Beyond Afraid

 I open my waiting room door to a mid-thirtyish man pacing back and forth in front of the couch. “Frank?” I ask.

He startles and turns to face me. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Did I frighten you? I didn’t mean to frighten you. I just can’t sit still. I’m so jittery. I just…”

I note that he’s afraid of having frightened me when he’s clearly the one who’s terrified. “It’s all right,” I interrupt. “Why don’t we go into my office and sit down.” 

He sits, but perches at the edge of the chair, as though posed for flight.

“What has you so frightened?” I ask.

“My, my, mother,” he stammers. “I’m afraid she’s going to die. My father died a year ago. He was fine, came home from work, went upstairs and died. Doctors said something about his heart. I couldn’t understand it. My Mom started screaming and screaming. I guess I did too. It still all a blur. But now I’m worried about my Mom. They say she has something in her uterus. I’m afraid she’s going to die. I couldn’t make it if she died. I couldn’t make it,” he says starting to cry. 

“What does she have in her uterus? Are her doctors concerned? Is she concerned?”

“She’s a wreck. Her doctors say it’s nothing, just something to watch. I don’t know, fibrosus?”

“Fibroids?” I ask.

“That’s it! Can that kill you?”

“I’m not a medical doctor, but my understanding is that fibroids aren’t usually a problem.”

“Are you sure?”

“Frank, do you think anyone can sufficiently reassure you?”

Still crying, he says, “I’ve always been this way. Everything scares me. Mom’s like that too. Dad was also kind of anxious. Only my sister isn’t. She’s the opposite. She’s in something like the Peace Corps. In India. My parents flipped out when she joined. But she was determined. And now she married an Indian guy so I guess she’s never coming home. I worry about her dying too, but it’s not as bad as with my Mom.”

“Can you tell me a little about your growing up, Frank. What was it like being a kid in your family?”

“It was great. I didn’t worry about anyone dying then.” Pause. “But I was always afraid. Hard not to be. My Mom worried about everything, about us being kidnapped, about us driving. I didn’t drive ‘til I was 20 or something. She’d take us to the doctor for the least little sniffle. Make us stay home from school.” Pause. “That was okay with me. I didn’t like school. I mean it wasn’t school I minded. I just didn’t like being away from home. I always felt scared being away from home. The other kids made fun of me, called me a Momma’s boy. I guess I was. Guess I still am.”

“Have you ever lived away from home?”

“I tried. Went away to college, but didn’t last a semester.  I came home, got a degree in accounting. Dad was an accountant. But I’m an assistant accountant. I didn’t want all that responsibility. I didn’t want the work to kill me like it killed Dad. I work mostly from home, especially since Covid, and especially since my Dad died. I want to be around for my Mom. She’s my responsibility now that he’s gone.”

“Have you been in therapy before?”

“I may have gone awhile when I was a little kid. But not really, no, not since I’m grown.”

“How do you feel about being in therapy? And how do you feel being with me?” 

“I guess I need it. I’d like to not be so scared all the time.” Pause. “And I like you. You’re nice. Sort of like my Mom, except not as nervous.” Pause. “Can you help me be less scared?”

“I certainly hope so. But I do want to say, Frank, that you may not always think I’m so nice. There are times therapy can be hard and painful. Like one of the things I suspect you and I are going to look at is your relationship with your mother.”

“Why? I have a great relationship with my mother.”

“Except it’s hard for you to have a life apart from her.”

“Are you going to take Mom away from me?” Frank asks, panic seeping into his voice.

“No, Frank. I don’t have the power to do that nor would I want to. But having part of your life be separate from your mother seems like something an adult child might want.”

“I guess.”

“You can always disagree with me, Frank. My saying something doesn’t make it so.”

“That’s not like my mother! She always wants me to think the same way as her.”

“Well, maybe that’s one thing we’ll get to look at together, how you feel about always needing to think like your Mom.”

Emptiness

 

“I can’t understand it,” Valerie says sobbing. “Why would he want to leave me? We said it was forever. He’s breaking his promise! It’s not fair!! This should have been the best time of our lives. Approaching retirement, soon able to travel wherever we wanted. And now I’m just going to be alone.”

“Valerie, is Dave really choosing to leave you?” I ask gently.

“Of course he is. The doctor said there were several other chemo options he could try.”

I am more than familiar with the pain of losing a life partner, so I know to tread carefully in this most difficult of life experiences. “Can you understand Dave’s decision to stop further treatment?”

“No. Definitely not.”

“Do you have a living will, Valerie?”

“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t want to be kept alive if I was in a vegetative state, or if my mind was totally gone. But that’s not where Dave’s at.”

“Where is Dave at? What’s his quality of life? How does he spend his days?”

“He’s in bed a lot. He’s always tired. He sleeps. I know it’s partly from the lung cancer and partly the pain medication. But we still have conversations. We still sleep in the same bed. Sometimes we watch TV together. He coughs all the time, sometimes says he can’t catch his breath. Tells me he has a lot of empathy for Covid patients but he also says…” Valerie breaks off, puts her head in her hands and sobs.

When she composes herself she continues, “He says at least they have vaccines for Covid now and new medications and that at least Covid patients have the chance to get better and live normal lives. He no longer has hope. But I have hope. He could try some of these other drugs, these other regimens.”

“It sounds as though Dave is very tired, Valerie.”

She sobs again. “You think I should let him go?”

“Sounds like he’s saying he’s had enough.”

She sobs. “I’m so scared. I’m going to miss him so much. I’m not saying our marriage
was perfect, no marriage is perfect I know that. But we’ve been together for over 30 years. I don’t know what it’s like to live alone. I’ve never lived alone. I lived with my parents then roommates and then Dave. I just see myself locked in that house rotting away.”

“Rotting away? That’s a very graphic image. What makes you think you’ll rot away?”

“I don’t know. I guess like old food in the refrigerator that is left and forgotten about and just rots away. Like no one would know whether I’m alive or dead.”

“I don’t in any way doubt that you’re describing your feelings, but it’s surprising to me that you picture yourself so desolately. Before your husband’s illness you seemed to have a very active social life, to be involved with lots of people, in lots of different ways.”

“All meaningless. And besides, it was my husband who was the social one. Left on my own I just rot.” Pause “There’s that word again, rot.”

“Do you feel as though you’re rotten, Valerie? Rotten as in bad?”

“No, I don’t think I’m bad.” Pause. “I just think I’m not much of anything. Kind of a blob. My husband brought life into our home. Left to my own devices I’m afraid I’ll be swallowed by the emptiness.”

“I know depression can put a pall over everything, but this sounds like something more, like you’re literally afraid of disappearing into the void.”

“That’s it exactly. No Dave, no me, just an empty blob.”

Feeling more and more of Valerie’s despair, I ask, “And you felt that way as a child as well and as a young adult, like in college?”

“Well, there were my parents to tell me what I was supposed to do and then, as I said, I had roommates and sort of followed along with the crowd.”

“It sounds, Valerie, as though you’ve spent your life following along with whomever you’ve been with. And now, with Dave’s decision to stop treatment, you’re confronted with the terrifying feeling of not knowing who you are apart from him, and perhaps of never knowing who you were.”

“I’m terrified. I think you’re absolutely right and that makes me need Dave even more. Do you think I can persuade him to continue treatment until you and I can work this out? Until you can fix me?”

“Right this minute you may feel that you need Dave more, but nothing has actually changed. We definitely do need to work on your feeling more your own sense of self, but whether Dave will stay around until we accomplish that I can’t say.”

“I’m not sure I can survive. I want to survive but I’m not sure I can.”

“You just said something very important. You said you want to survive. That’s you, Valerie, knowing what you want.”

An Apology

An Apology

“I’ve been depressed since our session this past Monday,” Paula begins. “I’m not exactly sure why.” Pause. “I guess it’s because we were talking about my mother’s death – for a change – and that always makes me depressed. It’s been almost 20 years for God’s sake, I don’t see why I can’t let it go.”

“I know you get depressed when we talk about your mother’s death, Paula, but I thought about our last session too. I feel as though I was pushing you too hard and I want to apologize for that.”

“That’s what you get to do. If you didn’t push me, I’d be even more stuck than I am already.”

“I don’t know. You were talking about your guilt about your mother’s death and although it’s true that from my perspective you have nothing to feel guilty about, what matters is your perspective. I don’t think I gave you enough of a chance to talk about your feelings, including your guilt feelings.”

“My mother died of cancer. I get that I was a teen-ager, more preoccupied with my own life. But I could have gone to the hospital more. I could have spent more time with her. I could have just sat holding her hand.” Pause. “Besides, why would I get depressed if you were pushing me to not feel guilty? You’d think I’d appreciate it.”

“Well, what is one of the big problems you had with your mother even before she got sick?”

“She was always in my face, always on top of me, telling me what to do, telling me what I should think, what I should feel … Oh! I get it! You think you were being like my mother, intrusive like my mother”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. I guess that’s a good point.” Pause. “But I still don’t know why that would get me depressed.”

“Well, what did you feel when I was pushing you to not feel guilty”

“I don’t know if I felt it then or whether I’m feeling it now that we’re talking about it, but right now I guess I do feel, hey, isn’t this where I get to talk about my feelings? How come you’re not letting me feel what I feel?  I thought that’s what I get to do here!” Paula pauses. On my video screen I watch as she drops her head, her straight brown hair falling forward over her face. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles, “I didn’t mean to get annoyed.”

“Paula, what just happened? You seemed to go from a person expressing her feelings and her right to be heard, to what seemed to be a scared, apologetic little girl?”

“I felt guilty for being ang… annoyed at you.”

“So you can’t even say you’re angry at me.”

“I’m afraid to be angry at you.”

“Because?”

“I don’t know,” she says in a barely audible voice.

Silence.

“Your anger feels dangerous?” I ask.

She nods. “I was angry at my Mom and look what happened to her. It’s much better to keep it tucked safely away.”

“Except it’s never ‘safely away.’ It’s turned inward on yourself so that you end up feeling depressed.”

“So you’re saying I was depressed after last session because I was angry at you and turned it on myself, not because my mother died? That makes me sound even more selfish and self-centered!”

I feel the urge to argue against Paula’s interpretation of her depressed feelings and wonder if her way of being self-deprecating, tends to elicit a reassuring, albeit intrusive, response from me. Do I feel a similar pull with other patients? Does Paula unconsciously set up this dynamic?” I’ll have to think about all that, but right now I need to respond to Paula.

“I think you can be depressed for more than one reason, but it sounds as though you’re saying you should feel depressed about your mother’s death.”

“Yes, of course I should feel depressed about my mother’s death. She’s dead!”

“You can certainly feel sad about your mother’s death, but I don’t know that carrying depression around as a heavy weight that burdens all aspects of your life is at all helpful.”

Paula sighs. “I guess after almost 20 years I should be able to cut myself some slack.”

I nod, smiling.

“But why is that so difficult for me?”

“I guess because you still feel the need to punish yourself.”

“I think you’re right.” Pause. “But what can I do about that?”

“I guess we’ll need to talk more about why you can’t forgive yourself for what you see as your adolescent ‘sins.’”

A Dream

 “I’m so glad I’m talking with you today,” Rose stays, starting immediately. “I had this awful dream last night and it’s haunting me. The specifics are kind of vague at this point, but the feeling it left me with is very clear - horror. And it was like a horror movie or something out of a scary sci-fi movie, neither of which I ever watch. So it was like this force, not sure what the force was – people, aliens, I don’t know. I don’t know that I ever saw any particular thing or person, I guess that’s why I call it a force - that was going around and doing something to people so that they looked like their whole body had been burned and like instantly turned to ash and dissolved. Ugh! It makes me shudder just to think about it. And I guess I was going around trying to avoid this thing, but also to warn people, people I knew and cared about, that they were in danger. I think I had a better idea when I first woke up who some of those people were, but now I’d just be making it up. I keep shaking my head wanting that image of people dissolving into ash to go away.” She takes a breath. “So what do you think?”

“I can certainly understand how disturbing a dream it was,” I say, impressed with how Rose has managed to convey her horror so well over the telephone. “What are your thoughts?”

“I don’t know. I was watching this TV show that had a cancer patient in it last night and it struck me how he seemed to be being eaten up from the inside out.”

Silence.

“I just keep feeling the horror.”

“Where does that feeling take you?”

“The horror? I guess the horror of the pandemic, of how many people have died. Oh! I guess that could be the force, the unseen virus, killing all these millions of people.” Pause. “But I wonder why I’d have the dream now. Things do seem to be getting better, at least for us. I’m vaccinated, most of the people I love and care about are vaccinated. Why now?”

“You said you thought there were specific people you were trying to save. Even if you have to make it up, who do you think some or one of those people were?”

“My mother comes to mind. She’s been dead for over 10 years now. She had a long life, almost 100 and she was pretty good until the last few years. She was ready to go. That made it easier for me, although it was still hard losing her. Painful, but not horrifying.”

Silence.

“What are you thinking about?”

“First I was thinking about this article I read about how deaths to overdose have skyrocketed during the past year. That feels like another force taking over people, especially young people. But then I ended up

someplace entirely different. I was thinking of the horror of growing up in my house, of my parents screaming and screaming at each other, of us cowering in the corner waiting for my father to start beating up on my mother or turning on one of us. He was definitely a force to be reckoned with, although he was a specific person, a tangible force, not a sci-fi character.”

“Maybe that made him even more scary. You couldn’t just turn off the TV.”

“That would explain why I was trying to save my mother. I was always trying to save my mother and feeling awful that I couldn’t.” Pause. “But still, I don’t know why I’d be dreaming about this now. This is an old story. Why now?”

Silence.

“Any thoughts about people being turned to ash and dissolving?”

“Cremation. Lots of cremations during the pandemic.” Pause. “The Holocaust. That was certainly a force of evil. Hitler, the gas chambers. But it doesn’t seem to be about that either. It felt more contemporary, like right now.”

“All right. Right now, what’s horrifying you, scaring you, threatening you?”

“Aging. I turn 65 next month. I know that’s not old these days, but I worry about aging, about who will take care of me if I’m ill or incapacitated in some way. And I suppose death itself feels frightening, the unknown, the aloneness. Death is a pretty scary, menacing figure. You think that’s what the dream’s about?”

“It’s certainly possible. And it’s also possible that it’s about all the things you’ve talked about today.”

“I suppose.”

“What are you feeling now?”

“Definitely not as horrified. Talking about it made it less scary. I feel more removed from it, like it’s something to look at and to figure out.”

In Mourning

“Well, I’m back,” David says morosely. “I thought I could at least make it a couple of years without seeing you, but there’s no way. I can’t stand myself any more. I knew I’d have to see you virtually too, which only makes it worse, but I just can’t get myself out of this depression.”

“Do you know what’s gotten you so depressed?”

“Yeah, my mother died of Covid in April.”

“I’m so sorry, David. Yet another victim of the pandemic.”

“Yup! I mean, I know my mother was 92, and her health wasn’t the best, but she still had all her marbles. And of course, just like in the news, she died alone in the facility.” Pause. “I feel so incredibly depressed. And you must think I’m nuts since I had such a difficult relationship with my mother. You’d think I’d be, I don’t know, relieved, or something.”

“What do you feel?”

“Lost.” Pause. “That sounds crazy when I say it. My mother was so suffocating. I was always trying to get away from her. And now I feel lost without her?”

“But when you were a little boy, you felt your mother as the only loving presence in your house. And she was a huge protector. She protected you against your father, she protected you against your older brothers.”

“But I’m not a little boy any more.”

“Except that you carry that little boy inside you as an adult, just as we all carry our child selves with us.”

“So you think that’s why I’m depressed?”

“I think you’re in mourning so it’s not surprising you’d be sad, but the depression seems as though it’s more than that.”

“So what it is?”

“You know, David, it’s interesting that you look to me to tell you what your depression is about. That may be another indication of how lost you’re feeling, looking to me for answers that reside in you.”

“That’s true.” Pause. “I want you to tell me what’s wrong and make it go away. I know therapy doesn’t work like that. But it’s like I’m too depressed to even do the work I know I have to do.” Pause. “Please help me.” Pause. “I sound like a sniveling baby!”

“Well right then, you sounded like your Dad berating you, rather than being able to have compassion for yourself.”

“That’s true!”   

“So you’re mad at yourself for feeling depressed.”

“Definitely. I thought we fixed me. That my depression would be gone forever.”

“So, David, do you think you’re also mad at me? Mad that I didn’t fix you.”

Hanging his head, he nods. “Yeah. When my depression came back, I started questioning whether therapy had made any difference at all. When Covid first hit I felt very different. I felt that as was coping with all the stress and insanity and that I was a good support for both my wife and daughters. In the beginning we were all living together. My daughters came back from college, my wife was teaching from home, and I was doing my accounting from home too. It was kind of crazy, but sort of fun too. Felt like we were whole, a big, happy family again.  And I wasn’t allowed to see my mother so that took away my worry about whether too much time had passed and whether I had to go see her. Now my daughters are back at college, although they’re still doing most of their courses virtually, my wife is back teaching and I’m back in my office although I still meet with clients virtually. And obviously my mother is dead so I don’t have to worry about seeing her.”

“Sounds like you are feeling a lot of loss, not only of your mother, but also your big, happy family.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Like there’s this void.” Pause. “And I turned 60. That didn’t feel good at all. Made me feel old. The time I have left in my life is getting shorter and shorter.” Pause, “I guess my mother’s death added to that feeling.”

“So there’s loss everywhere.”

“Definitely.”

“I notice though, that as soon as you acknowledged your anger at me and your lack of compassion towards yourself, you were able to start doing to the work, start looking at what was going on in your life that’s been contributing to your depression.”

“That’s true.” Pause. “I just wanted to ask you if that means I’ll stop being depressed.”

I smile. “I think with the loss of your mother, it’s easy for you to want to put me in the place of the mother who can make everything all right. I’m sure you have lots of feelings about your mother’s death, as well as issues about the inevitable passage of time.”

“Just hearing you say that made me depressed again.”

“I’m sorry. But sounds like that’s an issue we’ll definitely have to address.”  

Stalked by Death

 

“I know I keep saying the same thing over and over,” David says, his despair and anxiety apparent even over the telephone, as all our therapy sessions are conducted these days. “I feel scared all the time. I’m sure Covid is going to get me. I’m sure I’m going to die. Yet it helps me to tell you. I mean I know you can’t keep the virus from killing me, but telling you makes me feel at least a little better.”

“Do you know why telling me helps?”

“You’re the only person I can tell. My wife doesn’t want to hear it any more. She says I’m a 48 year old man who rarely leaves the house, so how likely am I to get Covid. She’s just fed up with me. And I try not to talk about it in front of the kids. I don’t want to scare them. But I’m so glad they’re not going back to in-person school. I don’t know if I could have tolerated having them go into a classroom every day and then came back home.”

“So is it that you feel less alone when you talk with me?”

“Definitely.” Pause. “I’ve always been afraid of dying. Even when I was a kid. If I saw a dead bird, I’d cry and cry and not be able to sleep for days. I was sure that would be me. And when my cousin enlisted in the army, I was in shock. I couldn’t imagine how anyone would volunteer to be killed. But this, this is the worst it’s ever been. There’s this disease that’s killing hundreds of thousands of people. It makes complete sense that I’ll be one of them.”

“It makes complete sense because…?”

“Because I know I’m going to die.”

“And what does knowing you’re going to die mean to you?”

“What!?”

“What does knowing you’re going to die mean to you?” I repeat. “We are, after all, all going to die.”

“You say that so calmly.” Pause. “Of course I know we’re all going to die, but that terrifies me. And it removes all meaning from life. Why bother being in a marriage, having kids, being successful? In the end it all goes away.” Pause. “I know we always go back to my father’s heart attack when I was seven, but even then I was amazed that he was able to come back from that and throw himself back into the business as if he hadn’t been on death’s door.”

“But that wasn’t your mother’s reaction.”

“Oh no, not at all. She hovered around him like he was about to die at any second.”

“Just like she hovered around you when you were sick,” I add.

“That’s for sure. She was an anxious mess. All I had to do is run a slight fever and you’d think I was dying.” Pause. “I know we’ve talked about this before. You think that my mother’s over-reaction to my being sick is why I always think I’m going to die.”

“Well, maybe it’s not quite that simple. How did you feel about your mother’s reaction to your being sick?”

“I don’t know. I guess I kind of liked it. Made me feel like she really loved me.” Pause. “Especially after my father’s heart attack, she paid way less attention to me, so it was nice having her focus on me again. And actually it drove my father crazy. He’d say that she was babying me, that all I had was a cold or a sore throat or whatever and that I’d be fine. I remember, he’d say, ‘Stop treating him like a baby.’”

“So when your wife doesn’t want you to talk about your fears, what do you feel?”

“Ignored, I guess.”

“Unloved?” I ask.

“I suppose. But I’m not really sure how much my wife loves me. Ever since we’ve had kids, she’s way more focused on them than on me.”

“So you felt you lost your mother to your father and now you feel you’re losing your wife to your kids.”

“Yeah! That’s right.”

“And what about me?”

“You?”

“Um hmm. You said I’m the only person you can talk with about your fears.”

“Certainly the only person who will listen.”

“And that makes you feel how?”

“I guess it makes me feel like you care.”

 “So maybe you learned early on that the only way to feel loved was to be sick.”

“But I could be sick without dying.”

Silence.

“I just thought of something,” David says. “Maybe dying is my punishment, my punishment for being such a baby and wanting Mommy’s attention.”

“That’s a great insight, David. We’ll talk about that more next time.”

I Have to See You

“I’m sitting in your parking lot,” Laurie says barely whispering into the telephone.

I consider asking her why, but I know the answer. Instead I say, “I’m sorry.”

“Not even your car is here. I thought maybe I’d at least see your car.”

“You know I’m working from home, Laurie.”

 “I know. But I thought maybe I’d get lucky.” Pause. “How long is this going to go on?” she asks, plaintively.  

“I don’t know. No one knows the answer to that.”

“But you could see me. We’re not under lockdown. I can eat in restaurants. I can have my hair done.”

“That’s all true, Laurie, but it doesn’t feel safe to me for us to be behind a closed door in a small space without a mask.”

“I know. I know. We’ve been through this a hundred times before. But I have to see you! I have to! I have to know you’re really here!”

“We did try FaceTime.”

“That’s worse. That’s like you’re here and not here. I don’t know. That totally spooked me. Then you really aren’t real. It’s almost like you’re a figment of my imagination. Like I willed you onto my phone. Flat. Way too flat.”

“Flat or dead?”

“I know you keep going back to that.” Pause. “Maybe. I don’t know. I went off to school, came home and my mother was dead. I’m sure that did a number on me. Oh yes, and by the way, she killed herself.”

“You’re talking about that horrible time almost like it happened to someone else.”

“I don’t want to feel that now! I’m too sad, way too sad, why would I want to start feeling about my mother offing herself?”

“Maybe because you are feeling it. Maybe because every time you pour over the statistics about how many people have died and how old they were and where they lived, you’re actually mourning your mother again and again.”

“Don’t I ever get to have mourned enough?”

“I think there are always times that losses in the present trigger past losses, especially when that loss was so primal.”

“How about if I met you in the parking lot for a session? At least that way I could see you.”

“And what? We’d both sit in our cars and …” I stop myself. Giving Laurie the practical reasons why her suggestion won’t work is not what’s needed here. “You know, Laurie, it strikes me that you’re trying to undo your mother’s death. It’s as though if you figure out a way to see me, to erase the missing, to erase the absence, then that will magically make everything all right including bringing your mother back to life.”

Silence.

“What do you feel if you accept that we’re not going to see each other for some indefinite period of time?” I ask.

“Angry!! Angry, angry, angry! Because it’s only an indefinite period of time because you’re making it an indefinite period of time. It’s you, you, you!! You’re doing this.”   

“Just like your mother killed herself.”

“Right! Who the fuck has the right to kill themselves and leave behind a six year old child? It’s not right! It’s not fair,” Laurie says sobbing.

“No, Laurie, it’s definitely not fair,” I say softly.

“Okay, so I’m mourning now, are you happy?”

“I’m definitely not happy you’re in pain, but you know I always think it’s best for you to feel whatever it is you’re feeling.”

“I want to see you! I want to see you! That’s what I’m feeling.”

“I’m sure that’s true. And I’m sure that’s what you were feeling as a child as well.”

“Fuck you! Leave me alone.”

Silence.

The silence continues.

I hear Laurie crying.

“I’m here Laurie,” I say quietly.

“You sure?” she whispers.

“I’m positive.”

“I used to make believe that I was talking to my mother on the phone, like she’d taken a trip somewhere and was missing me and couldn’t wait to get home to see me. Isn’t that pathetic?”

“No, Laurie, that’s not pathetic at all. It’s totally understandable and very, very sad. Don’t you feel for the little girl who was you who wanted her Mommy to come home?”

“I guess. Sometimes.” Pause. “And sometimes I just want her to stop being such a baby. I guess like I should stop being a baby when it comes to wanting to see you.”

“You’re not being a baby. You’re yearning for what your mother took away from you and what you feel I’m taking away from you too.”

“But you’re really here, right? I’m not just imagining you and I will get to see you again sometime?”

“Yes. I’m here. And we will see each other again.”