Re-learning to Care
I'm excited about a change that has been taking place in my life. I'm recovering my ability to care.
About five weeks ago my cat, Max, started vomiting a lot. I took him to the vet, who didn't know what was wrong with him. He told me my options were X-rays and exploratory surgery, which I did not want. I'd decided ahead of time that I wasn't going to pay for or invest time in any extraordinary means of keeping him alive. About three weeks ago, when Max stopped eating and drinking water, it became apparent to me that he was going to die. Besides feeling a lot of grief, I was also in a quandary. I instinctively felt I wanted him to die with me, at home. But I felt like I should put him to sleep. I had heard that was more humane, though it didn't seem right to me. I spoke with my sister, who is a doctor, and she said it was fine to let him die naturally. She said that dying of starvation and dehydration is actually not a terribly uncomfortable way to go, and that this is the way many old people die if they are not put on life-supporting machinery once they stop eating and drinking.
We had always had lots of cats and dogs growing up. That meant there were lots of deaths of our pets. Car accidents, cancers, maggots, you name it. My sister and I share a long history of death. We did not discharge very much on this growing up. We didn't talk about it either. We both carried it around privately and wondered why we felt so horrible a lot of the time. I think our parents felt the same way. It was awful. Probably most people can identify with this-horribly sad things happen in your family, and it's embarrassing and painful to show that they affect you.
I remember a time when my sister was leaving for France for a year. Two adolescent friends of our family and my parents were crying in the car on the way home from the airport after her plane took off. I did not cry; I felt like killing somebody.
My sister started Co-Counseling about a year after I did, nine years ago. We live on opposite coasts of the U.S., she in Los Angeles and I in New York City. Though we've always been pretty close, RC has made a big difference in our relationship. We rarely attack each other now. We really think about each other. Each of us is a valuable counseling resource for the other. We've introduced counseling to our cousins, aunts, and parents-Kris has done more of this than I have.
When my dad's brother died two years ago, Kris thought we should give Dad a session. She told him we would listen while he read the eulogy he had written. He said he wasn't going to read the eulogy himself at the funeral. He was frightened of "cracking up." But in any case, he did want our thinking about how it sounded. We sat up in Mom and Dad's bedroom in the late afternoon. I felt almost too embarrassed to go on, so I was glad Kris was there. We held his hands. Dad sobbed as he read about his younger brother, whom he had fought with throughout their childhood. My uncle had had some heavy addictions and died of a massive heart attack. He was only fifty-two. Kris and I cried, too, as we listened. We weren't successful in convincing Dad to read the eulogy himself at the funeral, but spending this time with him reading it privately was precious.
So Kris and I do have some history of discharging together. However, it reached new levels when she wanted to counsel me about Max dying. She asked me on the phone if I wanted to take some time about it, and almost the moment I started talking and haltingly crying about him, Kris started crying, too.
She counseled me this way for about an hour. I heard her crying steadily on the other end, and I was able to talk in an increasingly less embarrassed way about how much I loved Max. With her crying, I felt like there were no limits to what I could say and how much I could care. I think this is one of the most powerful things I've ever experienced. It was like being in a sailboat and having a strong wind blowing me along. I never had to wonder if there was someone with me. She was so clearly present. We've repeated this several times over the last two weeks. She calls me to check in about every other night. I report on how Max is doing. I tell her how soft his coat is and how I love to lay my head on his side, and we cry. I tell her that today he could only walk a couple of steps before his legs crumpled under him, and we cry harder. I've told her that I'm scared for him, scared that he's scared or lonely-that I don't want him to die. I can cry in a very deep and sustained way about this one creature. It's been enormously useful.
I don't counsel with just my sister, though. Since I started discharging about Max, all my sessions have been consistently great. In a number of cases I've been able to communicate to my counselors that it's okay for them to cry, that they should consider it their session, too. In those sessions where my counselor has just let herself cry and care as much as possible, I've had an unusual and extremely pleasant feeling of safety. The best way to characterize it is to say that I feel like I can say anything then. I can say then that I don't know how I'm going to live without Max, that he's the sweetest, most beautiful cat I've ever known. I can look at him and pet him in my sessions and thank him for letting me be his owner, thank him for living with me. It has been so relieving to say these things. I think we all care so much about everything, but it is terrifying to let it out.
I had an experience last week of going to the Jewish Museum in Manhattan where there was an exhibit called "The Illegal Camera" with photographs taken by courageous people in Holland during the Nazi Occupation. Public photography was illegal then, and these people ingeniously hid cameras in their shopping bags and bicycle baskets to snap pictures of what was happening in their cities. When I saw a picture of a boy dying of starvation in the Hunger Winter, with his stick legs and enormous head, I felt the most acute need to cry. I did let myself a little. What would our world be like if everyone walked around crying whenever they were moved, whenever they cared, whenever they felt bad?
I am in a poetry workshop where we write together for twenty minutes or so every session and then read out loud what we've written. This week I ended up writing about Max dying (interestingly, I felt like a bad person for not being able to think about anything else but that). When I finished reading my piece in a shaky and fighting-back-tears voice, I looked up to a room full of red eyes and startled silence. The first person who responded to my piece said, "I've buried fourteen cats . . . ." For a few minutes I felt like I was in a support group. I was astounded at how much people wanted to feel. I could tell it was relieving for everyone. I think this is a gift we can give people whenever we have an opportunity to speak in public or one-on-one. We can let ourselves care and let it show. Most people probably have to discharge to care this much, and that immediately creates safety for everyone.
I recently had people work on caring in my ongoing RC class. I suggested to them that they try to remember anything they had ever cared about (a toy, a pet, a friend . . . ) and just go for broke in their time in front of the group. I think it's the best class we've ever had. One woman held on to me and cried hard about some strawberry plants she'd seen washed away in a hurricane when she was little. Another cried about the blanket she'd loved as a child.
Since I've realized it's okay to discharge a lot about Max, that it isn't too unimportant, I've been doggedly crying about him in every session. I figure I've now logged about twelve hours of solid discharge on this one subject. Depending upon who's counseling me, I either stay right on Max or go back to a memory that's coming out of occlusion, something about somebody dying. The discharge about Max is just as effective as discharging on the memory. I guess they are the same thing.
I'm a person who was "raised cold-hearted"; I was treated meanly growing up, and it's hard for me to show caring. Persistently crying about my beloved cat is making me into a different person. Instead of trying to look like I'm a nice, caring person, I'm finding I actually am one.
It's very, very serious that we are robbed of our ability and right to discharge as young people. It makes us act cruelly and uncaringly as adults. You can get back that ability to care, though. Just pick anything in the world that you care about-a song, a baby, somebody you gave money to once, the frogs dying in the Amazon-and try to care about it in session. Stay on it. It will carry you a long way.
P.S. The night after I wrote the above I came home to find Max dead. I'm glad that I didn't put him to sleep, that I kept him at home to care about for as long as possible. I also waited a day and a half before I took his body to be cremated. It wasn't much harder for me to discharge while petting his dead body than when he was alive. This reminds me of Patty and Tim's advice to families to choose pets with a short life span so that young people get many opportunities to grieve and learn about death. I noticed in myself a very frank interest in the decomposition of Max's body, and if living in a small apartment in New York City hadn't prevented it, I would have liked to keep his body to see what happened. I think this also would have aided me in continuing to discharge grief and fear. I have noticed it is harder for me to put my attention on those spots since he is gone.
Kate Potter
Brooklyn,
New York, USA