When I asked, it was simply part of a greeting. When he asked, he actually meant it.
“I think I’m doing well,” I answered. “No nightmares, no insomnia, sleeping well. I had one or two beers on four different days last week. I worked out five times. No episodes of anger or anxiety or depression in the last week. Still working the CBT and DBT skills whenever I feel like I need them.”
“Great.” He nodded. “Sounds very healthy.”
He paused. Bowen did that a lot. Pause, I mean.
“Should we keep talking?” I finally asked.
“Would you like to keep speaking?”
“Are you going to charge me?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I’ve got a new joke,” I said. “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb?”
“I don’t know.”
“Only one. But the lightbulb has to really want to change.”
He laughed, just as I knew he would. Bowen laughs at all my jokes, but then he gets quiet again. He’s told me that jokes might be my way of keeping people at a distance.
“Anyway,” I began, and proceeded to catch him up on the basic goings-on in my life in the past week. When I’d first started therapy, I wondered how any of this could possibly be useful; I’d learned over time that it allowed Bowen to have a better idea about the stress I was under at any given time, which was important in my management of PTSD. Add too much stress, remove the skills and healthy behaviors, and it’s either kaboom, like I felt toward the Home Depot guy, or way too much drinking and Grand Theft Auto.
So I talked. I told him that I’d been missing my grandfather and my parents more than usual since I’d last spoken to him. He responded that my feelings were entirely understandable—that checking the hives and fixing the engine on the boat would likely have triggered a mix of nostalgia and feelings of loss for just about anyone. I mentioned that I was nearly certain that someone had broken into the house and had lived there. When he asked if I felt violated or bothered by that, I said that it was more curious than bothersome, since aside from the back door, there’d been no damage and nothing had been stolen. I also mentioned the things Claude had said about my grandfather, and—as we had so often of late—we spoke about my grandfather’s last words and my ongoing confusion about them.
“It still troubles you,” he observed.
“Yes,” I admitted. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Because he told you to go to hell?”
Dr. Bowen, like Natalie, seemed to remember everything.
“It wasn’t like him to say something like that,” I insisted.
“Maybe you misunderstood.”
Bowen had suggested this before. As I had in the past, I dismissed it.
“I’m sure he said it.”
“But he also said that he loved you, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you indicated that he’d had a major stroke? And was on a lot of medication and was quite possibly confused?”
“Yes.”
“And that it took nearly a day for him to be able to speak any words at all?”
“Yes.”
When I said nothing else, he finished with the same question that continued to plague me.
“Yet you still feel he was trying to communicate something important.”
On the monitor, Bowen was watching me. I nodded but said nothing.
“You do realize,” he offered, “that you may never understand what that might be?”
“He meant the world to me.”
“He sounds like a profoundly decent man.”
I looked away. Through the open door, the creek was black and ancient in the soft Southern light.
“I should have been there,” I muttered. “I should have gone with him. If I had, maybe he wouldn’t have had the stroke. Maybe the drive was too much for him.”
“Maybe,” Bowen said. “Or maybe not. There’s no way to know for sure. And while it may be normal to feel guilty, it’s also important to remember that guilt is simply an emotion, and like all emotions, it will eventually pass. Unless you choose to hold on to it.”
“I know,” I said. He’d said this to me before. While I accepted the truth of it, it sometimes struck me that my emotions didn’t care. “Anyway…Natalie said that I might find some answers in his truck. As to the reason he was in South Carolina, I mean. So I’ve begun the process of trying to find out where the truck is.”
“Natalie?” he asked.