Dr. Jedidiah's Diary Episode#14: When Spring Comes Around...

Dr. Jedidiah’s Diary

Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single father who lost his wife to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his old perky self for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met hundreds of, thousands of people from various walks of life around all over the world. Meeting new people and listening to their stories outside his office have given him different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter groups or support groups for therapy. These people he has accidentally come across were the paths through which Dr. Jedidiah could look back on his own life, being truly honest with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue that has left him with some food for thoughts in life….or a fodder to justify his own mistakes in the past.

Episode #14. When Spring Comes Around…

Her name was Maria Collins. She was working as a cashier at the small liquor store in Harlem, and her life never seemed to be peppered with any kind of excitement or changes at all. As a monthly volunteer at the local shelter “The House of Hope”, Maria came to learn about my occupation and cautiously asked me if it’d be alright for her to consult me about her hardships in life. I didn’t figure out what made her seriously talk about her life with me, but I already found myself all ears to her story outside my office without charging her for my unofficial consultations.

Maria said her unmarried aunt Ellen was a war correspondent who had spent her life in heartless war zones where there was nothing but ear-splitting bomb explosions and rains of bullets every night and day. Each time she went away to the hellish territory, Maria’s mother cried herself to sleep at night, because there could be no such thing as a promise for her one and only sister to come back home in one piece. Years and years of being trapped – which was often described by aunt Ellen as “being intentionally planted or located” – inside those combat zones made her aunt look like phoenix to Maria and her mother….until the disheartening news of aunt Ellen’s death in the throes of reporting on the front line. Since Ellen was reporting from the middle East nations where civil war had never ceased, Maria and her mother wished to believe and hope Ellen would survive like phoenix under any harsh circumstances. After some time for her and her mom to simmer down, they started to get dubious of aunt Ellen’s demise in the country where hiding away from gunfire and sudden carpet bombing was all in a day’s work. Maria used to ask herself and me this question repetitively. “Did my aunt happen to be in the area that exploded by accident?” “Is there possibility that she was murdered by the government?” Maria was suffering from hearing aunt Ellen’s voice out of nowhere every night. She heard her say “I wanna come back home tomorrow. Just wait till I come to see you and your mom, Maria!”

I felt frustrated at my own incompetence in giving Maria, my dear friend, anything that could make her feel better than yesterday. Her aunt Ellen could either be killed like many other unlucky, fallen souls at a war zone or attacked by the disgruntled government that had hated her series of reports about the country pigeonholed as the most heinous hotbed of violence and tragedy in the world. All I could say to Maria was “When Spring comes around, you will be alright, ….and I bet so will your mother. Just let time heal the sore feelings inside of you and your mom, Maria.” Maria kept silence, not seemed to listen to me whenever I gave her that helpless and ineffective response. ‘God bless the mark! What am I saying or doing to this poor girl?’ Shame, shame, shame on this quackery.

When the fifth Spring came around since I first met Maria as a volunteer worker at the House of Hope, I heard from Joe – the janitor of the hallway – that Maria moved out of town for good. No one knew where she left for, but the last thing she said to Joe was “When Spring comes around, could I find hope somewhere else?” Had I been there when she said it, I could have felt another sad taste of bitterness in my mouth, because I still cannot find the right thing to say to Maria. If there’s one wish that I’m asked to make, it is just Maria and her mother are alive in peace somewhere, not came to an untimely end to be with Ellen in Heaven. As a shrink who knows that average suicide rate is the highest in a year when things start to bud, I have been so unnerved by Maria’s absence in my life.

Expressions

    

    1.   war correspondent: a reporter or commentator assigned to send news or opinions directly from battle areas

    2.   in one piece: safe and sound/  safely

    3.   phoenix: (in classical mythology) a unique bird that lived for five or six centuries in the Arabian desert, after this time burning itself on a funeral pyre and rising from the ashes with renewed youth to live through another cycle

    4.   to simmer down: to become calmer and quieter/ to chill

    5.   all in a day’s work: part of a normal job or activities on a daily basis

    6.   disgruntled: disappointed or annoyed about something

    7.   heinous: evil/ atrocious/ aggravated

    8.  quackery: bad medical treatment from doctors who are not very good at their job, or from people who cheat other people by pretending to be doctors