Ghosts

It is Christmas. Almost. Here are three things I want to share with you.


1) Marianna has two very dear friends called Mike and Margaret. She’s only known the two of them for just over two years but the three of them couldn’t be closer. Even if you’ve known Mike and Margaret or Marianna for decades when you’re in the company of the three of them you’ll feel like a spare part. The love they have for each other is clear. It seems that even though ‘M and M’, as Mariana calls them, had three children and successful careers and lives what had always been missing from their lives was a small Greek woman. I think they now consider themselves to have four daughters. Marianna hasn’t seen them since the four of us met up as a surprise for her on her birthday in September. Mike called yesterday to briefly tell Marianna that Margaret has been in hospital for the past three weeks. Although a diagnosis hasn’t been confirmed it seems highly likely that she has pancreatic cancer. The prognosis isn’t good.

2) We don’t have a kitchen and so, because it’s Christmas tomorrow, we thought we’d treat ourselves to some extra special uncooked pre-prepared food and so made our first visit to the Waitrose store in Kenilworth. Whilst wandering around the aisles I spotted a face I was sure I recognised. Before my brain seemed to have registered that this was a former patient from my NHS days in Lincolnshire I said “Will?”. He turned and looked towards me but then carried on. I tried it a bit louder; “Will Simpson?”. He turned and then took a step towards me.

I’m sure you know what I do for a living. I’m sure you know that I fell out of love with it a long while ago. I would summarise the job as involving myself in the worst that human life has to offer. I have, sadly and worryingly, become quite immune to it. The client says “And two days later I returned to the forest, dug her up and had sex with her again” and I just nod, make a note and ask the next question. I should stress that Will was a mental health rather than a forensic client. He hadn’t killed, raped or robbed anyone. Perhaps it was because I was only about three years into my career when I met him or that we’re the same age or just that he was a little, lost boy in a man’s body looking to me to help him that he touched me. This is despite his stating in our first session that “99% of people are arseholes and I’m not sure about the other 1%. You’re probably one of the arseholes”. He ranted about how awful his childhood had been in our first few sessions and the physical and psychological torture he had received from his mother, then we did some constructive therapeutic work for many months and intermittently I tried to convince him that life was worth continuing with. He was rarely convinced. When my career took me away from the NHS our time together came to an end.

When he came towards me I reached my hand out to shake his and was close to tears. I could say that this was because of the injury I sustained to my back an hour so earlier, that it was because it was Christmas or because of the extortionate price Waitrose charge for the average item but I was tearful because I was so genuinely pleased to see him and to see him alive and looking well. “It’s Patrick Bodger. Do you remember me?”. I didn’t want to say “I was your psychologist” because he was with someone. He said “Of course, I remember you. You turned out to be one of the most important people in my life”. It’s not much of a career and I increasingly see myself as a hack but I’ll remember his words for a long time.

3) This evening, just a little while ago, I called my friend Paul. We haven’t spoken since Christmas Eve 2008 when Marianna and I happened upon him in Tesco in Wisbech. We’d been estranged for a couple of years at that time. Typically, Paul began the conversation as if we’d last spoken a few days previously;

“Hello Paul, it’s Patrick”

“Hello, mate, you must be hoping Kenny Dalglish will come and sort out the mess Roy Hodgson is making of your season”

I met him just after I’d turned twenty one. Even though he was, and still is, twenty years older than me we became firm friends based on shared interests and activities; music, playing our guitars with each other and in front of a number of others, supporting different football teams and silently watching matches, going to gigs, silently watching movies. When I asked him to be my best man at my wedding he told me that he’d done it twice before and both of those couples were now divorced. That made me laugh. It doesn’t seem so funny now. It was, unfortunately, the women in our lives and the tendency for all four of us to do things together that eventually meant that Paul and I saw less and less of each other. Something about the four of us and the things we did together didn’t work and the friendship died away instead of us realising that we could have just reverted back to watching football together or spending hours trying to figure out the chords to a tune by The Eagles and let our significant others do other things.

It may not be clear why I want to share these three things with you but I want to add this;

“Life is very short. People come and go from our lives so quickly. You must never miss an opportunity to let them know how much they mean to you”. (Dr Frasier W. Crane, 1993)