Dr. Jedidiah's Diary Episode #41. Ms. Norrison

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 # 41. Ms. Norrison

I had not seen her so grumpy and blunt since our weekly indoor HIIT class started at the local gym. Ms. Norrison was the last person you’d find bellicose or involved in an acrimonious bickering of any kind. When she gave me a cold look, which was very unusual of her, I thought she was no longer the charming lady that everyone in the class used to call “Ms. Merry-Go-Round”. Having an uncanny feeling that she’s showing totally different colors from her normal spirit, I was like ‘what is going on with Ms. Norrison? Could it be…  nah… She’s only 36. She must be just tired today.’ But I could tell she was not the lady of rhathymia anymore. The way she glared at me told me so.

 

Lauren, the instructor of the spinning class, was always full of vim and vigor and never stopped boosting our motivation in class. “Now, let’s kick it up a full notch and test your mettle. Alrighty, then let’s call it a day in 5 minutes!” Then all of a sudden, a mad voice from the back of the classroom turned everybody’s head. “No, I’m just gonna call it quits now, you heartless Chicana girl!” Lauren got dumbfounded at her words, but managed to finish the class. Uh-oh… it was a moment that I needed to bring Ms. Norrison to my clinic in any days soon. She had never ever been viewed as one of those clueless Beckies or Karens. So unlike the kind and soft-spoken Ms. Merry-Go-Round that we all knew. Although she did not ask me to talk over a cup of coffee, I had a strong inkling that I might need to take this matter into my own hands. I was not her family, but as a professional shrink who happened to be in her workout cohort every morning, I should reach out to her.

 

Ms. Norrison was a middle school teacher. All her students and her parents loved Ms. Norrison’s passion, love, and care for what she did. In her P.E. class, no kid felt like they’d be viewed as an incorrigibly clumsy or some lazy butt in following her fitness and sports program. She was taking care of every single student so that no one would feel left out because of their lack of mobility. That is why at-risk kids from broken homes had willingly come to see Ms. Norrison to talk with her. Sometimes in the corner of the school playground or in her car, students used to have an honest talk with their loving P.E. teacher and learn golden words of wisdom. The principal of her middle school also deeply appreciated Ms. Norrison’s heartfelt care for students until it happened. She did not show up in her class for a couple of days in a row without a word. Her close friends and other teachers from the school came to her house one by one, and she did not look crazy or sick at all. Ms. Norrison said she was getting a bit forgetful and should have called her school in sick, which never took place.

 

Since she was still coming to our HIIT class at the gym, I was able to get a chance to ask her out for dinner. found her sitting still in the rocking chair with hazy eyes. She was in the middle of eating her cold TV dinner. She was at a loss for words when I reminded her of our dinner date that night. Her half-done microwaveable entrée on the coffee table looked like the saddest meal to my eyes.

 

Ms. Norrison and I had seen each other for a year. I was always carrying medicines like Aricept or Exelon for her, but she never wanted to take them even after she admitted what she was going through. My beloved Ms. Merry-Go-Round did not want to break the invisible wall between her world and mine and others. I wished to cross to the other side of the barrier and bring her out of that haze but to no avail. Ms. Norrison wouldn’t let me hear her pain. She moved to her hometown in Memphis, and I had not heard from her since then on. To this day, I’ve asked myself every now and then, ‘Did I ever see it in her eyes? Did she know that I loved her even once before she had the early onset of Alzheimer’s?’

 

Each time I pass the frozen Entrée section in grocery stores, I still feel so bitter, sad, and down. TV dinners in the freezer are still such a painful reminder of sorrow in the back of my mind.

 

<Expressions>

   1.  bellicose: belligerent/ demonstrating aggression and willingness to fight.

   2.  uncanny: weird, strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way

   3.  rhathymia: carefree behavior; light-heartedness

   4.  to kick (something) up a notch: to make things more intense, exciting, or interesting

   5.  mettle: a person's ability to cope well with difficulties or to face a demanding situation in a spirited and resilient way

   6.  Becky / Karen: a certain type of privileged young White woman who exists in a state of racial obliviousness that shifts from intentionally clueless to intentionally condescending

   7.  inkling: a slight knowledge or suspicion; a hint

   8.  to take something (back) into one’s own hands: to take control of something : seek to do something that is the responsibility of others

   9.  at-risk: often used to describe students or groups of students who are considered to have a higher probability of failing academically or dropping out of school. The term may be applied to students who face circumstances that could jeopardize their ability to complete school, such as homelessness, incarceration, teenage pregnancy, serious health issues, domestic violence, transiency (as in the case of migrant-worker families)

   10.              to call in sick: To inform one's employer that one will be absent due to illness (real or feigned)  

   11.              hazy eyes: lackluster/indistinct eyes

   12.              to no avail: of no use/ ineffective