Help After Death

Two weeks ago today I found out my therapist of eight years, Paul, had passed away after a battle with cancer. I hadn’t seen him in over a year; I didn’t even know he was ill. Suddenly many anxieties that had long since become irrelevant came rushing back to me. I missed my dog more than anything in that moment. For a few minutes, I experienced a wave of stress, the likes of which I hadn’t had in a long time. Will my mom and brother ever get along? What happens when I’m not there to save his ass? Then I thought, ‘How will I ever go to the Coffee Bean again?’

My sessions with Paul typically consisted of a game of chess as we talked over any new events, and a walk to the Coffee Bean which might be filled with me talking about not-always-relevant topics or him trying to find potential stressors in my life. When I had this thought of being at a Coffee Bean and getting sad thinking of Paul, his words echoed back at me, “Dude, it’ll be fine. It doesn’t have to be a big deal.”

I’m not sure if it was because of the alcohol in my system at the time or the fact that I was with people, but it took me until the next day to have the realization that Paul was still helping me after all this time. He probably is still helping a lot of people from beyond the grave. That day was rough. It was Veteran’s Day so there was no class, and I spent the day rolling around on my bed, unable to escape from one haunting thought: all he did was help people. That’s all he did. That was his entire life.

Paul was a psychotherapist and high school history teacher. He believed in organization and hard work, and he was certainly a main influence who instilled the importance of these on me. I won’t try to list all the ways he helped me; there are far too many to count. He was 63 years old. I miss him tons.