one end by suffering and oblivion at the other. Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. Another favourite quote, from The Princess Bride.
Hold that idea for me, I say to Don. Something about being gentler towards myself; a quality that came easily with clients, even the frustrating ones, and feels so natural with the boy it is invisible. As invisible as love.
Lonely Keyboards 