This past weekend I gestalted Jeff’s passing, and our goodbye which, in reality, did not occur. Well yes, the passing really occurred, but not a two-way goodbye with acknowledgement of the significance the past 10 years (not to mention the past lifetime) held for the parties involved. Such is the nature of Alzheimer’s though. A person is lost long before he is finally lost.
I don’t think gestalt is really a verb. But Gestalt therapy is really a concept, and the particular warm and humane version practiced by Mariah Fenton Gladis and her team of therapists and apprentices at The Pennsylvania Gestalt Center’s weekend workshops is really a process in which a person can take part. And I did.
A cluster of people spend the weekend together (we were at capacity, with 40 or so participants,) and engage in discussions and exercises. The greatest part of the weekend, by weight and volume, is devoted to “hot seat” work, in which a person, for 30 minutes more or less, confronts through some imaginative form of re-creation, an aspect of his/her life that is in need of looking at.
There are parent issues, regretted decision issues, difficult relationship issues. You can imagine. People usually like the opportunity to take roles in other folks work, and that is usually how the process is carried out--through surrogates, standing in for whatever or whomever needs to appear...sometimes maybe even a person having a heart to heart with self.
I knew, or at least I assumed, that once I started talking during my turn, I’d have to pick someone to be Jeff. I had, for that reason, already zeroed in on someone I’d met, (who, for confidentiality reasons, I will call Hank) and he did a fine job. It was me I was more concerned about, performance-wise, even though performance isn’t really an apt word in this context. Really I just wondered whether I had the capacity to drop my intellectual, detached observer of the process stance sufficiently that I could even experience anything psychologically or emotionally meaningful.
I need not have wondered. Mariah has some well-honed insight into humans, and great intuition when it comes to setting up the right evocative scenario. By the time she had me sitting by Jeff-as-played-by-Hank’s deathbed with my head on his chest and arm around his torso, and he acknowledged the care and love and work I’d tendered over the past decade, and expressed his desire that I move on and have a life (things which I knew to be true of Jeff,) I couldn’t not have a cathartic, moving experience.
I do not, at this time, know just what I took home from the weekend. I liked it. I will be processing the loss of Jeff in whatever private way my psyche sees fit to employ for quite a while, I imagine. I’m not sure what role my Gestalt work will have played. Several people told me I looked much more relaxed that afternoon, and the next day, than I had prior to my turn. But maybe I was just anticipating being brave enough to jump up and take that turn, and relaxed after. I don’t know. Didn’t, still don’t.
I think I’d do it again though
4 comments:
Had Jeff been one of your children I suspect you would not have chosen to bring a healthy child into the fold and blog about it. While you obviously are quite the compelling story teller, your wit betrays a fundamental flaw.
I'll submit that I probably have 3, 4, or 5 fundamental flaws. Whether or not that analogy is apt, I'll have to think about. I tend to think I would have balanced sad stories with happier ones, even using my existing healthy children as blog material.
I am certain that the choices I've made in this life wouldn't be palatable for everyone.
All anyone can do is ponder a lot, weigh his/her own feelings, and live. The way I see it, all the options came with fundamental flaws.
On thought, something else came to me. Giving credence to your analogy:
First, yes I would blog about the healthy child(ren.)
Second, would this lead you to think that I didn't care for or didn't grieve for the one I'd lost? That would sure be an interpretational error.
Third, can you really pretend to have any insight into another person's inner processes, based on a few blog posts?
What is it that really troubles you about this? Unfortunately, I cannot help to clear things up for you directly, since you are Anonymous.
Wow, that was harsh of him/her! Living in the Alzheimers World is harsh enough without the criticism of another who had she read any of your posts about Jeff would know how much he and your family meant to you.
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