Free at Last

Our very last day of CPE, we turned in our badges and keys and got to leave early. In the evening, one of our peers had us all over to his place to relax and eat. The next day, a Saturday, I was planning to do this, that and the other—making good use of every single second, as I have been doing for 15 months—and then realized I didn’t particularly have to do anything that day. I could do it Monday! Or Tuesday! Or Wednesday! Instead it became a napping and reading day. Ahhhh!

On Sunday, Ann and Tom and I saw Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, at Berkeley Rep, which I loved. The show begins with a mockup of the front of the Fox Theatre in Detroit, which is where Chris Cornell played his very last show.

The following week, I was on jury duty but didn’t have to report on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. On Monday, I went downtown so my periodontist could remove the dressing over the surgery and review his handiwork. I was a little afraid to see what was under the dressing, but when I looked at it later at home, I felt pleased by the meaty, bulky redness of this gum graft. Things definitely appear to be shored up.

I did a pretty good job of getting nine hours of sleep nearly every night that I was in CPE, and of stretching each morning for 30 minutes and meditating for 45 minutes. Toward the end, there were more and more days when I did a token 10 minutes of sitting or even had to skip stretching altogether, but on the whole, this all went pretty well. I figured that once CPE was over, I would most certainly do all of these things every day, but it has been just the opposite. It turns out that maybe the hardest thing about CPE is when there’s no more CPE. That absolutely inflexible commitment was a reliable backbone for my entire program of activities. Now that it’s gone, I feel somewhat adrift, but maybe the most disrupting factor is that now I do different stuff at different times every day. My routine has vanished.

I also thought I would dispatch the bulk of my ignored-for-a-year to-do list right away, but in fact, tasks that must be done are only proliferating: stuff for County Hospital, stuff for the Very Fantastic Medical Center, stuff for applying to school, stuff for my eventual application for board certification as a chaplain, including obtaining endorsement from my faith group.

On Wednesday, I went to County Hospital for IS (individual supervision) with our leader, Clementine, and she said she had been thinking about how I might make good use of this period of training. She said it could potentially be an “easeful” time, or maybe I could move in the direction of my interests and learn some new things. Learning some new things had never crossed my mind, but she made it sound rather appealing.

The rest of my group is brand-new to chaplaincy, and so they will not be assigned to an ICU or to the ED, but Clementine said I can potentially work in those areas, or maybe I would like to work with the palliative care team, or with the prison-psych patients. All of those sound enticing. She also said maybe I can help with teaching duties. I felt inspired after our meeting, and touched by her generosity.

On Thursday, I had to go to the Hall of Justice at 8:45 a.m., where I found myself in a room with about 200 other people for jury selection for a five-week trial. Like half the people in the room, I filled out a form requesting to be excused due to hardship and sat through several rounds of hearing other people’s names called. I wrote on my form that my only income is from a part-time per diem job that will start in a couple of weeks and that I am the sole member of my household.

I had worked myself into somewhat of a frenzy—I just got a new job! I cannot be on a five-week jury!—when finally my name was called. Free at last! But also feeling slightly guilty, since I could have told my new boss that I need to work every Sunday for the next five weeks, and I could have done my volunteering at County Hospital on Fridays, since the judge said the trial would happen Mondays through Thursdays only. And I could have been a little bit late for Wednesday night training at County Hospital every week. It would have been five crappy weeks, but not the end of the world.

I walked to the soup kitchen to volunteer for the first time in a year or so, and found it not very enjoyable. I’ve become slightly allergic to being asked, by nearly every person I encounter, “Where have you been? Really? Where was your internship? What are you going to do next? Are you moving to New Mexico???” Partly it’s just the irritation of being asked the same things over and over, but there’s some deeper and not so constructive psychological thing there, too: I like to share news, not have it extracted. I notice a similar dynamic with money. I like to offer it freely, and hate to be asked for it.

I also felt abashed by all the pairs of eyes trained on me. Maybe I’ve become more used to dealing with people one on one. I found it a little difficult to have 50 people, mostly men, staring at me at every moment.

And, of course, I missed F. terribly. That is where we met. I could so clearly picture him sitting in his customary seat, with his art materials (and three or four admiring women) surrounding him. I kept glancing at that spot as if looking at it often enough would magically cause him to appear, but it didn’t work, and looking every two minutes at the front gate also didn’t. But I know I’ll get used to being there again and will eventually stop hoping he’ll appear.

I dreamed that we made a plan to meet up weekly. In the dream, I thought, “This is great! I’ll get to see F. every week.” Then I thought, “But what if something goes wrong? What if he gets angry at me? Maybe it would even be dangerous for me to spend time with him. Maybe I’d better tell him I’ve changed my mind.” In the dream, I felt frightened about what would happen when I told F. that I didn’t want to see him every week after all. It was remarkably similar to a thought process that could occur in waking life. When I woke up, I was relieved that it had been a dream and that we parted nearly a year ago. But I still feel sad about it.