The Healing Journey

September 20, 2024

The doctor was going through her interminably long checklist, which the nurse had gone through just ten minutes ago and that Mark had gone through earlier that morning online, answering questions. “Did you have any surgery in the past year?”

“No.”

“Do you smoke?”

“No more.”

“Do you drink?”

“No more.” “Have you fallen in the past year?”

“I fell on the ice while I was shoveling snow.”

“You were shoveling snow? Can’t you get someone else to do that for you?”

“I suppose I can, but I need the exercise.”

“What are you allergic to?” Etc etc.

“And then the jackpot question: “Are you depressed?”

He paused. And she detected the pause. His first reaction was to say, “Who the heck isn’t depressed?”

He had resigned himself to the reality that he would be depressed for the rest of his life and deal with it. He finally looked in her eyes and responded, “Define depression.”

Now, it was her turn to hesitate. “Do you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning?”

“It depends on the morning.” This wasn’t going anywhere, so he finally said, “No, I’m not depressed.” But he knew that if she had hooked him up to a polygraph, the needle would have bounced off the scale.

The interrogation was over. Now, he could go back to being depressed. He learned it didn’t help telling people he was depressed because his wife had died six months ago, and people didn’t expect him to be depressed. It was supposed to go away.

They didn’t want him to be depressed, and if he was depressed, the polite thing seemed to be to keep it to yourself because no one else wanted to hear about it except the other people who had lost someone they loved and could understand.

What would the doctor do about it? Tell him to deal with the depression like everyone else, put him on medication? Send him to a shrink? Not one worthwhile suggestion as far as he was concerned.

The day eventually came when he did something himself and joined a bereavement group in his parish. He didn’t want to do it but knew he had to do it. So at his next doctor’s visit when she asked, “Are you suffering from depression?” He could respond, “Yes, but I’m doing something about it.”

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