Shadowed Soul (24 page)

“Did I?”

“Think about, Thomas, of course you did. You could have come here and stayed with us but you chose to get all freaked out about it.”

“Beth, that's not fair.  I didn't choose to get freaked out,” I said defensively.

“You began to panic,” said Beth softening her tone.  “You did everything that you could to make it impossible for you to stay with us. I hate being apart but I don't want to live with you until you get a better grip, darling.”

“I am.  I'm seeing a counselor and it's great and I'm making huge steps forward, Beth,” I whined then stopped myself from speaking like a child to a grown woman. “Listen, I want you to come back, that's all I want.  We've been together when I've been through this before and we always managed.  I don't know what's so different now?”

“What's different? Did you forget we have a son?” Beth’s tone was flat.  “A baby boy, not a puppy.  I don't want to bring him into an environment where his father struggles to spend time with him.”

The penny dropped.  The baby.  That insufferable thing that intruded between my wife and me. Part of me despised the kid; irrational though that was.  If we had no baby, then everything would be as it was.  Beth would be able to deal with my depression and if she could do that then I would not have to be spending time and money for the stupid counselor.  Mainly, I would not have to work so hard at improving myself.

“I see, so you’re choosing him over me?”

“Thomas, stop being such a fucking child, will you?”  Beth’s voice escalated into harsh anger.  “I don't choose him
over
you.  I don't even believe that you said that, you selfish prick. You made your choice and that choice was you-you-you, Thomas, you
over
Jonathan and me. In fact, sometimes it feels like the only one of us that you love is Bailey and he's my fucking seeing-eye dog.”

A gulf of silence swept the telephone line.  Desperately, I grasped for words to right the situation.  But there was nothing I could say.

“He's my dog too,” I attempted to bridge the gap.  Beth’s reply was the soft sound of heartbroken sobbing.  Then gently, quietly and with terrifying finality the line went dead.

The phone did not ring again.  Beth had hung up on me.  I had no control over the situation.  Fear became rage unlike any I had felt before.  With it came the desire to lash out.  In fury I kicked my foot through the television screen.  Sparks and glass flew everywhere but all I wanted to do was break something, shatter something physical in the same way that I had shattered my life. I picked a glass vase from the table, mother’s cheap wedding gift sent two weeks after our marriage.  Its impact against the wall was almost perfect and shards scattered everywhere. I spun searching for something else to obliterate and saw Bailey cringing against the door, his tail tucked between his legs and his ears flattened.  My dog looked at me with fear in his eyes. My anger vanished in an instant and I fell to my knees and held my arms out. Cowering, Bailey remained where he was for a long time before he found the courage to take a few trembling steps towards me, daring to trust.  The hatred I felt for the world became a hatred that I believed I and I alone deserved.  I opened my arms and he came and sat against my chest, his body shaking with adrenaline and fear. I hugged him and tried to soothe him and after a long time he settled down.  He turned to lick my nose and that was when I began to cry.  I buried my face in his side and wept for hours until the phone rang.

“Beth?” I asked, hoping she had forgiven me.

“Mr. Milton, my name is Staff Nurse Sato, I'm afraid I have bad news for you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

              A sunny funeral seemed unfitting, especially for my mother.  Mournful weather would have been more appropriate.  It seemed wrong to bury her when the sun was shining and the birds were singing.  I stood by the grave with my hands clasped awkwardly behind me.  I was not sure whether there was a specific way that I, her only child, was meant to stand.  For such an unfriendly woman quite a few people came to pay their respects:  Many of a similar age interspersed by a handful of younger people. Beth and her parents came and offered condolences, then, they stood a tactful distance behind everyone else. It struck me on that day that my mother had never met Dorothy and Peter.  In fact, my mother had met Beth a grand total of four times and none had ended well.

What I found the oddest was the soft weeping around me. Who would waste energy to weep for my mother?  This confused me.  I found it almost impossible to believe that her passing would have any negative effect on anyone.  Guilt crept through me. I should be crying, not some people I had never met.  After all she was
my
mother and I felt almost childishly left out of the grieving process. Why the hell would these people give a flying fuck that my mother was gone? The priest spoke forever.  I lost concentration. My mind drifted to the previous afternoon and my conversation with Sophie.

“How do you think I feel?” I narrowed my eyes and looked at Sophie with something that resembled anger.  “My mother died and I have a funeral to attend tomorrow!  What would be a normal response?”

“John, what have I told you about
normal
?” replied Sophie a patient voice which filled me with rage.

“That it’s an illusion!” I snapped.

“No, that’s not what I said, Thomas,” answered Sophie, smiling a little. “Conforming to what is said to be normal is comparative.  That’s what I said.  There are social norms that people have to adhere to, such as laws, but when it comes to emotional responses then the arena is wide open.”

“I’m sad,” I snapped. “My mom died and I am sad that she’s gone.”

“Okay.” Sophie nodded and paused leaving a silence I felt compelled to fill.

“I’m angry too,” I said.

“A lot of people get angry when they lose someone, Thomas, that’s not unusual.”

“No, I’m angry that she’s gone and I never, ever found the courage to tell her how much I detested her and despised the way that she had been with me.  I’m pissed that she’s gone and she never really understood how much she fucked me up as a person.”  I paused and looked at Sophie.  I knew that Sophie was not a fan of cussing.  In fact she requested that her clients not curse.  But in this case she ignored it so I continued. “If my mother had given me something like a normal life then the chances are that I’d be normal.  And please, don’t give me any of that ‘what’s normal’ crap because I know that I’m not.”

“No, you’re not normal, not in the broadest terms but, Thomas, but you are far from alone though.  I mean there are almost 15 million people in the United States who suffer from clinical depression.  I guess that won’t help you understand your own feelings but it does mean that you are not abnormal, not by a long shot.”  Sophie sat back. “Your feelings about your mother and her passing are yours alone.  So, if this anger toward her is making you feel guilty then you shouldn’t beat yourself up.”

“I don’t feel guilty,” I said.  However, the truth was I did feel guilty.  I felt so bad for not having shed a tear for my mom.  Her death was something that I didn’t want to have to face because she had been so much of a negative influence on me.  And try as I might I could not dredge up one memory that could have legitimately been called
good
from the mire of my childhood.  But at the end of the day she was still my mother and I felt alone.  Even though she had been absent when I needed her most, the knowledge that she was no longer around was bitter pill.

“Can I tell you something, Sophie?”

“Of course you can, Thomas, that’s why we’re both here, isn’t it?”

“I’m mostly angry because now that she’s gone I don’t have a focus for my anger and hatred.  I detest what I am, Sophie.  And when my mother was alive I had a target that I could use to diffuse the real depth of my anger but now I don’t have that.”

“Is that such a bad thing, Thomas?”

“What?”

“Well, perhaps having a focus that effectively let you avoid looking at the real reasons for your illness was something that ultimately wasn’t helping you deal with it appropriately?” Sophie paused.  Her face held its usual non-judgemental expression.  “I mean, I know how the depression, or Shadowed Soul if you prefer to call it, affects you.  But I don’t know if you have any real coping mechanisms in place.  It’s something that we haven’t really discussed.”

I stared blankly.  I had no strategy to cope with my illness at all. There had been a few that I had attempted but given up on.  They had no instant effect and the Shadowed Soul was pretty damned good at robbing me of patience. Alcohol sometimes gave short-term relief, but long-term made me feel worse. I could not imagine what my life would be like without the Shadowed Soul.  Freedom did not appear to be an option.  My conclusion was that often people are defined by elements of themselves of which they are not particularly fond.  I feared I was defined by the Shadowed Soul.  People thought of me as depressed and miserable. Although I longed to be free of the Shadowed Soul I was petrified that if the Shadowed Soul disappeared there would be nothing left to define me. Without the drama of him dogging my every move, I risked being seen as exceptionally dull.  Sophie’s precise mind hammered deftly at my facade, one question at a time, each sending brittle cracks through the shell I had chosen to build around myself.

Sophie and I sat in silence until I blurted out that my coping mechanisms were not in any way defined.

“Well, if it's something you want to explore,” said Sophie nodding and smiling pleasantly.  “I'm more than happy to help you.”  I agreed I would like that.

Sophie had become an important part of my life and I found myself thinking of her between our sessions. There was nothing romantic in my thoughts, far from it because all of the love that I had to give to a woman was directed at Beth. I found myself writing poems on a nightly basis, words that maybe Beth would never ever see but had great value for me and I found cathartic.  In contrast, feelings I developed toward Sophie were based on the fact that she was such an easy person to talk to.  I had been reluctant for years to visit anything resembling a shrink because I feared judgement.  In reality Sophie’s compassion and direction were so consistent the idea of judgment never entered the picture.  She was honest so I was feeling that I too could be honest. In the past the very idea that someone would ever dare question that I had never developed a coping mechanism would have sent me into a sullen mood that could have lasted for months, but I always left Sophie’s sessions feeling positive.

Movement around me brought me back to the funeral of my mother.  The priest had finished the eulogy. Utterly unprepared as I was for this event, I suddenly noticed people were looking to me to do something.  But what? Panic rose in me as the labyrinthine process awaited my actions.  Should I cry now?  Was that what people were waiting for? A grand display of grief for my dead mother?  Were these people judging me?  This is how these people would remember me. If I did the wrong thing then I would be known to them as the man who did not care that his own mother was dead.  I wanted to turn on them and explain what a cold hearted bitch she had been to me.  But by the same token I also wanted them to believe I was a fully functioning human being. It did not matter to me how many times Sophie had said normality was relative.  What mattered to me, the only thing that mattered to me, was that these strangers would never think of me as being the asshole that had ruined this woman’s funeral for them.  It felt like I was on display in a macabre show.  As I stood, floundering with social ineptitude I felt a hand slip gently through my arm and I turned to see Beth beside me. She gated me forward to the open grave. 

For a second I was gripped with a terrifying image.  My mother would be lying there, looking up at me with her hooded judgemental eyes, as she found dark amusement in my inability to function properly even on her big day.  Together, Beth and I walked to the grave.  Suddenly, I understood what I was meant to do next.  I scooped a handful of soil and gazed solemnly at the coffin before gently letting the dirt fall onto the wooden lid of my mother’s final resting place.

This cue was followed by the other mourners and as they said their own good-byes to a woman I could never know.  Maybe she was their friend and neighbour, someone whose death they believed was worth crying over.  With genuine indifference, I received gentle platitudes and sympathies from each mourner.  I nodded one by one they passed me.  All I wanted to do was leave. Beth's hand gripped my upper arm reassuringly as my pantomime ran its ludicrous course.  The priest announced refreshments would be served in the rectory of the church my mother had attended.  Beth quietly told me she would come with me and offer whatever support she could. As we were leaving I turned one last time to look at my mother’s grave.  In the shade of a nearby tree stood a tall, thin, bearded man who watched the proceedings. He was too far away for me to get a good look at his face in the shadow of the branches and the wide brimmed hat he wore.  Still I had the distinct feeling that he was looking directly at me.

When at last it was over and we could leave, Beth came with me back to the empty apartment just so I had company.  I had readily agreed.  There was no romantic intention; she just wanted to make sure I was not alone.  I had not argued because although I could not see myself crumbling under the emotional weight of my mother’s passing there was a large part of me that simply did not want to be alone.  It was an odd feeling, the thoughts that I had expressed in Sophie’s office the previous day had drifted away.  The anger and resentment I felt toward my mother’s death was not staying with me.  I would miss her.  The thought that she was no longer there, irrevocably taken from me, sank slowly into my mind.  Oddly, a world without my mother had no appeal to me.

Beth and I had chatted and held each other and listened to music as the evening passed.  Our conversations were safe and easy.  With Beth by my side and Bailey nearby, I knew at all cost I had to reconstruct our familial atmosphere of love and warmth.  Whether I actually would was up to me.  The progress I was making with Sophie was taking me closer and closer to a happy end, or perhaps a happy continuum interspersed by periodic downs.  It was late when I finally broached the subject that I had been avoiding for weeks.