a new window

A week ago I received a phone call from a friend of a client. She had found my card in his wallet and she remembered him talking about his “shrink”. She called to let me know he had died of a sudden heart attack.

I had seen J. once a week like clockwork for well over seven years. He turned fifty a few months back, and we had spent some time reviewing all the events of his forties that had been so difficult, both of us imagining that the fifties would be better. He had worked hard in therapy, and for the last two years he’d been sober. J. was a big man who tried to move thru the world taking up as little space as possible. He was quiet, shy, and uncomfortable being the focus of attention. The very fact that he could tolerate therapy at all was a miracle. Early on, I learned to draw out and encourage his dark sense of humor. He could come across as dour, but laughing, he became a different being.

J. had come from the kind of twisted Christian home where almost anything enjoyable was considered sinful. Pride was something to be shot down, and the body itself was considered to be evil. How perfect that he would end up with a Pagan priestess as a therapist! I don’t think he ever knew that I identified as Pagan, but he certainly learned over the years my world view. Somewhere in the first year I picked up the Mary Oliver anthology that sits near my chair and read him the poem “Wild Geese”. It was a poem I would read to him many times, and we would refer to it again and again. Last night, I read it at his memorial.

I’ve been crying on and off now for days. It seems so unfair and tragic that he would die just as he was coming fully alive. I’ve been feeling how strange the relationship between client and therapist is, how intimate and yet, how removed. In some ways, I was the closest person to J. In the past seven years there is no one he saw or talked to as regularly as myself. Our relationship existed between the worlds, outside of regular life, contained in fifty minutes once a week. What happened in that place between the worlds was meant to change the world for J., and in many respects, it did.

Talking to one of my colleagues about him, I said “I just wish he had died loved”. “He did, Deborah, he did. You loved him”, she said. And, this is true. I did. I’ve been thinking of all those moments when he would dive deep into pain and I would sit and bear witness, holding the belief that he would survive the feelings and become stronger. I also remember the moments his smile would come out like the sun from behind clouds and I would beam back at him with my own light.

Psychotherapists aren’t trained to use the word “love”. Love is so, well, unprofessional. But it is love that guides the best of our work, which is the curative force in that magical fifty minute hour. I did love him, and this past week I've allowed myself to feel just how much delight I take in each and every client I work with. I've always said that I love my work. This week, I let myself feel just how much I love my clients.

A month or so ago, J. got a new job. As part of the condition of taking the job, he asked that a window be put in the windowless office he would be occupying. Our last session we talked about the new window, and all that the asking and receiving symbolized.

His death has put a new window into my work, opening me to a deeper understanding and a mindful tenderness for this strangest of relationships. As much as therapists work to help clients change their lives, every single one we work with transforms and changes our lives. I will miss J., and oh, how grateful I am to have known him.