Twigs and Dead Leaves

Aaron entered my counseling office and almost scraped the top of the door jamb with his untamed curly hair. Seven-feet tall and lanky, he dropped down on the client sofa to face me and said, “Everyone wonders if I got a basketball scholarship.” 

“Well, did you?” I asked, leaning back like Freud, pulling out my notebook, pen in hand. I was a rookie mental health counselor, ready to record every clue to Aaron’s psychopathology.

With a sweet smile, he answered, “Well, yes, I did get a scholarship!” He had played for his University of Michigan team before traveling overseas in his junior year to play for a Swedish basketball league. 

We talked easily and he continued coming to sessions, every Friday morning at 10:00, week after week. At the beginning, we discussed many things, nothing therapeutic but all of it interesting: his family, his favorite books, poets, music, and movies. Then, about a month into therapy, he started talking about what was bothering him.

“I lived in Stockholm,” he began one sunny Friday morning session.

“Did you like the city?”

“Yes, except it got dark very early in winter.”

“What happened there? Do you want to talk about it?”

“Deena,” he said as if uttering her name explained everything there was to know about her. He continued, “We were really in love. After a few months of dating, I moved in with her.” He paused. “She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever met. She spoke English with a sexy Swedish accent, and she was a brilliant graphic artist.”

“What did you enjoy doing together?”

“We read our own poetry to each other; we both loved to write.”

“Sounds like she was a special lady.” 

“We also loved hiking, especially in the Nacka Nature Reserve. We would get up early, take the T-bana out of town to the park.”

“Oh, how wonderful!”

“We talked about everything on those walks. We even made love in the forest. Once, I remember an impression of twigs and dead leaves on her naked back as she was getting dressed.” He smiled then said, “I brushed them off and thought it was kind of like a temporary tattoo...” he paused “...like I almost had her forever.” I waited through his silence.

Now staring at the floor, “On one of those hikes, I was bitten by a tick. That changed everything.”

“A tick?” I asked. No response, he only gazed at his large feet enclosed in sandals. “What do you mean?”

“It took several months but I started going fucking crazy, excuse my language.” He looked up, his blue eyes blazing. “My poetry, journaling; I couldn’t think of one word to write. My emotions were frozen like a computer screen.”

“Was it Lyme disease?”

“Yes, it was Lyme disease,” he said. “A doctor here in the states confirmed that’s what it was. He told me Lyme can develop into a neuropsychiatric disease.” 

“Oh, I see,” I said.

He continued, “The person I used to be had disappeared. Deena said I spent hours just staring into space and I stopped communicating. I couldn’t sleep. She finally asked me to move out, said she couldn’t live with me anymore. I flew back home, tried to get into college again, but my brain couldn’t handle it.” Silence. I didn’t know what to say.

“One morning,” he said, “I deleted all my online journals, all my poetry from my computer.” His face blanched, an empty piece of paper.

“You had backup files?”

“No. Everything’s gone. Forever.” 

 “I’m so sorry,” I said. There was a long pause. “How is the disease affecting you now?” 

“I feel poured out,” he said, “like how you dump leftovers into the trash. I don’t feel anything.” 

“Are you depressed?”

“No, not really.”

“Are you angry?”

“Who should I be angry with?” He looked up, now his gaze focused on a still life painting behind me. “I can’t be angry with Deena. I wouldn’t want to live with me either. I can’t be angry with the tick. Or with myself. Or with God. Shit happens.”

“Yes,” I agreed with him. “Shit happens.”  

When our session ended, I encouraged Aaron when he returned home, to write about his feelings. He was reluctant.

“I’ve tried this before. There’s a void in my head, an emptiness.”

“Just try,” I said. “Just try.” We shook hands and he ambled down the hall to the exit. I watched him go, tall, agile, sinewy like a big cat. Then I called out, “Don’t give up, Aaron.” Without turning around, he gave me a thumbs up and the door closed behind him.

After Aaron left my office, I did some research on the computer about the affects of Lyme Disease on mental health and learned his doctor was correct. I read that in severe cases of the disease, patients might experience sleep disturbance, irritability, or depression.

The next morning, Daniel, my clinic director, met me in the front lobby.

“Come into my office,” he said, his face ashen. I was suddenly afraid. This had never happened before. He closed his door and motioned for me to sit down.

A sizzle in the air like heat lightning. “Aaron committed suicide last night.” My heart dropped like a kite that loses air, flimsy, twirling, crashing to the ground. 

.·゜゜·　　·゜゜·．

Daniel drove us to the Celebration of Life for Aaron several weeks later. It was held at his former high school. 

“I can’t stay for the whole thing,” Daniel said.

“Me neither,” I answered. “I have a 1:30.”

The bleachers were full of students and teachers. We found a place on the end of a row. I observed Aaron’s mother sitting up front facing us, on a metal chair. I had met her only once, a loving, passionate mother. Behind her, a white screen. I realized there would be videos of Aaron’s short twenty-one-year life. 

The room was bursting with chatter, a mish mash of words and laughter bouncing off every hard surface in the room, echoing back onto itself, then circling around again. It was an acoustical hailstorm.

The video presentation began. Films of Aaron as a child, roasting marshmallows over a campfire, as a toddler, hugging his new baby sister, as an adolescent, executing tricks on his skateboard, on the basketball court, scoring the winning basket.

I closed my eyes. Imagine: Finding Aaron in a field, his large body slumped over the steering wheel of his car, still running and already dead for many hours. Or discovering him in his lonely basement, a rope around his neck. Or his broken body in a pile after pulling the trigger on his father’s gun.

Imagine: After Aaron’s death, his fingers, brittle like twigs, his sinewy muscles, dried like dead leaves. 

Imagine: Aaron’s seven-foot body, his femur, long as a rake, his spine, the length of a flagpole. How would they pack all those lily-white crumbling bones into a normal man’s coffin?

Aaron’s high school Principal stepped to the podium. He rambled on about what a great student Aaron had been. With amazing courage, his mother rose, walked to the microphone, spoke of her son, his sweetness, intelligence, talent as an athlete. 

After more videos, Daniel motioned we had to leave.

On the drive back, we were quiet until I asked, “Was there anything I could have done, Daniel? Could his death have been prevented?”

“Did he tell you he was going to take his own life?” Daniel kept his eyes on the road.

“No, never once.”

“Our clients, from time to time, will commit suicide.”

“But why?” I asked, tears welling up. “Did I do something wrong?”

 “Elizabeth, believe me, there are no magical or hidden signs someone wants to die.” 

“He said he felt nothing,” I said. 

There was a pause. “I see,” he said.

Daniel pulled into the clinic parking lot. Our clients were waiting for us in the lobby, fresh new puzzles to dissect, analyze, and piece together again. 

Walking to the entrance, a gust of wind blew, sending brittle twigs and dead leaves around out feet in out-of-control unending circles.

Photo by Ellen Sollinger Walker