The Year of Mourning

We've talked about it before, ritualized grief. It is healing, if executed well. And at the end of an official year (especially if you do it the Jewish way) one feels different, as if a millennium has passed.

We're returning from Ruby Falls, a tourist trap in Tennessee. I had the front seat of the van on the way out, but am in the back now, hosting three very little, dirty and exhausted children. They are engrossed in movies. I can stretch out my legs. Not a bad way to travel. Gazing out the window, road trip lyrics come to mind:

Let us be lovers,
We'll marry our fortunes together.
I've got some real estate here in my bag.
So we bought a pack of cigarets.
And Mrs. Wagner pies,
And we walked off to look for America.

America, the Bookends Album

Hard to get the Bookends song out of my head. Now you've got it. That's what we do in my family, pass off songs.

My son asked if we could take a short vacation, come for a visit this summer. So just before the year of mourning ended, FD and I got on an American Eagle jet and took photos of clouds, seeing clouds from both sides now, obviously. Changing the song works, too.

But only one  emotional snapshot stands out from that vacation.

The children have personal entertainment consoles;  The Lego Movie and Lilo and Stitch play on and on. I look out the window and watch the landscape, hoping for an occasional rooster or horse. The Paul Simon song attacks and I want to sing but can't remember the words, immediately Google them on my phone.

A patient had just complained about her niece and an internet addiction. More accurately, a media addiction. And I think: My grandchildren will have to wait until they have children of their own to even  begin to look for America, feel the sensory joy of looking beyond their phones, their tablets. They will have to take their kids on road trips. Drive.

But maybe not. My kids are pretty conservative, don't even let the little ones have email accounts. I understand you get one now at your bris.

So I sing softly to myself, thinking it odd that during the first year of mourning, if you observe those Jewish rituals, singing is permitted, but not listening to music. Certainly not live music. Recorded music is discouraged, too, really. Paul Simon whispers in my brain and there's no need to adjust the volume, no headset.

So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine, and the moon rose over an open field.

Ruby Falls at Lookout Mountain

Why forbid music during a year of mourning?

Too happy, maybe. But until it ends we don't understand the real reason. After a year of sensory deprivation, at the end of that season of grief, the anticipation, the desire, the need to live is indescribable. And when you finally hear the sound of music, you cry.  It is as if life begins again.

As it should. That is the point. (We only grieve this long for parents, by the way).

So picture me the last evening of that season, a Thursday night. I have invited guests for a Friday night dinner, cooked a few hours. It is finally dark. Pitch black. FD comes home, has a quick bite to eat. I am in a chair, exhausted, feet up, watching my fish swim in the aquarium. He asks me if I want to hear what he's been working on. (He is a classical pianist). I thought you would never ask.

For a year he practiced on a keyboard, headphones on, and all I heard was the banging of keys, no notes. So now he plays the scherzos so that I can hear them loud and clear, explains each one. Then we listen to yet another on YouTube, one that he hasn't learned because it hasn't been transcribed for piano. He's working on the transcription. He tells me that a scherzo is a musical joke. The thought makes me smile. Weird Al has nothing on a scherzo.

The next day I am texting the kids, asking them for the names of popular songs that I missed during the year. I use itunes (forgetting all about Pandora) and listen, wondering if I even like the choices. As I dice onions, the enormity of it all, the trance-like feel of transition, works its effect. Guests! Fun! Friends. For a year socializing has been limited to family, primarily, and a few couples, one at a time, let's not over do it, very few. Certainly nothing remotely like a party. Tears applaud this moment, make it memorable.

My grandson would videotape the scene: An aging female seeking show tunes on her iphone, crying as she dices onions. Funny, no?

But it is sad. Setting the table, it is clear to me that my mother would love the china, the silver, the royalty of this Sabbath meal especially, for her touches are on everything. She is everywhere.

Waterford rose bowl

Then at night, after the dinner, a dream, a disturbing dream. She is alive, but not really alive, wearing a pale green dress that I don't remember, but her style (and green is a good color on her, but not this time). She is thin and disabled, and it is my son's wedding, which she missed due to her illness. But she's there now, and I have lost her and am in a panic trying to reconnect. She is in a carriage, or a rickshaw, on her way to the synagogue where we are hosting a huge celebration after services, the occasion of the day. I miss the whole thing trying to find her a lemonade.

Not a good dream, and it cast a pall over the weekend. We don't lose bad dreams easily, and even though it was nice to see her, it wasn't a picnic. I blame the short glass of excellent red wine, a Gallil Mountain, Yiron 2010. My guests chose well, but wine can be dangerous, even in small quantities.

The next night we dress up again. FD has tickets for Brigadoon at the Goodman Theater downtown, and from the very first note, the voices so clear and high, so strong and powerful; the scenery, brilliant; the story, fanciful, I am lifted there, to Brigadoon. A musical is surreal under any circumstances, which is why we love them, but to hear the songs that Andrew Lloyd Webber pirated (you're undoubtedly familiar with Phantom), and gaze closely at classically trained dancers up on their toes, stepping, twirling, skirts flowing, everyone smiling on stage, in the audience, everywhere.

Quite a sensory whirl.

We meet a few friends at the theater, too, also odd, because who goes to see Brigadoon? (People a bit older, that's who). Our friends go to the theater often and suggest we try the Lincolnshire if we haven't already. Very reasonable, wonderful productions. My parents had season tickets, I say, but we never took them up on their offer to go; the drive is a little far. Now I want to go. I am becoming my mother, I laugh.

Brigadoon-Goodman Theater

One of the women notices and compliments my beaded bag.  She has one like it, her grandmother's. She is nostalgic, her eyes look up and to the left, remembering.

My bag was my mothers, naturally.

therapydoc

I See You, I Hear You

This post is dedicated to Bev, who always saw and always heard my mom.

Zeek and Camille 

 I've been watching way too much TV, and feel guilty because I remember telling my kids how it is so numbing, how it can get away from you, the hours. And it's the truth, more than likely, why we love it. That and looking at people who are good-looking and talented enough to make it onto television.  Our own people zoo.

Does the job. And yet, it has to stop. An hour a night is all I get, then it's back to books.

Who needs friends? One big happy family

You do learn things from TV.

After hearing about it from a critical mass, I found • Parenthood on Amazon Video, all of those old episodes about aging and not so aging hippies and hipsters, one big happy family in Berkeley, circling the hub, the deteriorating old family homestead, complete with a barn. The teenager, even the young children, are the ones who think outside the box. There's an especially adorable child with Asperger's constantly screaming the truth. "Dad just said. . ."

The basic idea is that this is a close extended family, if not a little too close. Family members are honest with each other, or they are into the second season. Sarah, who has left her addicted ex to bring her two teens back here, is less mature than her 17-year old daughter Amber (Mae Whitman, so watchable), who loves her anyway, for all of her painful parenting mistakes, perhaps for them.  Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls) always gets these parts, the emotionally vulnerable, single mom doing the best she can , who acted out as a teenager and still behaves more like a teenager than her teenagers when she can't determine what to do. And they let her know it.

Perhaps because the boundaries in the family are so thin (everyone knows everything about anything that goes on), the ensemble as a whole fails to set the boundaries on relationships outside the family, too. Sarah lets her daughter's teacher make a play for her. Her daughter sleeps with her cousin's boyfriend.  These boundary conflicts resolve, people forgive. Somehow the power of the family works magic, even when you do really bad, inconsiderate things. When you love one another, you can do no wrong. Or if you do, nobody will stay angry for very long.

I love that. Another reason to watch television.

Not everyone is a screw up, of course, as parentified children are a big theme. At least one or two of the five adult kids have to be mature because they grew up in the shadow of the patriarch of the family, Zeek, a sixty-something Vietnam vet with a history of intermittent explosive disorder, drinking, acting out, and general cluelessness as a father and a spouse. Adam, the oldest son, had no room as a child to get into trouble; it didn't appeal.

Having no male role model worth following, the most functional of the children, Adam fit the role of real father to the whole family. Everyone looks to him for advice, and because they have no boundaries, literally plop in on him at his office to talk during his work day, not a care in the world that this could jeopardize his job.

In the first episode of the second season, Zeek and his wife, the beautiful, long-suffering, quiet, artistic, Camille, are in marriage therapy. She has finally made it clear that not only does he not listen to her, but he really doesn't see her, either. He doesn't focus well enough on her to put her in the room, to put her desires, her needs on the list of things to do.  It isn't about love. He adores her. Just can't get outside of himself enough to take her needs seriously.  His are what matter.

He either changes or she's through. In either case she wants to sell the house, travel, get away from the children on occasion, buy a condo, really live that last chapter of life before they are too old to live it. Zeek won't even talk about it.

After awhile, because of the therapy that he hates so much, he realizes that he should pay more attention, should look at Camille, and he does. He can even say it, undoubtedly the therapeutic homework, the intervention. I see you. I hear you.  And it is a beautiful thing.

I liked it as a marital therapy technique.  When a partner isn't hearing, isn't seeing, the other partner should offer a blank stare, or a raised eyebrow that somehow communicates the problem, You're not seeing me, and the errant partner does a My bad.

 I hear you. I see you.

Beautiful, but not so beautiful that it should make me cry, particularly.  Then on Friday night, we're dressing to go to a friend's for dinner, a couple we haven't seen in quite awhile. I put on a pair of my mom's vintage earrings and a jacket she used to wear, not that I could remember her wearing either. But she took them with her to the retirement center after my father died, after we sold the house, our homestead, and she certainly couldn't take everything. So these things, these earrings, this jacket, made the cut. She valued them.  She wanted them to be with her even though she wasn't dressing much to go out anymore.

She must have worn them in her sixties or seventies, but honestly, for the life of me, as I put them on that Friday night, as I marveled and struggled with the backs of the earrings, had no recollection ever seeing her wear them.

I heard her, for sure.  You couldn't not hear my mother. Not because she was loud, but because she didn't say everything on her mind, so what she did say you heard.  When she talked it was deliberate, focused on a goal, something important, something that bothered her, or she was asking you about you.  She was never gossipy, unless a person bothered her, and that happened on occasion, and she had to work that out, even in that last year of her life. Abandonment issues. Who doesn't have some of those?

Intelligent, insightful, I wanted to hear her as an adult, not so much as a teenager, a common thing, we now all know.  But if you don't listen during one chapter of a person's life, they assume you aren't listening even when you are.  Unresolved issues. (Who doesn't have some of those?) She probably had no idea how much I valued what she said. When I told her I valued her opinions, when I told her how smart she was, she didn't believe me (although I could tell she considered it).  This is true humility, a character trait that breaks my heart.

Anyway, in that hypmanic episode, the kind that happens to so many of us when we are experiencing a life-changing event, in our case the trauma of parent-death, which is life-changing in so many ways, I hauled off from her apartment* with about a quarter of her clothes and much of her jewelry, brought it all to my own closet, and am now in the process of going through things.

Why can't I remember what she looked like in her beautiful clothes?  I didn't see her.

It kills me.

therapydoc

*We did the move a month and a half following her passing and I hardly worked, which was good for all of us, frankly. I put up a blog with her art and her furniture, her vases and creamers, and the kids chose what they wanted. The movers made four stops, five if we include the move from storage to Atlanta last week. (Yes, it IS possible to get things out of storage in a month, but it isn't easy.)

It could have been an episode out of Parenthood, the move. Maybe it will be. When I wasn't boxing up her things, I was boxing up files from my office. To complicate things, during her illness I had added a second office location, rented it to be nearer to her if she needed me. Turns out she would not.

Another disorder that never made it to the DSM V: Multiple Moving Disorder.

vintage jacket

vintage earrings 

Mothers Who Can't Love

Only weeks ago, maybe between my mom's lapse into coma and her last breath, not sure, I found a book in my mailbox:  

Mothers Who Can't Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters, by Susan Forward, PhD. 

I tossed it into the Get To This One Day pile. Found it yesterday, buzzed right through. Thank you Harper Collins.   

I'm talking to FD about someone we both know, and he asks, "Why is he this way." I suggest a particular parent-child dynamic, only confuse him more.

"How do you know this?"

"Because this is what we do in my profession, look backward to parents, how they treated now grown/adult children as children. We look for clues. In your profession history helps, but the lab results and the vitals tell more. For us, history is everything.

It didn't hurt, I confessed, that the subject of scrutiny, at someone else's visitation, talked about his father. From this it isn't hard to extrapolate, suggest broad strokes about personality and behavior.

"Oh," he says.

Keep in mind that there are all kinds of genetics that play into personality and behavior. Yet, it is this relationship cause-effect, or psycho-dynamic diagnostic that explained why it took so long for me to write a eulogy for my mother.  Her attributes meant nothing unless I could tell over the why. To me it was the what made her this way that mattered.  In the months of her illness I obsessed about her childhood and how what she experienced in those formative years affected her as a woman, as a mother.

It didn't help that she demanded to hear the eulogy before she died.  She really wanted to edit it.  She edited a few drafts, but it was the sixth that came to stage. We assume she loved the whole show.

One day you'll hear those stories, how my mother loved to love people, to show a smile, how everyone loved her, couldn't help it. Oh, just one. One of my sons went fishing with my father and his friends and one took him aside.  "Let me tell you something young man. Your grandfather is one in ten-thousand. But your grandmother?  One in a million."

But this is a therapy blog so let's move on, talk about the antitheses.

Dr. Forward does a magnificent job describing mothers who can't love, certainly can't show love, those who make adult children cringe even when they know, perfectly well, that they are no longer children, should not be stressing, reaching to cope, spending so much psychological energy and time on a mother.  She suggests ways to set boundaries on moms who enmesh, control, criticize, and otherwise weasel their way into our brains.

Face it.  It is all about the boundaries.  It is all about, "You, mama, have more to lose than I have. You have already made my life ridiculously unbearable. The party is over."

Dr. Forward suggests letter writing and non-defensive communication, above all else. And sometimes, time off from the relationship altogether.  I don't think I ever labeled retorts to critical mothers as non-defensive communication, but surely, this what it is, it is the way to go. Never give mothers like this more fuel, more of an edge.  When we defend it is as if there is something to defend, and with mothers who can't love, guess what, no one needs to defend against their negativity. Their bad.

A short list of simple non-defensive responses to criticism, accusations, complaints demeaning comments, and negative untruths. Parentheses mine:

Really? (add a raised eyebrow)
I see. (sage nod, try not to smile)
I understand.
I'm sure you see it that way.

Practice these in the mirror or with others. If you want to go on the offense, restrain yourself, although I've suggested staging grand behavioral hysteria, falling on the floor, holding your belly and laughing until tears come out of your eyes.  Some of us have to emphasize the absurd, and it works. Dr. Forward would surely concur.

She uses lists-- You make lists.  (a) The lies the mom tells, (b) The truth that really is.

(a) "You are selfish."
(b) "Actually, I'm not."

There is also an adult daughter's Bill of Rights. An abridged version:

You have the right to not take responsibility for anyone else's problems or bad behavior.
You have the right to get angry. (Susan Forward is particularly good with anger)
You have the right to say NO.
You have the right to protest unfair treatment or criticism

And Dr. F suggests Position Statements.  I love this.  When a parent crosses a line, makes you feel uncomfortable, reinforce the boundary with a clear, direct, redefinition of her power and what will no longer describe your response.

I am no longer willing to...
I am willing to...
It is no longer acceptable for you to. . .

I issued a position statement to my father, professionally bullied him many years ago.  I was in my thirties, he must have been mid-sixties. Now I have mixed feelings about it, years later, although I still tell the story. When his grandsons, my twins were about four or five, one of them, when frustrated, would shoot out tears. Annoyed by this my father mocked him at the kitchen table. "Cry," he teased.  "Babies cry."

I looked at him, glared, and asked, "Are tears BAD, Dad?  Because in my profession, we don't think so.  If you make him feel badly for crying, if you continue doing this, then we won't be visiting. So please don't."

That was a Position Statement.  He apologized and never did it again.

I miss my father, and wish, instead of bullying him, I would have simply, sincerely asked, "Did your father mock you when you cried?  When?  How did you feel?"  We do remember things like that, you know, those snap shot memories of trauma.

That would have been productive, too.

therapydoc

Wearing Other People's Clothes

Like this?

I like this one better.I really love the jacket in stone. The whole idea of the color "stone" is very wonderful. If I were to pick out a new rock for Blue's tank, I'd go with it.

Settle back, I feel like talking. I learned something new the other day.

I think I mentioned that it's getting a little chilly in Chicago.

And I feel it in my chest and in my arms and in my toes and then FD will come to bed late, hoping he's going to warm up, and his hands and toes are freezing and well, all I can say is that

we're not acclimated. It's like this every November. It takes us awhile, in fact, to acclimate since really, we're not the kind of people who ever say, Wow, this cold air! How refreshing!

It's not refreshing; it's just cold.

When it gets like this (and it's not even really cold, cold, it's only in the 40's-50's), I've learned to wear lots of layers; and if I'm going out, I try to put enough of them on so that I'm almost working up a sweat just breathing. And I hate it.

I just want to give my better endowed friends big warm hugs to steal the heat off of them.

This is where it gets tricky, you see. My friends are always telling me that they want to lose weight and I say, Yeah, yeah, but inside I wish they'd quit with the self-dissatisfaction. I love them just the way they are, and none of them are over-weight, really. Yet I know they mean it when they say that they're not happy with extra poundage (which I never see), so I say, Sure, sure you want to lose weight. It's okay, I get it; go for it. Diet. Exercise, whatev. Get skinny.

But you'll be cold.

So Saturday I was alone in the morning, FD had already left for shul (he goes to an early synagogue service) and I was in my sweats reading the Wall Street Journal. The article that grabbed me had to do with "older" women buying clothes that aren't dowdy, yet they're not too youthful looking, either.

The price tag on the Premise Gayle Lillie Jacket (Quotations, Bloomingdales) is a little out of budget for me; too many out-standing college loans from education-at-what-price, the United States Department of Education Direct Loans waits for no man, let's not talk about it, and income taxes that make a grown-woman weep.

Yet I looked at that stone jacket and thought, Man, that would look good on me, NO question. And folded up the newspaper, finished my chocolate chip cookie, and headed up to the bedroom to find something to wear to shul.

I settled on a great looking long fall suit that is surely 15 years old. Or more.

But on my walk to the synagogue I thought about how cool it is that the people who go to services with me really don't give anyone a critical once-over and judge. It's not that kind of crowd. Not that they're retro or wearing jeans. But on really cold winter days, and we're not even there yet, I've been able to get away with flannel pajamas under my skirt and even when they pop out of the boots, nobody's said so much as Boo.

'course, you could say they're polite, and that would be true.

Anyway, I put on that trusty suit that fit me like a glove, added a heavy bell-sleeved cable sweater under the jacket and a pair of tights. Brown wide-towed Mudd loafers (what, you thought I'd wear heels?) Checked the mirror and searched for something to break the wind.

This is Chicago, okay?

Still it's that funny time of year that my mother calls "transitional" , when nothing really feels quite right, weather-wise. And I don't get into a car to beat whatever weather the Old Mighty determines should suit us just fine on the Sabbath. So I have to be prepared.

And wouldn't you know it, not one of my full-length coats in the front-hall closet matched my suit. I held out hope for the basement cedar closet where the warmer outer-wear parks for warmer months. Sure enough, Empath Daught's old tan-suede Wilson jacket, really heavy and warm but beat up comfortably, said, Hello.

In a flash I was out the door, feeling no pain, admiring the world. The leaves are turning and all the colors are warm and mellow. You have to love Chicago in November, even if it's cold. You sort of forgive the city the cold. Chicago can't help it. Someday our property values will sky-rocket as people in southern climes swelter and curse.

Oh global warming is a myth, never mind.

Generally I go to the synagogue so late that I'm only there for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. The socialization after the services (cake, chips, soda, or booze) is a weekly attraction. I rarely eat or drink (that's so personal, you know?) but I like to watch other people do that and I like catching up with them on their family news.

That morning, as we hovered over gefilte fish, crackers, and cake, a friend and I compared air fares overseas. In our crowd kids are encouraged to actually marry and live in Israel, so visiting the Holy Land in the winter is one of those things people my age do to see family. It's rare anyone goes to Hawaii, or Japan, unless it's for business. But we go to Israel and we talk prices with one another, hoping to find a cheaper fare.

Apparently there's an Airbus A380 that seats 500 people and flies to Paris (Air France). I think I'll wait awhile, let them test that one out.

I looked around the room and really none of the women had on anything that looked anywhere near as chic as the Quotations stuff at Bloomies touted by WSJ. Even the mens' suits didn't seem particularly sharp. This made me happy. I can't explain it. But these are my people and we're awfully laid back in Chi-town. Some of us.

So I left for home. And on my way I wondered why I liked wearing Empath Daught's old jacket so much. I mean really, it's pretty beat up, and the color's an orangey-tan, NOT my color at all. It makes no sense. And I flashed on another jacket, my brother's (O'B'S- he should be at peace by now). He had a black leather jacket that he wore only months before he passed away.

Me, being a teenager at that time, and not a young one at the cusp of 18, grabbed that jacket the week after the funeral. For me it had to have been too long to be a jacket, really, and it was too short to be considered a coat. He wore it in the autumn, around this time of year. He was well over six feet tall, and I'm well under.

I didn't wear it often because I was self-conscious about it and it swam on me, but we had a dog and I had to walk the dog (I LIKED walking the dog), so I wore it when I took the dog out in the late night hours. And occasionally, I think, I wore it to school.

Nobody raised an eyebrow. This was the sixties.

In another year I was off to college and when I returned for Thanksgiving break I looked for the jacket (and a few other things) but it was gone. I might have asked my mom, Did you give it away?! But I'm sure I didn't push it. I think I might have actually said, I wanted that, and poor mom couldn't really respond. Perhaps she hadn't heard.

But how do you respond when you lose your twenty year old kid and the next in line is upset about a jacket?

Ah, it's getting a little maudlin in here, a little warm, isn't it? So basically, all I wanted to say is that humans hang onto humans in many ways. Wearing one another's clothes, obviously, is just one way of feeling, sensing the other person.

When Empath Daught was a kid, she and her friends swapped clothing like crazy. I never knew WHAT she'd be wearing or WHERE she got some of the things she wore to school. That's how some adolescent girls connect with one another, and how others increase their wardrobes.

How your therapy doc got stuck there, in adolescence, so many years ago, I'll never know.

Well, perhaps maybe I do.

therapydoc

Virginia Tech Massacre

2 weapons recovered at the scene
22 mm. handgun, 9mm semi-automatic

I don't understand these things, guns

an isolated domestic violence incident

Hospital official: This man was brutal. There wasn't a shooting victim with less than 3 bullet wounds, abdomen, chest, head. We're a small rural hospital, 126 beds, we had to send three out to Roanoake.

Roanoacke trauma center 3
Louisgale Hospital 3
Montgomery Regional Hospital 9
families are bedside
these are the survivors

33 GONE

deadliest shooting spree in US history
one year post-Columbine, almost to the day

Zach Petkowicz--hero--barricaded another classroom shut using a rectangular table, held off the gunman who tried to push into the room full of students

psychotic energy (my words)

Face Book

black ribbons

The Virginia Tech Web Site:

Campus closed today; convocation at Cassell

Updated at 7 a.m., Tuesday, 04.17.2007

Counseling assistance for students is available at West Ambler Johnston and McComas Hall until 9 p.m. Students are encouraged to utilize these services. Students may also gather at the Old Dominion Ballroom in Squires Student Center.

Counseling assistance for faculty and staff today has been moved to Brush Mountain Room A in Squires, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Two shooting incidents on campus Monday left 33 dead. Thirty-one, including the gunman, died at Norris Hall; two died at West Ambler Johnston Hall. Fifteen other victims from Norris are being treated at area hospitals.

Officials are in the process of identifying victims and notifying next-of-kin. Names will not be released until that process is complete.

Essential personnel are to report for work today. Classes are canceled.

A public gathering will be held at Cassell Coliseum at 2 p.m.

How does this happen? Why?

Can we assume he had counseling and that it didn't help?
Can we assume he was either an emotional, physically, or verbally abused person?
Can we assume that he was failing? Engineering is hard.
Can we assume that he lost in love?
Can we assume he was mentally ill, that he heard voices, that it was premeditated?

Therapy doc pundits like me assume it all in varying combinations. The median age for onset of schizophrenia is early to mid-twenties, and delusional paranoid schizophrenia is associated with violent behavior. That's certainly possible. Bi-polars are usually spontaneous and this seemed premeditated.

He wore something that looked like a boyscout uniform.

We'll find out, I hope, in the coming days. Meanwhile, the counseling centers in Blacksburg have their work cut out for them. Graduation is in three weeks and there is no way, simply no way that the students at this school will put the past behind them so soon.

Oh. And of course, I forgot. If you happen to need to buy a gun? Go to Virginia, the second easiest state in the country, apparently to whiz through the purchasing process. No background checks, no licenses. Anyone can get one.

Ironically, it's an election day in Chicago. Now here's a cause, for those of you who feel you need to get involved in something. I'm always pushing my patients to get involved in SOMETHING. This might be interesting, gun control.

I wonder what people will be talking about in my office today?

Sadly yours,

TherapyDoc