I’m living on my sailboat working on it on weekends when I’m not sailing it. I love getting out whenever I can.
When Gilbert came into my life I moved in with Laura for the initial months of house training. Those were joyful times. This little bundle of love and our walks and talks as a doggy family. We had so many great meals. I was riding my Harley to work with Gilbert on my bike. At first he was in a sling under my arm before he graduated to his on box on the back of the bike.
At work Aim would have this little bundle of love at her desk sometimes. At other times he’d be in my office. So many of the patients loved him. The offices and neighbours would love to see Aim, a gentle Buddhist, be dragged about the community by this little guy. She knew nothing about ‘leading’ a dog. He immediately dominated her and took her where he wanted to go on walks. Wagabaga Dog Store was a block away, one of Gilbert’s favourite trips. Other dogs were at a daycare there. The owner laughed as we talked of Aim’s being dragged there for Gilbert’s visits. She’d be running behind him. He grew strong pulling Aim about the neighbourhood. Joanne, not surprisingly having a dog herself, became alpha male in their pack and Gilbert behaved himself when he walked with Joanne but he loved Aim more. If Laura was Gilbert’s mother then Aim was his girlfriend. I was definitely top dog but the older he got the more I became the room mate and friend.
For decades I had season’s tickets to Pacific Theatre. Ron Reed is one of the greatest writer’s and directors and actors, I’v ever know. Year after year I was there in that tiny theatre seeing the most inspirational works by the country’s greatest talents. I’d had season’s tickets to several theatre companies at one time but it was only the Pacific with their high minded drama and great sense of humor that kept me returning year after year. It was very convenient when Laura lived down the street. We’d have great meal’s at Max and attend the theatre. When I took courses at UBC I’d been able to drop Stuart and now Gilbert off at her place on the way. It was just a little bachelor but it served us so often. It also served her cousins and sister as their place to stay in town. Gilbert loved the little back yard.
A highlight of my life was joining the Canadian Authors Association. It was a monthly meeting but the best was meeting Bernice , Bob,Jean and Ben. I loved being on that board and also on the Board of the Drug Prevention Network.
I’d been on the Board of the Blue Water Sailing Association being a watch keeper. With Laura’s help, we raised revenue for Currents the offshore sailing magazine. We loved Perry who was there in early days. I’d been attending Wilderness Medicine conferences in the early days of that organization. Sailing solo in winter to Hawaii was an award winning event. I did so enjoy that years awards night.
When I was asked to be on the board of the Canadian Author’s Association I so honoured to meet with these great writers. I’d been writing for various publications over the years obtaining a number of awards writing for the Medical Post regularly. In medical school I’d actually had a column in the Winnipeg Sun. I’d put out one poetry book and now with the help of Ben would get another poetry book published. The launch was just a great excuse for a party. The girls were all such fun. I loved the readings. I still enjoy that book. I wanted to ‘know’ how to self publish a ‘text’ so with the help of Bernice I wrote the book Psychiatry and Addiction.
After hearing a presentation at Canadian Authors I began my blog, Williamhaywriter.blogspot.com. I thought that it would be an excellent means of maintaining digital copy for ‘cut and paste’ books in the future and the ideas for books and writing.
My blog Williamhaywriter became 5 blogs in one. I’ve been so often told to separate it but I like the hodge podge and really think I’m doing my ‘lions share of the work’, I’m living and working and writing about it, so enough. The unexamined life is not worth living,said Plato. Well, my life was examined.
The purpose of the blog was as follows:
1. I wanted a journal. I had been through a divorce in which my ex had stolen my journals and I wanted to keep my personal writing safe but essential having it public and transparent. I have kept a journal since I was 16. I’d met a famous artist whose wife in spite and drug addicted fury had destroyed a hundred of his canvases, works in progress and many finished. A million dollars loss as it were. But the courts don’t see beyond their nose and the aim was to punish men for divorce where historically marriages were about family and children were tools and not toys. Now I wanted my journal safe. I had also had my office journals stolen by my crystal meth addicted lying skank secretary whose lies served the nefarious underworld and also interfered with my work with several agencies. When she stole my confidential files and my office daytimers I notified the police. They sent a policeman out and she said. “Of course I’ve taken all that stuff. I’m not giving it back and if you don’t go away I ‘ll say you sexually harrassed me too.” That’s duly recorded and the police in terror or the lying woman of today never got my journals back. So there I was years of work, years of private correspondence all exposed and the state unwilling to catch, prosecute or even stand up to the self admitted criminals. The quasi legal burocratic agencies were even worse increasingly aligning themselves with the criminal agents. So faced with years and hours of theft and destruction of the ‘external’ hard drives of my life by two women with drug addiction and a castrated society, I thought I’d like to keep my journals of ideas and activities in a digital place where they were least likely to be stolen. I could also make back ups and copies. So that was the first consideration. A writer’s journal. All those little black note books I’d carried around with me in high school and university, all those notes and quotes and observations would no longer be on paper and no longer be filed in a storage locker box or stolen by demon possessed women but would have some security in one place
2. I’d learned publishers wanted evidence that we as writers were ‘modern’ and used the net and social media. I ‘d spent weeks learning web page design and put up my own web page at the time. I’d been a head of the times early days of computer when I hacked and enjoyed the whole proto internet experience. Now I was rapidly falling behind with new languages but took the time to study these and apply them. I’d learn how to create web pages and blogs and teach countless patients how to do this to keep in touch with family, have business and extend their social lives. I’m so pleased looking back at the artists and writers I helped to get their work out. I would have patients who wrote for New Yorker, Science magazine and various other journals and it was a direct consequence of therapy. I was actually envious of the success I saw working those years with Aim and Joanne. I was blessed to know so many people who with help would go on to be able to find their greatness. I felt like I’d had the privilege of polishing diamonds. At one time three of my patients had hits on the radio and I couldn’t seem to turn it one without hearing their creations. I loved Cameron’s idea that mental illness could result from blocked creativity. With my blog I clearly could show a publisher if I ever wanted that that I was indeed ‘prolific’ and that I was a ‘worker’. The new publishing world was about the artist not the work. The money was following those who were workers not the one shot product. I could now if I wanted to show an investor what I did, show that I indeed knew the art and game of writing.
3. Travels with Gilbert. Since Gr 3 I’d loved writing travel stories. Bicycling across Europe I’d written daily of the sites I’d seen, the cobblestone and palaces. I just loved recording these experiences. I”d been the high school photographer and had a job on the local paper doing photography having my own dark room as a teenager and just continued to take pictures. I loved writing about sailing on the west coast and as well, offshde I’d be paid for my writing and my photography. I’d approach these as professionally as I could and now enjoyed having a place to put my travel stories and pictures.
4. I wanted to be able to ‘advertise’ the great work of others. Publicity is really important for those people who are ‘creators’. Mostly the ‘critics’ are the superior ones. I wanted a place where I could ‘celebrate’ others works by providing positive criticism, support and encouragement and just all those warm fuzzy things that make good people keeping on ‘trekking’. So I used my blog to record whenever I found a great movie, book, product, car whatever. I gave ‘free publicity’ to those I felt so deserved it.
5. I wanted a place where my thoughts on Psychiatry and Theology could be recorded. In a review of my written journals once I found that I’d been struggling with the same issues since adolescent, “why do bad things happen to good people’, ‘what is normal’, ‘what is saniety’, ‘what is it to be a Christian’. What is psychosis”. What is reality? What is addiction? This whole ‘ideas’ section, mental meandering, personal journaling, ideas and conflicts and struggles. I wanted this out there where I could see a ‘record of the themes’. I’d not made a lot of progress in some areas. I see I’ve continued to struggle with institutional corruption and abuse of power by authorities and justice and morality and ethics. I have read all the great philosophers of the classics and theologians on these topics and even studied bioethics only to have the most unethical individual require me to study it more which was okay with me because I’d done 2 years of Community medicine when these very issues were the de rigo and the grandiose individual had simply only a kindergarten notion of the topic yet they had a gun and that was the limits of their ethical and moral development.
The Canadian Authors Association was a joyful network. I’d love taking writing courses with Betsy Warland and Susan Juby. I’d meet the most extraordinary and funny professors from the Vancouver Film School. I’d have these writer and producer and artist friends and just enjoy their company. There was no ‘censorship’. It was so different from ‘government’. The confidence and ingenuity of these creative people was a joy. I’d meet Lucia Frangione and marvel at the breadth of her mind. Bernice was such a romantic in her writing but so down to earth and practical in person. I loved these highly competent artists who also paid the taxes and had families they supported. I loved Margot, and Kathleen and all the writers I’d meet in the great community of writers and artists in Vancouver. I loved dining with them.
I’d go for dinner with Prime Minister Harper and feel good with the world knowing such a brilliant and good man was in charge of the country.I’d spent a day with Prime Minister Turner years earlier and come away with the same experience of admiring the leadership. When I met PM Chrétien I was equally impressed by what a tough experienced leader we had. When I met Pierre Trudeau the summer I was the Youth Parliament representative I had that sense of being in the midst of a rock star character but also thought he was weak and effeminate and had a snake like hand shake. He was smart though in a clever cunning way . I remember thinking that he was terribly intelligent and liking that. I got caught up in the Trudeau mania of the time because I was drinking and smoking dope. When I stopped drinking and smoking dope 22 years ago so much of what that guy was selling lost it’s appeal. When I was paying taxes I began to watch what was being done with my money and horrified at what I was coopted into supporting.
I’d lunch with an amazing Anglican Queen’s counsell and learn the history of law in Canada. “I felt clean and good as a lawyer until Trudeau began to introduce his whole series of social laws which then made the courts a cultural referee. It was wrong. So much that should have been decided in the democratic forum became dictatorial.. As a lawyer, I felt more and more dirty about my profession. “. He taught me so much about history. Kind of Mondas with Moray except he sailed and liked to go for coffee with me and look at the sea.
Dr. George and I would have our wonderful grounding, sharing uplifting, collegial story telling « sole food » dinners at Michel’s then head off for more wisdom at Whitcliff.
Dr. Philip Ney would take me under his wing. I was so impressed with his great mind and great heart. He was a Christian Child Psychiatrist who had a PHD in psychology and was the back bone of the pro life movement in British Columbia. I’d independently seen a dozen women who had had untreatable depression, chronic sadness and disability and in psychotherapy they’d ‘blurted’ out this horror at their abortions. I’d done abortions and knew that they weren’t anything but killing a baby. I know when I killed a fish, a deer or a moose that I’m ‘killing’. All the politically correct lies can’t change that. I’d actually thought my first abortion would be like taking out a tumor but it wasn’t.
I remember another doctor saying he did his last abortion when he felt the baby ‘clinging to his mother and fighting being scraped out of his home.’
Well, these women had spontaneously in the course of therapy with no ‘direction’ from myself begun speaking and crying about their having abortions. So much of chronic depression is ‘complicated grief’ and yet the idea of the pharmaceutical industry was that it was all just ‘Prozac deficiency’. Rarely it really is that but despite the analogy of the ‘reductionist psychopharmacologist’ people, brains aren’t another ‘pancreas’. So I’d listened and there would be this outpouring of grief and quite miraculously we’d work through the self loathing and hatred that was bottled up under the pus of this emotional abscess. They’d be well for the first time in decades and stay well.
I’d always leave people who had had depression on some antidepressants but the therapy had changed their lives. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Prozac, it was a break through in psychiatry akin to the finding of penicillin but it wasn’t the end all or be all of psychiatry which was about the ‘mind’ though the money in the industry was in ‘pushing drugs’. I’m happy to be a ‘drug salesman’ and a ‘representative’ for the amazing pharmaceutical industry but I’m not a ‘drug pusher’ and I’m not going to sell you a sports car because I make more commission when it’s clear you need a truck. If I’m ‘selling’ anything it’s mostly ‘life’. I often think of myself as the ‘complaints department for life’ and say in the next life I’m returning as a talent scout. For decades I’ve been shown people’s ‘worst song and dance’ while the talent scout gets to see peoples ‘best song and dance’. Mostly I say I fix broken Ferraris, some need an overall ,while some need only a tune up.
I’ve really been blessed to have so many amazing patients and be able to help them over a hump. I love the metaphor of the ‘knots’ or freeing the log jam. Too many of the counsellors I’ve known have seen their job as ‘reparenting’ without realizing that they are infantilizing adults and creating ‘codependencies’ for profit. I don’t ‘parent’ patients. Doing surgery I was ‘parental’ but in therapy I’ve always been adult to adult in the Transactional Analysis model. This says each person has a mode of Parent , adult and child. The difficulty with the College of Physicians and Surgeons and other government structures is that they are rigid hierarchies and attract ‘parent child’ sorts. Ferguson has written extensively in his latest book about the networks and hierarchies.
The ‘civil’ service was indeed a parallel to the ‘military’ service. It’s dictatorial, authoritarian, rigid and yet attracts people who have not acknowledged their unresolved childhood conflicts with authority. In the military ‘authority’ is clear but in the ‘civil’ service it’s all intrigue and passive aggressive.
Professionals by contrast have at their core as the ‘Prince among Princes’. I’m reading the Magna Carta again because it’s apparent that a lot of the world hasn’t evolved to where the Magna Carta occured. Following that was the French Revolution and then the American Revolution. I love reading Jefferson and Plato but today the ‘sound bite’ is the extent of peoples general knowledge. I’m literally appalled at the ignorance of history and the propaganda and rewriting of history especially in today’s media. Democracy is certainly under attack on all fronts.
Communist dictatorship is such a contrast to even Fabianism which gave rise to the Union movements. Professionalism has been destroyed by licensing bodies that no longer respect the university and university training. Fundamentally dictatorial they are threatened by autonomy. In their increasing inferiority and fear, lost and out of control, they strive for more dominance and controlling. They applaud them selves moving deckchairs on the Titanic. They’ve become a deeply evil pawn of a greater evil dictatorship, the destruction of the ‘decentralized power’.
The democracy and basic capitalism are ‘decentralized’ and place the ‘power’ in the hands of the people. This is a threat to the government worker who thrives on control given their fundamental ‘inferiority complex’. The independent ‘professional’ was judged not on the sillies like political correctness dictates but on their ‘product’. The architect had a building that didn’t fall down. Doctors reduced morbidity and mortality. Excellence in the true sense before post modernism and deconstructionism and cultural Marxism destroyed ‘truth’ and returned ‘divide and conquer’ tribalism, was the measure of the professional . Today a ‘professional ‘ is one who wears a suit.
My patient said that she was being rejected by her lesbian friends because she’d not had a lover in years. “They say « I’m not a lesbian but I’ve just not met anyone I want to sleep with since my lover died.” It was around the time that LGBT was becoming popular and dominant. They’d been rejected when gays were not ‘trendy’ but rather persecuted. AT the height of the Aids epidemic the persecution had been horrible but since the miraculous advances in anti virals and the triple treatment of HIV infection had stopped STD’s from being associated predominantly with the gay community and the gay community had moved away from the drug and alcohol and underworld scene, things had changed remarkably. LGBT was now ‘in’.
I asked a patient who was a major ‘trendsetter’ and political figure in the community. “When gays were completely out and heterosexuals were totally in, it seemed like if a person sucked one cock they were rejected by the heterosexuals and immediately adopted by the homosexuals.”. The stats showed that 2-3 % were mostly gay and Dorothy Bea’s work Macho men and fluffy women.showed that 10% who would rather die than ‘Switch’ in the heterosexual males, heterosexual females, and homosexual males and homosexual female groups. There was a 30% ‘opportunistic group that under duress had a ‘default’ position. So I asked «’now that ‘gays are in ‘how many ‘cocks’ (so to speak) must a person suck to be considered ‘gay’? ‘
As I knew he’d enlightened me , he answered. “You don’t have to suck any cocks anymore, darling, it’s where you shop.”
When a person is in terror they mutiny and demand the helm. When a person is calm they gravitate to the place where they personally are most suited. Division of labour and specialization have resulted in the paradoxical notion that ‘the best leader is one who doesn’t want to be a leader’. So many in the hierarchy today are their not to ‘serve’ but because of perks and a need for ‘control and dominance’. This occurs in dictatorship and as corruption rises in systems.
I’d have these corporate leaders and brilliant men and women ‘with it all’ and they’d discuss with me ‘what next’. ‘What is the meaning of life’. What is purpose’. I’d walk with them on the journey. I loved seeing PHD’s who were bullied in their workplace make the decision to leave and go to the competitor only to be highly successful in a non toxic workplace.
I was working a lot as always with PTSD and more with refugees and trauma victims. My sailing colleague after a heart attack left the busy demanding practice and became involved with refugees so I’d begin to see torture victims and people who were truly escaping persecution’s, not the ‘economic migrants’ of today but these people who were victims in the truest sense.
I’d meet the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu and know the measure of greatness and thank God that my own trials were not at the level of Tibetan genocide or prisoners of religious jails in the Middle East where rape and torture were apparently normal. I’d hear first hand stories that were increasingly at extreme variance with the ‘journalism of CBC”. I’d see the survivors of the Cambodian genocide and was blessed to befriend a Jewish psychiatrist who had survived Auschwitz.
It’s one thing to read one of the greats psychiatric texts of all times “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankl but it was a wholly extraordinary experience to dine with a psychiatrist who had survived that nightmare. I’d also be blessed to know and share with the most amazing West Vancouver psychiatrist Dr. Millar who wrote Omnipotent Child but had previously been a spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain.
I’d also have the amazing benefit of lunching and discussing ideology, theology, philosophy, ethics and morality and politics with Dr. Sam , the great Jewish mensch of a psychologist.
Meanwhile I was working 12 hour days and on weekends increasingly doing medical legal work because my patients commonly were involved in trauma and that involved the legal system .I’d see first hand the failure of the Family Law system and it’s sacrifice of children to the rapacious greed of the courts and the anger of parents fueled by a totally evil system and single gender judges. By contrast I’d be in the Property and Criminal courts and see truly brilliant judges and lawyers making the whole world a better place with their clear reasoning and Solomon like skills.
I’d be in the city and thought that I never wanted to be in the city so much preferring the country. To make the best of the bad lot I participated in the culture of the city. Being a member of the Canadian Authors Association meant meeting the most amazing people and having intimate discussions with them. In the classes I attended I’d befriend classmates and teachers. Susan Juby was an inspiration as a person. Betsy Warland’s Autobiographical Writing series seemed like a ‘therapy class’ for the bright and wealthy. I was learning so much from Dr. Philip Ney a truly great mind and seeing the rise in the ‘death’ culture and the ‘fear’ that was permeating the world. I was sailing and participating in his world with addicted youth taking them and their families sailing to increase the relationships which protected against addiction.
I would join the board of the Drug Prevention Network and become close to these amazing researchers and shakers and makers who didn’t buy into the drunken drug addicted ‘give them cake’ model of criminal greed. I’d also become friends with many of the leaders of the Treatment Centres in the community sitting in meeting with them and sharing visions and ideals.
I’d have season tickets to the Pacific Theater and Ballet BC, attend magnificent performances of the Vancouver Opera and Symphony. I’d have the most amazing experiences like sitting listening to Pete Seegers with a couple of others present. I’d be able to go to concerts of those like U2 and Fleetwood Mac. My friend Laura was always a delight to be with.
Tom was a great companion early days sailing, hunting and camping. Every fall I’d shoot a deer or a moose but it would take every weekend of the season to eventually find the animal that would grace my plate for the rest of the year. Tom and I would discuss Christianity but as time went on he’d isolate in his cabin in the country and become caught up in the hysteria of internet fear mongering. Hysteria generating machine.
My office would rise in paranoids. The whole the ‘world is coming to an end’ was broadcast with massive money and pseudoscience and vulnerble people caught up in the sense of doom. I’d reassure. But really, “The skies falling. The skies falling. Give me money. Give me money’ seemed like worse than the oldest profession. I was indeed seeing the leading escorts in the city because they were recovering from drugs and alcohol and now were coming to heal the trauma of childhood sexual abuse mostly though some had been sex slaves and others child porn ‘stars’ who had been taken advantage of by leading citizens.
I loved the Vancouver Police when I’d be able to work with them and have them see my patients and see justice done. It was comforting to see millionaires and multi millionaires were not above the law when the law really worked . I’d meet these amazing lawyers who would work with us pro bono to help women and men who weren’t part of the new breed of ‘liars and wannabes’ but had actually been the truest of victims. When the Vancouver Police and RCMP helped my patients we so often found that the men and women involved had dozens if not hundreds of other victims. I felt good like the times I worked with public health to follow up on gonorrhea and TB outbreaks. It was a ‘disease’ and we were highly effective treating it but only when it was a part of therapy and not a way for lawyers or therapists to be stars on the coat tails of victims. I was thankful for my training in psychodrama and remembering this was not my story and that I was only helping the patient tell his or her story.
I loved watching people ‘find’ recovery. I was so thankful with Motivational Psychotherpay. I’d done Strategic Therapy with the Ericksonian group and the ‘story telling’ ‘indirect therapies’ and ‘change therapy with the Palo Alto groups but now was having amazing success moving people from determination to action phases of change.
I had this great team of Aim and Joanne and Hannah doing all the administrative work and was for a time able to focus on patient care having so many years dealing with the administrative back stabbing and the whole ‘popularity medicine’ that was coming with ‘rate your doctor’ and all the College ideas of mediocrity and uniformity. My colleague who worked with psychologists mostly said that they didn’t have the weight of stupidity to contend with and still could be creative but she felt that the psychologists were increasingly being reduced by the ‘political masters’. The joy was sucked out of the room when these personally terrified ‘police’ powers moved in. There was a great description of ‘soul suckers’ that helped me appreciate these folk and how so many of my depressed patients were working in areas where this money fear and power need dominated the workplace. Committee dictatorships. Toxic workplaces.
I was however during this time having great chats with Red Robinson on my elevator and loving being in China Town where I admired the business owners and came to know neighbors. The government ‘industry’ of the DTES was blooming. I ‘d be exposed to the utter corruption and greed that surrounded the Fentanyl Crisis. I’d been at ground zero in the Aids Epidemic, the VGH psychiatry emergency and here I was at Ground Zero of the Aids Epidemic. It was certainly a ‘restaurant at the end of the universe’ view. I’d love seeing the same marchers outside my window carrying different signs.
I’d routinely have patients who were the characters in national and international stories and I’d see how wrong the journalists were or how the ‘government propaganda’ put a twist. My friend was a lawyer in the Picton farms, my biker friends had been at the parties, and suddenly I’d have musicians from that experience and the sister of a missing girls. Now there’s an Opera.
It would all be just day to day living. I’d yearly go to the International Doctors in AA and meet with psychiatrists from around the world, the true shakers and makers. I’d loved spending time with Dr. Valiant of Harvard after having corresponded with him for years but finally meeting him in person. I’d have this amazing friend Art, an Air Force colonel who was also a leading American forensic psychiatrist. He was the straightest shooter I knew and we both bow hunted. He’d shot elk with bow and I’d shot deer. It was in those late night meetings of psychiatrists talking about our losses and trials that I’d invariably find the strength to carry on. I’d love cyberdocs.
I’d go to international psychiatry meetings and learn over coffee from the head of the Moscow Psychiatry, Israeli Psychiatry and Australian and Scottish Psychiatry divisions all manner of things that just don’t show up in text books. I’d see that local problems were ‘international trends’ . I’d learn that there are solutions and breakthroughs which politics denied to my patients. I’d be amazed at these conference, learning nothing much in the actual lectures but now having the most amazing dinners and lunches and coffee meetings with the authors of text books and Nobel prize winners and being humbled by their ‘service’ and ‘contributions’.
I felt touched that they ‘liked’ me and that I’d done sufficient in life and my work to be ‘allowed in’ . Increasingly I saw that like my off shore sailing buddies who’d form a circle and keep juniors out when the adults wanted to talk and share this phenomena occured everywhere. I was privileged to be invited to ride with a group of combat veteran motorcyclists. “We know you’ve not been in combat but you’ve listened to us and we want you to ride with us even if we know you’re trouble.” They laughed and I struggled to keep up. The same for doctors. I’d had the ‘clinical experience’, I ‘smelt’ of knowledge. I was invited to dinner with my personal heroes in the field, the greatest of clinicians who also wrote and taught. I truly have been blessed to be in the right place at the right time.
I love that the Haight Ashbury doctor who started the clinic remembers me and has coffee with me. I love that he’s a great man today and I remember the days when he was an outsider and we were all dirty for working with a dirty disease.
I love being kibbitzed by the great Emergency doctor combat medic whose done tours of Afghanistan and is one of the purest men I’ve ever met. He calls me a hippy with a good heart. An American General calls me a Canadian Hippy. I’m touched. I’m loved and cared for and blessed by so many people I personally so admire. It’s been hard to fight the good fight day in day out but on these occasions I get to be with others who have integrity and honor and still tell the truth when truth telling is becoming anathema to the state.
My father’s death was sad.
“I’m tired Bill. I miss your mother. I want to be with her.” He said, blind and frail. I always wished I could be a better son, more like my brother who was the best of the best.
At the moment he died I saw a vision of my mother and father meeting and heard my mother’s voice saying “it’s okay Bill, we’re together again.’ I was catching the flight to Ottawa after my brother’s call.
“How did you know the exact time,’ he died. “ I saw Mom welcoming him into heaven at that exact time.” I told my brother later.
God, it was good to be with my brother and sister in law Adell then. They are such great people. My father was such a giant and I just found him smarter and wiser and kinder the older I got. It was sad to see him gone. I’m more and more alone. He called my dog, Gilbert ‘monkey dog’. I’d fly down with Gilbert and like old friends they’d play.
Now so many of my mentors and favourite people are dying and retiring. “I’m taking early retirement” a half dozen psychiatrists have told me.”I can’t stand this government.” “I can’t stand the college’. They’ve said. Canada now has the most beurocracy in the western world, greatest mismanagement, least doctors, longest waitlists and rising doctor suicides and greater than half the doctors are burnt out. I keep trying to recruit doctors into the areas of greatest need and they just say ‘it’s too dangerous...I can’t work for how little you make.”
My dog’s life was threatened by a drug addicted sociopath. “I’ll kill your dog.” He emailed me for a year. Nothing was done. Constant fear. Reminder of the loss of Stuart and how the drug addicts had murdered him and then this repeat performance. I protected Gilbert. I didn’t let him out of my sight for that whole year. I scanned everywhere I walked watching for the weasel always armed ,feeling way way too old to be on constant guard and fearing for my life and my dogs life. I’d have nightmares and couldn’t sleep. The times my windows were shot out by the drunks came back. I’d wake with terror. I’donly find comfort knowing my dog was safe and then it stopped.
“Your patient threatened your life and your dogs life, “ the Mountie said.
“Yes, he still does. »
“Well he’s threatening Prime Minister Trudeau’s life’...so could you tell us all you know about him.”
And then the threats stopped. The emails stopped coming.
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