Saying Goodbye
October 29th, 2008 |
By Jeanine Austin, Ph.D.
Part of my job as the Department Head of Social Services when I worked for a skilled nursing facility was to have regular client contact. One morning, I stopped by to see how Mr. and Mrs. Carol (not their real names) were doing. As soon as I stepped in the room I felt I was entering into a combat zone. The couple was sparring loudly about which television program they were going to watch: People’s Court or Sally Jesse Raphael. Not five seconds into the debate, in horror I watched a cup of hot tea, launched by Mr. Carol, fly past my head only to narrowly miss Mrs. Carol, his bride of more than 60 years. Not to be outdone, Mrs. Carol chucked her full tray of gooey hospital food towards Mr. Carol. For someone in her final days of a terminal illness, she surprisingly mustered enough strength to create a giant mess with food landing on the ceiling, windows and walls. Indignant and incensed, I looked at my 90-something year old patients and exclaimed with all the authority a 23 year old might command and said, “You two should be ashamed of yourselves!”
Back in my office, I reviewed the couple’s intake and psychosocial assessments. Their marital history was unremarkable and by all accounts it was a happy liaison. What was up with these two crazy characters? Then it hit me. They didn’t know how to say goodbye to each other. Of course, it is much easier to contemplate leaving someone who is on your last nerve than someone whom you feel a warm fuzzy connection with. I was able to bring this up later with Mr. and Mrs. Carol and they both acknowledged that their bickering the last few weeks had to do with their fears of losing each other.
I certainly understood some of what the Carols were resisting. When I was training to be a psychotherapist, the issue of termination of the client therapist relationship was always a challenging one for me. Most schools of social work and psychology suggest that termination isn’t something that you discuss with a client a few weeks before the psychotherapeutic relationship ends, but in fact from the beginning. I often found myself resisting this discussion with clients until midway through the treatment process, which never served myself or the client. Eventually, I learned to bring up termination at the beginning of the process and found that this discussion helped the client to have more clarity regarding the beginning, middle and ending of treatment. The timely discussion gave them time to emotionally prepare and assisted in reducing some of the grief relating to termination.
As a child, I moved around considerably and the same has been true of my adulthood. I remember when I left Southern California about eleven years ago that some of my friends expressed anger at me for leaving for the East Coast. I remember fighting a bit with a best girlfriend about something trivial right before I left. The truth was we had been joined at the hip for 15 years and we weren’t sure what the separation would mean for us. Rather than discuss the issue, we had a couple of cat fights to make the move easier. I also noticed that when she was feeling tearful and expressive, I was feeling cool and distant and when I was feeling scared and sad, she would be apathetic. If we were both feeling emotional at the same time, of course, we would have to confront the grief we were both feeling.
While I don’t have complete mastery in saying goodbye, or in some cases farewell for a time, I do know my intention is to show up for the experience. It may make it seem easier to create a diversion of some kind to make dealing with the goodbye easier, but it is a spurious strategy. A Course in Miracles offers us that no relationship ever ends (this may be disconcerting for some!).
I once work with a darling little boy named Charlie when I was an aide in a kindergarten setting. I was admittedly very attached to Charlie. It was obvious we both took the last day of school very hard but I tried to comfort him by telling him that we would carry each other in our hearts. About five years later, I saw him on a playground. As he ran by me playing ball with his friends he shouted, “Miss Jeanine, you are still in my heart.” This is the paradox of the goodbye, it may be painful but the truth is we take our loved ones with us wherever we go.
©Copyright 2008 by Jeanine Austin, Ph.D.. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry.
15 comments so far
This makes so much sense to me. There were times near the end of their lives when I saw my grandparents arguing over such silly things and it always totally baffled me. They used to be so loving and here they were spending the rest of their days (which were surely limited) arguing. They just did not know how they were going to be able to say goodbye to one another once the time came. This is a bittersweet reminder of how fragile life and love both can be.
Thanks so much for this. I had never given something like this ANY thought until I came across this article. This gives me little better insight into not only why older couples fight and argue but friends who are not so old as well. Sometimes we are all so afraid of what the future will hold than rather be hurt by it we would prefer to get the hurt over with by arguing and breaking a friendship down. Why is this the easier way for us to deal with things? I will never know but it is so logical that I am only sorry I was not given something to help me realize this sooner. Thanks.
When I cam across this article I had one of those real A-Ha moments. My wife had to go for an unexpected mammogram the other day because she had found a mass in her breast. I tried to be very loving and comforting but it seemed that the closer the date came for the test the more she pulled away from me. It left me baffled, like what was I doing wrong? The I came across this and realized that the pulling away and anger she must be feeling internally must be her coping mechanism, almost in preparation for finding something bad. Everything turned out just fine and benign, but this does give me more insight into the way we all deal with different things and how health scares can actually pull people apart.
I appreciate the work you did with this couple. I have found that with patients and with others, anger is easier to come out than sad and empathic feelings at times. I have worked with an elder in my practice and in the first 3 years he was very angry with his wife who had passed away when I began to see him. He would tell stories about their life together and he couldn’t find much to say that was nice. When the 4th year of our work came around, he began to really recognize that he felt his wife was not that bad, they didn’t always get along but now he missed her and felt the sad depressed part.
I’m thankful that I was able to experience this with him.
There were times in the treatment I would try to explore other experiences with his wife and it was always met with anger. Now he can talk about his life in more realistic terms and feelings. He is 95 years old, and I enjoy working with him. He is much more at ease now.
Suzanne
this makes so much sense to me. It’s like we don’t want to separate from our friends or loved ones and when we are mad, it’s easier for us. It’s like.. I’ll show them and we do things in haste without really thinking about it. I had a friend who lived in the same town as me.. she moved to another town, about an hour away. I was a little disappointed and when I didn’t hear from her, I got kind of angry, that she had made knew friends and I was no longer her “best” friend. I have told my husband many times that she must like them more than me because she never visits. The truth is.. I still consider her a good friend, but at the same time, feel betrayed
I have a friend who’s brother died back in December. He was mentally handicapped and before he died, he was very irritable with his mom, whom he lived with. His mom took very good care of him, seen to all his needs and yet his personality was very hateful toward the end. I am sure that my friends brother appreciated all his mom did for him and I believe he knew his time was up.
I think we tend to lash out to the people we love in desperate times because we know that they understand us and are closest to us and we are just in their pathway to do so. I have often heard of people lashing out to the ones they love. I also believe this is one way for them to communicate and they don’t want us to worry about them, and this is the only way, at the time they know what to do.
This makes me so sad because I know that I behaved in the very same way when we knew my dad was dying. I was so angry with him for what I felt was leaving me, that I guess I understood on a subconscious level that perhaps staying mad at him would make it easier for me when he was gone. But it has not. It has left me with nothing but regrets for the things I did not say or do while he was alive so I urge anyone out there who is going through this right now to put all of those angry feelings aside and use the time that you have left in a more loving and caring manner.
I love my wife dearly, yet I often pick fights with her for trivial things. can’t help mysef
Carolyn that story is so sad and yet I know it is not unique. I have seen people time and again turn away from the ones they love in the hope of warding off future pain. But this is not the way we shoukd deal with things like this. We should all strive to get better at confronting our demons and working to make them better. Ignoring it all only makes things worse in the long run as I am sure all of us already know.
What you said is very true. I don’t realize too. I had big fight with my ex when he was about to work in overseas. I don’t want him to go because I read in many places that distance relationship won’t last longer. I guess. I’m worried of losing him, that’s why I have created such a big fight and end up breaking with him. I never know about this termination process incurs. Thanks Jeanine for widening my eyes. Now, I’m a better person in tackling this issues.
Your article brought back plenty of poignant moments that I shared with my dad before losing him to cancer. He was fighting against pain and the fear that he wouldn’t survive and we were fighting the fear of losing him forever. It created many tense moments where we argued over his resistance to treatment and his anger at everything. I guess neither of us could put the recurring fear into words and things just became worse. I wish I had read your article earlier, I could have handled the situation much better….
Sometimes I wonder whether all this has something to do with seeing the light. Anyway I do remember my grandpa yelling at grandma so loud it woke the neighbours everyday. The day all was quiet was the day he passed away in the morning.
This makes me sad. The end of your life should be a happy time, a time of reflection upon all of the good you have known and the joy of having a family around that cares for you. Instead it is too often filled with steeling yourself against the inevitable of what is to come and I am sure that this more than almost anything else causes so many of the elderly to decline so rapidly in both their physical health as well as mental health. Perhaps this will give us all a better understanding of what many of them are going through and will help us to treat them more kindly as a result.
This article brings a lot of insight to me. im glad that I’m not the only one who has went through something like this. I feel so guilty getting mad at someone over the stupidest things when it really is just something so little.