The Depression Post: An appreciation for the response

As long as I lived in my boyhood Bay Ridge, Brooklyn home I didn’t have to worry about throwing a party and no one showing up, although I’ve always harbored the fear since a very small child.  Indeed, our basement was one of the first on our block to be “finished” and all my friends loved it so much they wanted to be down there as often as possible.  I was about twelve, if memory serves, when my parents renovated the basement.  Prior it was a dark, cool, musty storage space with a coal fired furnace and a black as night coal bin.  Well, they traded the coal for gas and pipes for bin and set off the new boiler in its own palatial space in the back while creating in front a wood paneled big room complete with sliding door storage shelves, a six foot long bar and several Danish Modern benches and chairs. 

Naturally, the kids on the block with whom I hung used the basement as a kind of neat club-house.  Being a responsible son, I would ask permission for my friends and me to hang out each time they wanted to go there.   And my folks would respond in the affirmative. We thought highly of our masculinity-the crowd I went with was all boys.  However, the fact of the matter was that, to a guy, we were polite, well mannered and respectful.  Still, the junior high age does come with some itches which occasionally required attention.  So, I felt I needed to “play cop” protecting the fine workmanship of the renovators and the stored family property.  On occasion, that duty pressed so hard on me I pleaded with my folks to say “no” when I asked for permission.  Putting the blame on them worked well, as all understood and were appropriately sympathetic to my plight living with parents so cruel.

Well, this blog is the party I am throwing now and I have the great fear that no one will show up.  Yet, I live in the hope that someone, or, in fact many, will come to take notice of the thoughts freed After Great Pain, in the words of Emily Dickenson’s poem.

What has pleased and surprised me has been the response to the post on Depression.  I want to thank all who gave great support and even better advice.  I thought it proper to give a collective response, some of which I have supplied separately.

I agree about finding help for my mother to both give me a break and to provide her the kind of intimate care I, as a male son, cannot give.  My wife and I have started a process looking for a home health aid to come on a regular basis and expect to secure the services of one within the next few weeks.  The Visiting Nurse Service here has begun coming, so at least there is a regular medical person seeing my mother.

Her decline has been rapid.  While she has had trouble walking for the last five years it was never to the point of a wheel chair all the time, just shuffling around with a walker inside and outside the house.  About two years or so ago she was hospitalized for congestive heart failure reducing her mobility more.  In the house she remained able to shuffle back and forth with a walker, but outside she needed the wheel chair.  However, about two months ago the bottom fell out where she just couldn't move without the use of the wheel chair and the kinds of assists I described.  And, what was worse was the dramatic decline into senility.  I mean, she would forget a thing or two, a little more than the usual and on a more than a frequent occasion, but the forgotten thoughts were truly of no consequence.  And then, Bam!, right into this child-like state where being dislocated and dependent has become routine.  Frankly, my wife and I were caught off-guard, ill-prepared to know what to do other than to press me into service. 

I do not need this circumstance to slip into Depression.  Heck, when my wife informed me over thirteen years ago we would be moving from our Brooklyn home where we had been for nearly fifteen years up to the Southern Berkshires because of a really good job offer she accepted, I replied, that that was really great, and then I added, that I could be Depressed anywhere, but the Berkshires are certainly one of the better places for being Depressed.  And that was true on all accounts.  As I said Depression has been a fact of life since as far as I can remember.  When looking back I seem to be able to identify these feelings definitely when I was eleven or twelve, but I have to wonder if they were there earlier.  

Over the years I've gotten help for it but like a good rugged individual American I feel I can conquer it all myself. I was working with a really good therapist up to three weeks ago but had to stop because I could no longer afford it: I had to pay totally out of pocket as he did not accept any insurance.  I had been very reluctant-heck stubbornly obstinate-in accepting I needed medication to lift the mood.  In our culture one is suppose to be able to heal oneself.  I have what one would call the American diet diseases:  hypertension, type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol.  I denied for quite some time that I needed medication to control these disorders as I had the deep abiding American faith I could do it myself without any pharmaceutical assists.  But, then I went to teach in the New York City public high schools which required a physical exam.  The examining physician really laid into me for being very hypertensive telling me that it was only a matter of months before either a heart attack or a stroke put me six feet under.  I resented being treated like a delinquent child, but his dire warning did the job.  I immediately afterwards sought out my doctor, promptly filled the prescriptions and started on the life-time routine.  The psychologist, on the other hand, treated me like an intelligent adult arguing cogently that I should conceptualize the treatment of Depression the same way I think about the physical ailments.  Emotionally, I was ready to hear what he was saying and secured a prescription for an anti-depressant from my primary care doctor, only to be prevented from having it filled by our health insurance company who wanted me to take a different medication.  This kind of hassle in such a tentative mood put me back into a reluctant frame of mind.  Additionally, we are in the middle of changing health insurance companies.  So, here I sit in a kind of limbo until we get all this stuff straightened out.  There is a concept in sales that goes that if a buyer is ready to put money down, you had better have the product right in front of him; otherwise he will walk away from the purchase.  I almost feel that that is happening here.  Indeed, my resolve weakens by the day. 

Now, I do not believe in divine intervention.  But there are times I have to wonder.  I had just fallen into a deep depressive sleep on this past Saturday afternoon when I was jolted awake by the phone next to our bed.  My wife answered on another extension.  She reported that the caller was our local State Assembly District Leader with whom I’ve been working for the last six years.  He had a couple of extra tickets for the evening’s Hearts and Shamrocks Dance-it’s one of the annual fund-raisers for the Queens County St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee.  He wondered if we wanted to use the tickets as his guests.  Karma was a popular idea during the late 1960’s.  At the time I had no idea what it was so I asked.  I remember whoever it was responding saying something like, Karma is the intellectual and emotional predisposition to perceive genuine opportunity.  It’s like Tom Hanks in Cast Away in that as the contents of the FedEx boxes washed up on shore, he was able to see what he could make from all the flotsam and jetsam coming at him.  Eventually, a large piece of a port-a-john washed up which he saw as the sail he needed to propel himself off the island, his strong Karma allowed him see the opportunity and by taking advantage of what he saw he got off the island.  So, I saw the opportunity to get out of the house, to dance with my wife and to get happy.  And what do you know?  The lever worked, the mood lifted some, at least enough for me to build on it.  Indeed, the District Leader asked me to accompany him to a community town hall tonight featuring our Mayor, another genuine opportunity has presented itself of which I am going to take advantage.  I understand this does not substitute for medication, but at least, I am on the way out of the deep hole.

Again, thanks.  Your responses have been very reassuring.  Additionally, I no longer have to live in fear of throwing this party and no one coming.