Martha Manning - What Can't Be Fixed

 

I’m going to talk about two breakdowns tonight. Thankfully, neither are my own, although I could serenade you for the entire evening [audience chuckle] with those stories. My stories are about a breakdown as a therapist, me, and a breakdown of a car, mine. For a long time, I was the epitome of the perfect therapist. I had a high-rise, expensive office. The Kleenex matched the carpet. [audience laughter] It resembled in no way my own home, which was decorated in one accident perpetrated upon another and another. But I loved my office. It made me feel closer to being a real therapist. 

 

And for the most part, my therapy patients helped in that regard, in that they seemed to respond to what I did for them and with them and get better. That was until Annie. Annie was the first person who was referred to me by an oncologist. After that I got a number of referrals because it appears that depression and cancer are very much hinged both in terms of dealing with the day-to-day as well as the inevitabilities that are shoved in your face. 

 

Annie and I worked together for a year and a half and she was a real street fighter when it came to cancer, which was marching relentlessly through her body. But the things we worked on were fairly mundane, many times. Her recalcitrant 12-year-old son, the fact that he didn’t get along with his new stepfather, those kinds of things. Unfortunately, her breast cancer metastasized again and it metastasized to her brain. And at this point it was decided that there be no more treatment. Annie came into my office to tell me that. And with that knowledge, the first thing she did was reach down into her bag and pull out a new pack of cigarettes. [audience laughter] She and I were going to light up the world. Unfortunately, I didn’t smoke and had absolutely no intention of starting. And we were in a medical building that would go absolutely nuts if there was any smoke detected. So, I’m thinking, “What would a real therapist do?” And I didn’t know. So, I said, "Let’s go outside." 

 

So, Annie and I went outside and we leaned against a green Dodge in the parking lot and our faces were tilted up into the sort of the new spring sun. And Annie is puffing away and says to me casually, "What is it you believe?" And I’m stunned. I don’t know what I believe. I believe data. And I said, "Well, it’s not so important what I believe, Annie. [audience laughter] It’s what you believe that’s important." "Bullshit, Martha. That’s bullshit. I want to know what you believe." And I said, "About what?" And she said, "About dying. About where we go after we die. About prayers, about God answering our prayers." Well, you know, I mean, Jesus, I had 16 years of Catholic school, but I didn’t have a single answer for any of those questions. 

 

And so, I started again and talked about how there was data about the healing power of prayer. And she had just about had it with me and actually came over and bumped me in the leg and said, "Cut it out. I want to know. I need to know." And then I realized what she was asking me. And so, I struggled and I struggled out loud. And my final answer was a mess. And it was that I didn’t know. Sometimes I thought I knew, and other times I was sure I didn’t. And right now, I had no idea where I was. And for some reason, that sorry-ass answer was satisfactory to her. And she let me back in. 

 

She lit up another cigarette and she said, "You’re going to be with me, right?" [sobs] "What?" "You’re going to be with me." "What do you mean?” “Till the end?" I’m thinking, “What end?” She goes, "The end, Martha, the end. You’re going to be with me." Again, there’s part of me that’s thinking, “What would a real therapist say?” I had never been taught any of this stuff. And I said, "Yeah, Annie, I’m going to be with you till the end," having no idea what that meant. 

 

At the same time, my car was stalling out. It particularly hated bumps in McDonald's, in the Safeway parking lot and would stall out, leaving lines of people royally pissed off at me, that’s McDonald's, and me stranded with groceries at the Safeway. And I finally brought the car to the person I should have brought it to at the beginning. And this was a person whose name was Chuck, but he worked at a place called Malcolm’s, Malcolm’s Automotive. And over the years, I had so associated Chuck with Malcolm’s that I always called him Malcolm. [audience laughter] 

 

Chuck always had a perfectly pressed gray denim uniform with the most remarkably clean fingernails and a deeply resonant, calming voice that would have qualified him to be an FM DJ late at night, comforting people in their insomnia. I would always say, "How you doing, Malcolm?" and I’d go, "Oh, God, I’m sorry. I guess a lot of people do that." To which he would always go, "Well, actually, no." [audience laughter] But I described the problem to Malcolm, and he was very satisfied and confident that he could fix it. Malcolm had always fixed it, and he conveyed his confidence this time. 

 

So, I rented a car and went back to work. Annie was sliding downhill faster than any of us had anticipated. She was in tremendous pain and was vomiting a great deal. She entered hospice to have better pain control. Hospice is one of the few places in life that says “We can’t fix it and we’re not going to try.” She went in and started having people call me immediately. And I began to understand what it meant to be with her until the end. And at night, after work, I would take my rental car and drive to hospice. And I would sit with her, always wondering, “What would a real therapist do?” She got worse and worse so that she was blind and she was in a great deal of pain. And I would struggle to know even what therapeutic thing could I possibly do with her. And when I ran out of stories to tell her, I resorted, and you’ll see how pathetic this is in several seconds, I resorted to singing in her ear [audience laughter] because we had, over time for meditations of pain control, used things and we had used, in the beginning, Steve Winwood's Roll with it baby. 

 

In the beginning, that song is a vibrant, rocking rebellion about taking charge and moving on, but at the end, it’s very different. And I would lean over and whisper into her ear, "Then you'll see. Love can be so nice. It's just a step up to paradise. You just roll with it, baby." And she would squeeze my hand and I would know that she heard me. The next day, Malcolm called and said, "Things aren’t going well. I can’t get the car to stall." I’m saying, "Did you take it to Safeway? [audience laughter] Did you go to McDonald's?" He made me very anxious in his impotence. [audience chuckle] He said, "We’ve done all those things, but I’ll call you tomorrow." 

 

So, the next morning I get a call from Malcolm. He says, "I’m sorry. We’ve done everything we can, everything. And we can’t find the problem. And if we can’t find it, we can’t fix it. It’s as simple as that." And I was furious. I said, "What do you mean you can’t find it? You can’t fix it. Mechanics can always do more, fast-talk me, cheat me, deceive me, but don’t say there’s nothing more you can do, Malcolm, I mean Chuck." [audience laughter] And he said, "I’m really sorry." And I believe he was, but it didn’t help. 

 

That evening I went to visit Annie at the hospice and she was in terrible shape. And I knew by her breathing that she was not long for the world. But in a moment of lucidity, she held my hand and she said, "I want you to know something. I want you to know the best thing you ever said to me." And I’m thinking, “Well, thank God, finally we’re going to hear a therapeutic intervention somewhere that was you know--” And she said, "Remember when the cancer came back the third time? Remember what you said?" And I said, "No, I don’t." And she said, "You got really choked up. And you said, 'This really sucks." And I’m waiting to hear therapeutic intervention. And then I realized that was it, all of it. 15 years of training and experience in psychotherapy and "This really sucks" had the most impact on this dying woman. 

 

 And just as I was despairing, she with great effort leaned her head over to look at me. And she said, "And it really does, you know, it really sucks." And all I could do was look right back at her and say, "Yeah, it really does." I kissed her on the cheek, not knowing when I would ever see her again. And as I was leaving and closing the door to her room, there was someone down the hall leaving another room. And from a distance I could tell that it was a man. And then closer, I could tell that it was a tall man in a uniform, a gray uniform. It was Chuck. Chuck was at hospice. And from the way he was leaving in that droop-shouldered, quiet way that people leave the rooms of the dying, I could tell that he was leaving someone he loved. I wanted to run to this man-- I had such violent fantasies about all day. I wanted to run to him. I wanted to wrinkle his perfect uniform. I wanted to hug him and say, "I get it, Malcolm-- I mean, Chuck. I get it. Some things just can’t be fixed, can they?" But I didn’t. I watched him get into his pickup truck and drive away. 

 

Annie died the next day and I stood by her bed as her priest said his prayers. My car got better. It never stalled again. I don’t get it. I don’t understand how a car gets better with nobody’s help and how a person doesn’t get better with everybody’s. But I’m learning that there’s a lot I don’t understand.