Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy Read Free Page B

friendly, and after several meetings, James offered Charles an attractive executive position in his new start-up. James, twenty years older, possessed the Silicon Valley golden touch, and though he had accumulated a vast fortune, he could not, as he put it, get out of the game, so he continued to launch new companies. Although their relationship—friends, employer and employee, mentor and protégé—was complex, Charles and James negotiated it with grace. Their work required considerable travel, but whenever they were both in town, they never failed to meet at the end of the day for drinks and conversation. They talked about everything: the company, the competition, new products, personnel problems, their families, investments, current movies, vacation plans, whatever crossed their minds. Charles cherished those intimate meetings.
    It was then, soon after meeting James, that Charles first contacted me. Paradoxical though it might seem to seek therapy during a halcyon time of nurture and mentorship, there was a ready explanation. The caring and fathering he received from James stoked Charles’s memory of his father’s death and made him more aware of what he had missed.
    During our fourth month of therapy, Charles called to request an urgent meeting. He appeared in my office with an ashen face. Walking slowly to his chair and lowering himself carefully, he managed to utter two words, “He’s dead.”
    “Charles, what happened?”
    “James is dead. Massive stroke. Instant death. His widow told me she’d had a dinner meeting with her board and came home to find him slumped in a living room chair. Christ, he hadn’t even been sick! Totally, totally unexpected.”
    “How awful. What a shock this must be for you.”
    “How to describe it? I can’t find the words. He was such a good man, so kind to me. I was so privileged to know him. I knew it! I knew all the while it was too good to last! Boy, I really feel for his wife and kids.”
    “And I feel for you.”
    Over the next two weeks Charles and I met two to three times a week. He couldn’t work, slept poorly, and wept often during our sessions. Again and again he expressed his respect for Perry and his deep gratitude for the time they had shared. The pain of past losses resurfaced, not only for his father but also his mother, now three years and one month dead. And for Michael, a childhood friend who died in the seventh grade, and for Cliff, a camp counselor, who died of a ruptured aneurism. Over and again Charles spoke of shock.
    “Let’s investigate your shock,” I suggested. “What are its ingredients?”
    “Death is always a shock.”
    “Keep going. Tell me about it.”
    “It’s self-evident.”
    “Put it into words.”
    “Snap, life is gone. Just like that. There’s no place to hide. There’s no such thing as safety. Transiency . . . life is transient . . . I knew that. . . . Who doesn’t? But I never thought much about it. Never wanted to think about it. But James’s death makes me think of it. Forces me to, all the time. He was older, and I knew he’d die before me. It’s just making me face things.”
    “Say more. What things?”
    “About my own life. About my death that lies ahead. About the permanence of death. About being dead forever. Somehow that thought, being dead forever , has gotten stuck in my mind. Oh, I envy my Catholic friends and their afterlife stuff. I wish I could buy into that.” He took a deep breath and looked up at me. “So that’s what I’ve been thinking about. And also lots of questions about what’s really important.”
    “Tell me about that.”
    “I think about the pointlessness of spending all my life at work and of making more money than I need. I’ve got enough now, but I keep on going. Just like James. I feel sad about the way I’ve lived. I could’ve been a better husband, a better father. Thank God there’s still time.”
    Thank God there’s still time. I welcomed that thought. I’ve