A Fine Romance by Candice Bergen

Author:Candice Bergen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2015-04-09T16:00:00+00:00

During Louis’s illness, we reconnected at the depth we’d had in the first five years of our marriage. But getting through every day was like climbing a mountain. I was on call from early morning to late at night, getting Louis up, getting Chloe off to school, heading off to work, going back on duty the second I got home from work. Close friends would ask if I was talking to anyone during the period of Louis being ill. I was not. I was handling it. But just barely. Our house was in a permanent state of high alert. The constant and urgent priority was always Louis.

At night tears would spill from my eyes, waterworks with no control. I would sit in bed at night, hiding in the housekeeper’s room behind the kitchen. I slept on the sofa bed there, since Louis was now in a hospital bed—just washing my face with tears. I got it out in any way I could and I remember thinking, “I hope I don’t get cancer from this” because I felt so clobbered in such an unyielding way. I read the Bible in that room, and I’m not a Bible reader. I prayed. I was looking for support, something to soothe me, to buck me up. I was just treading water.

Even though I was fairly certain Louis wasn’t going to survive, I made totally irrational choices. Some odd, aggressive woman had somehow gotten my number; she worked for a half-baked doctor in Tijuana who could, she assured me, cure Louis with some vials of serum for $75,000. I actually stumbled along with the scheme until something or someone helped me come to my senses. That’s the danger of magical thinking; you’ll do anything to save the one you love. You’re at your most unguarded and vulnerable.

After a couple of months of Louis’s illness, I was testy. Worse, I was livid. I never expressed any anguish or sorrow. I never cried or complained: I just seethed. It was not pretty. The situation was so huge that I had to deal with it somehow. It wasn’t going away. My friend Connie said, “There’s this man who has had good results with a specific kind of therapy that brings up grief in people skilled in repressing it.” Perhaps I should give his primal scream therapy a try. So I went to visit the Warlock.

I drove to the little ranch house where the Warlock worked out of his garage, which he’d converted into an office. He was a tall, very powerful-looking man. We talked for a few minutes, then he told me to lie down on the couch tucked into the corner of the office. He covered me with a blanket and said, “Start breathing. I want you to take deep, deep breaths.” I don’t remember whether he said to scream, but somehow that simple action reduced me to a state of hysterics. I started taking deep, gulping breaths and then some mechanism released the grief. I started to sob and sob and sob at the top of my lungs.

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