Dr. Jedidiah's Diary Episode #58. Demi was not an ephemeral plume in my life.

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 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 58. Demi was not an ephemeral plume in my life.

When I lost my wife Demi, I felt totally bereft and thought I’d never find anything in this world that could bring me back to my old effervescent self. Demi’s and my mutual friend Doug, who had been our church buddy, asked me one day how come I had not showed up at the church for more than three months. I was not in the mood for a babble about my becoming a spotty churchgoer. More strictly, I started to find pastor Greg’s preaching, hymns, and prayers quite staid and meaningless. I kept silent, and Doug said “I know you’re not a renegade. You’re in deep despair now, right?” My silence must have made him think that I was trying to sidestep his questions or agreeing with him on whatever he said.

 

Well, actually I was zoning out most of the time back then, finding nothing in the world either exciting or lachrymose. Wind, rain, clouds, flowers, birds perched on my old tree in the backyard meant no longer a moment of peace or happiness to me. Demi’s absence in my life shrouded every corner we used to be together with inexplicable sense of emptiness. She was such a passe-partout in my life with which I dared to explore the world in happiness. Now that Demi was gone, I lost a huge adminicle to my strength or will to live. Prozac or Zoloft that I had often prescribed to my patients did not work magic for me. Raucous music or weekend parties were not a rollicking solution to me at all. I wasn’t able to find answers or solace in the library or at my favorite bookstore in the neighborhood. Hundreds of my trail shoes had to hibernate on the shoe rack, waiting to be picked up some day. My teenaged kid was a poor thing that lost both his beloved mama and this depressed daddy as well. Seeing my own son losing his emotional anchor cut like a knife inside of me, but there was nothing I could ever try to change the situation. I realized I was hopelessly trapped in the most intractable net of frustration.

 

It was late afternoon when I happened to spot a couple of shiny feathers some birds left behind in the trail while I was listlessly taking a stroll. That was where Demi and I would go for a walk from time to time. I picked up one, two, ….and all the feathers under each tree. For some reason I couldn’t figure out, those shiny bird feathers caught my eyes and soothed my sorrow instantly. Demi used to say she wished to be born again as a bird if there were such a thing as an afterlife. I was gradually seeing some hope that I would come back to my life, believing that Demi wanted to save me through these bird feathers strewn in my daily promenade. Since then on, I have been into creating a bricolage work using the feathers collected from the trail. I breathe again. I hum again. I smile again. What took me so long to learn that Demi has never left me?

 

*picture source: https://www.etsy.com/it/listing/581254803/feathers-beautiful-colored-bird-feather  & https://www.aliexpress.com/i/32810876950.html)

 

 

Expressions

 

1.  bereft (of something): deprived or robbed of the possession or use of something —usually used with of

 

2.  effervescent: lively or bubbly

 

3.  babble: (noun / verb) noisy quarrelsome chatter or stubborn arguing

 

4.  spotty: irregular/ not consistent

 

5.  staid: old-fashioned and humorless

 

6.  renegade: deserter from one’s faith

 

7.  lachrymose: tending to cause tears

 

8.  passe-partout: Something, such as a master key, that permits one to pass or go at will

 

9.  adminicle: anything that aids or supports

 

10.             rollicking: exuberantly lively or amusing

 

11.             intractable: hard to control

 

12.             bricolage: something constructed or created from a diverse range of available things