My Inner Caulfield and Kubler-Ross

I'm not going to write about my usual mushy, sentimental stuff about the favorite topic - not just my favorite topic, but the be-all and end-all of this blog. If my readers have noticed, there's a certain theme in these writings, a frequent and pervading issue. And I'm not referring to my angst over my job as a doctor, for chrissakes! I'm referring to the reason why this proverbial walk on water started, the shell that was empty but I just couldn't throw away, that strange cosmic dust that I misconstrued to be the same as my own just because I happened to breathe it in, by some absurd twist of fate. Ahhh, 5 years of ultimate insanity.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Kubler-Ross once said that we don't necessarily go through the stages of mourning in this order. She's right. I've gone through all the other four, and anger just happened to sneak in today. I'm there alright. This thing - no this Phenomenon - can come in and out of my life, and yeah, it's really alright. This Phenomenon can happen again and again and it's not going to change - it's still going to be a phenomenon - extraordinary, enchanting, and strange. Twenty years from now, This Royal Madness will probably drop by my life again and I'm going to be as enthralled as Day 1, taking it up all over again as if nothing happened in between.

My Christian faith tells me to be patient. Common sense tells me to invoke the comforts of amnesia and just totally forget everything. Kubler-Ross tells me to just go through the stages of death and dying and let healing happen. She doesn't know I have nothing to mourn about.

For now, I'm just so goddamn angry!


(This post was influenced by my recent rediscovery of Holden Caulfield. Giving a damn about JD Salinger's death when I hated Catcher In the Rye when I first read it is such a phony thing to do. But then I'm rereading it now, and I realized there's a Holden Caulfield brewing in everyone, waiting to show up in a red hunting hat, screaming at the world in pure unadulterated anger. There's a phony in everyone and in everything too. But, ahhh, love is the phoniest sonnofabitch of all!)