The Falling Psychiatrist

Astrud smelled like heavy alcohol. Even though she balanced herself quite well on her feet, her speech was rambling and her eyes were unfocused.

"I was not a cat person and never wanted a cat. Sheba came to my door one day, so I gave her some food and milk. Then she kept coming back. Day after day. For 17 years."

Sheba was Astrud's black cat. Astrud installed a Cat Flap to give her the freedom of coming in and out of the house whenver she wished to. The cat was quite aloof. She stayed useful in doing her own business - catching moles, birds, or other small kinds, and never cared to purr to win attention.

"When she got old, she became quite affectionate, which was really not her usual self. She stayed indoor most of the times and preferred to sleep on my laps or by my feet. I guess she needed my company. She was a good cat even though I didn't even want to have a cat. But she came and she never left. And we grew old together."

Astrude caught herself repeating the part how Sheba came about. The sun was strong that day, so she went inside to retrieve her straw hat.

The straw hat was the exact same one that she wore 10 years ago when I first met her. Knowing that she was a retired Psychiatrist, I stuffed our conversations with questions about dreams and the unconscious and subconscious worlds, hoping that she would satisfy my appetite with her intellectual freudian analysis. Astrud never said much about those subjects. Even so, I believed in her and never doubt a second of her knowledge.

She had already continued talking when she walked out with her hat. Her voice faded in: "...not eating well and I knew she was sick. The vet couldn't save her. I couldn't save her. I held her on my laps, stroked her until her eyes closed and she stopped breathing. She was a good cat. How strange it is! I never liked cats before. Sheba came to me like a gift from God. I fed her and she stayed..."

"By the way, did you hear that Lou across the street fell and broke his hip last Wednesday? And Jackie Herman had a minor stroke?"

Oh Astrud, poor Astrud, why couldn't you confess what was really killing you? Not Sheba's death, not Lou's accident and not Jackie Herman's stroke, but your lifelong friend Gary's lost battle to cancer. You couldn't deal with the pain and you were too frail to face the truth, so this became the sole subject that you forbad yourself and anyone else to draw near. Perhaps you didn't understand why he was gone and resented the fact that he didn't want you by his side in his last months. It might have even crossed your mind that all these were only one big fat lie. So you talked about Sheba, which hurt you badly; Lou and Jackie, which worried you. But Gary, Gary, Gary - a name that you would from now on speak to no one of, but whisper in the deepest of your mind thousands, millions of times.

Standing alone in her garden with her straw hat and a glass of straight vodka in hand, Astrud seemed to be in deep thoughts. Her lifeless eyes gazed afar:

"Did I tell you about Sheba?"

Moon Fantasy

Fly me to the moon
and let me play among the stars.
Let me see what spring is like
on Jupiter and Mars.
In other words, hold my hand.
In other words, baby kiss me.

Fill my heart with songs
and let me sing forevermore.
You are all I long for,
all I worship and adore.
In other words, please be true.
In other words, I love you.

- written by Bart Howard

Fear

I study my hands closely:
The lines around each knuckle have grown

Complexity, they scream
Aging, they confess

Like a piece of crumbled-up paper
Destined to be abandoned in the wastebasket
Bearing the unbearable pain in its ugly creases

Since when did wrinkles creep onto my skin?
I fear that one day they would take me by force and conquer me
My hands would become foreign
So would my face my body

Promise me that you would then leave me be
Sulking in the wastebasket like the abandoned page
Any consolation would only cause agony
For the creases can not be smoothened
Even by the finest ironing.

"Oh God, there is no God."

"Are you religious?"

Simple and direct, the question caught me off-guard.

At age 87, Naomi's keen mind and big spirit compensated her ultra-petite body. She spoke four or five languages, although her German heritage often leaked from her accent: "Vat vas that vonderful muzic?" She had lived a long life, or several lives as she claimed and I believed, in which she experienced everything life had to offer, joy or sorrow.

"Are you religious?" She looked straight at me through her over-sized glasses. Those lenses immensely enlarged her eyes, at the same time magnified me in her vision.

I felt naked and transparent. I had to tell the truth.

"Yes." My voice was small and I felt the need to defend myself. "Well, somewhat, I guess." Then I was ashamed.

"Well, you see, I believe in the existence of God. But my ignorance to Christianity... um... There are too many things about this religion that just don't make sense to me. Yet." I went on and on about my experience with the religion, what I liked and disliked, about miracles and lies. I tried hard to make sense of things that came out of my mouth while Naomi just sat there silently, watching and listening.

The truth is, I didn't know where I stood in terms of religious believes, and I wanted to hide the fact that I still could not make up my mind after many years of questioning and searching. A strong force had been resisting me to believe, while the opposite seemed to be omnipresent in my subconscious, surfacing now and then when I thought that I had forgotten.

I fell in silence. It might have been an abrupt stop, but I didn't want to make a bigger fool out of myself by continuing to talk nonsense.

Naomi spoke:

"My father was a very nice man. He was a great father and a great husband. He always gave money to the poor and always went out of his ways to help others. And he believed in God and the goodness in God. He had done a large amount of charity work locally. We all loved him so dearly."

She took a deep breath and went on:

"I never understood how such a wonderful human being, a faithful, loyal child of God, would die in such a cruel way - he was murdered in the concentration camp. He was still quite young. Young and handsome. A loyal husband and a dear father of two. They took him and they murdered him."

Naomi failed to continue, as I found myself in a similar position. We just sat there across from each other. The clock was ticking and the tears were streaming.

"So I say, Oh God, there is no God."