Therapist, Out of Africa and the Sh*t Sandwich

I was visiting my dad this weekend in Ohio. My mom is in a memory care unit where her Alzheimer's is being managed. I was going to say treated, but they stopped treatment about nine months ago and are now trying to keep her comfortable.

My dad has been through a lot. My brother has schizophrenia, and my parents watched him fall apart for years. My mother had depression where she would lie in bed and cry for weeks until she found the right medication. My first daughter, Ada, died, and now my mom has Alzheimer's. I hurt my knee and was laid up for a year when my mother's illness became a crisis. My dad couldn't help me and I couldn't help him as much as we both would have liked. There is other stuff, too.

"We sure have had our own bite out the shit sandwich," he has said.

Sometimes when I list it out, it doesn't seem that bad. Other people have gone through worse. Other times, it seems overwhelming, too much.

I started meeting with a new therapist a few weeks ago to help me better understand some of the issues my teenagers are going through. When I was pregnant with Claire Adele, I saw a therapist who specialized in women's health issues.  Shellie was great. Now I have this new guy who works with parents and teens. When I give him by bio and list off all of the stuff that has happened to me, he looks bewildered, as if he doesn't know where to start or what is the most important. I can't blame him.

Last week before I went to Ohio, I was reading Out of Africa, a memoir by Isak Dinesen about her years on a coffee plantation in Kenya. She writes

"The Natives have, far less than the white people, the sense of risks in life... It made me reflect that perhaps, they were, in life itself, within their own element, such as we can never be, like fishes in deep water which for the life of them they cannot understand our fear of drowning. This assurance, this art of swimming, they had, I thought, because they had preserved a knowledge that was lost to us by our first parents; Africa, amongst the continents, will teach you: that God and the Devil are one, the majesty co-eternal, not two uncreated but one uncreated..."

God and the Devil are one. This is such an interesting concept. It fits with the story of Job from the Bible, the one where God and the Devil together torture Job (kill his crops, family, etc.) to see if Job loses faith. He doesn't. He keeps believing in goodness, even when faced with extreme distress.

I was reading Ordinary People and I found a comment on how Americans try so hard to have nothing bad happen to them, but what for? Difficult things--disease, injury, mental illness--happens whether or not we want it to. This sometimes is hard to see when I am in the thick of it--visiting my mom in a nursing home, wondering if she remembers me or not, watching my dad spoon-feed her because she can't feed herself. At times like this, I'd like to believe in good and evil, but then it makes more sense that God and the Devil are one.