John Christensen, MD FRCPC, friend

Today was the Celebration of Life for my friend, John Christensen. He was an amazing man, truly brilliant, wise, humorous, a loving man, deeply spiritual and profoundly caring. I’ve known him more than 20 years. It was sad to see his coffin. The Celebration of Life took place at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish.  The music was beautiful, hymns I knew John loved. The Priest shared the Beatitudes, a particular favourite of John’s. His sons Daniel, Luke and Jesse made the arrangements. John was so proud of his sons. He and his wife Pru, simply adored them. For good reasons, bright boys who I watched grow to be great men like their father.

 

Suzanne, a tall elegant, dark haired, sophisticated, impeccably groomed and coiffed, was a friend of John’s sister, Kay, a vivacious, gorgeous hilarious blond. Suzanne was from Toronto while Kay was,like John, from ‘down under’.  Like a tall Jolie and Kidman. They were a delightful pair. Their company made a man feel happy to be alive.   I met them at a place we called ‘the last club on the block’.   Kay invited us to dinner at her brother John’s. “You’ll like each other.”  We did.

That was the beginning of many fine lamb roast dinner’s at John’s. There were also the Greek Restaurants on fourth. Also the pizza nights.  Dinner in the Kitsilano home, conversations that moved from the living room to the dining room were a true joy.  Often listening to the genius and heart that flowed round the table, I felt like this must have been like what the Huxley circle or Bloomsbury Circle encounters were like, with a bit of the Apostle suppers thrown in.  Missionaries, engineers, models, doctors, carpenters, priests and always a reference to spirituality in the midst of discussion of politics and anthropology, psychology and physics.  John liked St. Francis and Richard Rohr, the Franciscan monk, whose book ‘Falling Upward’we both so enjoyed.

After our first dinner I met with him to ‘walk the dogs’. He had an Australian Sheepdog and I had Shinto, a cross Irish Setter, English Springer spaniel.  

‘Would you mind picking up my dogs’ poo, Bill? John asked.

‘Why? You don’t when you walk him.” John was in an electric wheel chair . It would have been impossible for him to pick up his dog’s poo.

“It will make my dog look bad if you don’t”.

“I don’t think so. I’ll pick up my dog’s poo and no one would expect you to pick up your dog’s poo.’

John thought about that and came back with:

“ If you picked up your dog’s poo but didn’t pick up my dog’s poo I feel my dog would feel badly.”

So I picked up the dog’s poo and we carried on.  We had many deep and meaningful conversations along these lines such that over time John one day said.

“You know Bill, I think I’d rather be in this chair than in your head.”

John had trained psychoanalytically as I had but psychoanalysis was his true love and focus. At UBC he was a founder of the Psychoanalytic Society and had headed the Psychotherapy Division. After his Christopher Reeves accident he’d not worked for a while.  He was asked by so many including myself to see people for therapy. He was involved in the catholic parish and accepted pro bono consults from the priests. Eventually he would return to work part time seeing patients in his home for in depth psychoanalytic psychotherapy. I and a few other psychiatrists would refer him specific patients for whom only such intensive therapy would be effcctive. I’d continue adjunctive psychopharmacology while John helped these patients work through egregious childhood trauma, often incest or rape, where betrayal had left them unable to trust and prone to repetition compulsion.  They had been treated as objects and lost any sense of their wholeness and worth. John would work through the negative transference and I’d be there to watch adult children who were so hurt work their way back from the darkness to the path of light.  Over and over again I witnessed this miracle and was thanked for helping patients to obtain the therapy they needed in a psychiatry system where band aids and factory models had begun to rule.  John was a true healer.  I once spent some nights helping him tabulate  the CME credits he needed to continue practice. I was amazed at the depth and breadth of his study in analysis. He was a member of the most  esteemed psychoanalytic society but continued to pay personally for supervision with an analyst. I’d done the same for years, the humble psychiatrist, discussing cases with a colleague, exploring the dynamics and transference and counter transference.  John had more than ample credits but because he was always studying and always reading and consulting for his patients he had no idea  how to input the Royal College MOCOMP process.  It was an honour to help with this, my computer and typing skills , reflective of my younger years and lack of spinal injury. It was an honor to see how much he cared for his patients and how great his mind was with it’s continued thirst for knowledge that could help him help others ‘out beyond the wire’ so to speak.  I used to tell him he was a ‘scalpel to my hammer’ and he’d humbly as ever bemoan his limitations.  We’d talk at length about the dynamics of difficult patients struggling with life threatening decisions. It was a joy to know such a colleague and share the care of these extraordinary persons, 

Meanwhile, at one time his son Jesse was in the back yard with friends rehearsing a play where he’d get shot. Teen agers would be flying through the room talking about paint ball burns from too close shots to the chest and us trying to provide medical care. The oldest was learning  Mandarin and falling in love.  The youngest Jesse,admitted he’d been spoiled by his mother’s cooking and went on to be a chef.   Luke became a carpenter and one day brought home the most beautiful girl.

“Your son’s really attract the most beautiful intelligent women, John.” I said one day.

“I know. It surprises me. Their mother , Pru was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known.  I couldn’t believe that she loved me because frankly I thought I was ugly.  So I concluded that most beautiful women were attracted to ugly men. The boys get their good looks from Pru.  They’re  definitely challenging my theory.”  I laughed.

A colleague who knew John and Pru when they were young described them as the most outstanding couple at UBC.  Pru was definitely celebrity material, like a young Helen Mirren,   with a wit and vibrance that delighted all .  John was described as a kind of Aussie Paul Newman character. They were a couple so deeply in love. They’d both been through Vancouver in its hippie era, LSD, the Vietnam war years, the great rock and roll music, Beatles, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the beginning of Green Peace. 

In later years, respected professionals,  they loved the classics. John’s brilliant psychiatrist friend,Oliver Robinow  married to gifted Order of Canada violinist Gwen.  The boys remember growing up with all these illustrious gifted friends of their parents coming for dinner.

John and I would attend the BC Ballet together for years, having seasons tickets. I loved when his friend, Karen Kain, the famous former principal ballerina later artistic director from the National Ballet, rushed off stage at intermission to see him. They chatted throughout the whole intermission tete a tete like school kids.  All the while everyone  looked on,myself included. 

Equestrians. John loved riding and would wax poetic when I talked of camping and sailing about his time with his family riding. They’d do these cross country weeks long cattle drive cowboy rides with the boys.  

“I never held it against the horse, “ John told me one time, speaking of his accident. “I knew he felt so sorry for letting me down.” 

John would write about his accident, the failed horse jump, the fall and feeling his spine twist and break. “I don’t remember being afraid,’he said. “I just felt like I’d fallen into God’s hands.”

I was studying Christian spirituality when we met and invited John to join me for Dr. Shirley Sullivan’s courses on the Catholic mystics at St. Mark’s College. That’s when the pizza nights began. I’d finish a full day of clinical practice, rush over to John’s where they’d always remember I loved coffee and off we’d roar to an evening of incredible teaching and discussions.  After we’d have late night pizza and share our thoughts on St. John of the Cross', Long Dark Night of the Soul and St. Theresa of Avilla.  Several of our friends, including my friend Laura, joined us for these evening classes. Later my Anglican engineer and pilot, sailing buddy Tom would join when we started attending Dr. James Houston’s series of lectures at Regent College on Christian mysticism and spirituality.

The first night we were at the Protestant Regent's College, I asked John, the staunch catholic, ' Arent you afraid God will  strike you dead  with a lightning bolt to be a Catholic in a protestant college?'

 "I’m not taking any chances,'he said, 'I'm wearing titanium underwear.!'  

That began John’s friendship with Dr. James Houston, an Oxford geology professor who came to UBC, was the co founder of Regent College and later Chancellor.  More dinners at John’s with free reigning discussions and profound insights into what James would describe so deeply as ‘person hood’.  

“The Trinity is the three persons of God’, Dr. Houston would say, “ït’s all about our personhood .  

He’d been a friend of C.S.Lewis at Oxford and would tell stories of the great man over dinner.  Dr. Houston’s book, the Transforming Power of Prayer,   remains the deepest  prayer book of all time as far as I’m concerned .  

John and I talked a lot about prayer and spirituality.  I’d say, ‘Religion is for those who don’t want to hell and spirituality is for those who have been and don’t want to go back.' Then I ‘d argue I needed to pray more than he did. We’d laugh. His chronic pain was increasing with the years.  He spoke so comfortably of his relationship with Jesus. I’d enjoy the lamb.   James and John talked of Jesus.  James wife was alive in the early years.  It was heaven to know her.  John’s friend, Helen Miller who’d go on to be a missionary in Africa wrote  of her Christian work amongst the children orphaned by the wars of the Sudan. We’d share our books, hot off the presses and discuss ideas. 

John always had the most incredible bad luck with care givers. He had this Russian doctor arrive and pass right through in a day using his job offer as a conduit for entrance to America. I would joke that through his care givers he created a conduit for the terrorist cells in Canada. They literally would arrive after months of arranging visa’s and such, only to disappear. “I am a doctor. I don’t cook.”was the first thing this Russian Amazon had said before she left the weekend she arrived. 

John was wholly dependent on these care givers, quadriplegic, unable to get out of bed, needing catheterization.  We all loved some who were literally saints. They lasted years and I loved them especially for the care they gave John, but also the incredible meals they’d make for us.  But as the years progressed ‘getting good help’became a problem. I was so sad when one, I was concerned was a drunk and addict, crossed the line, not showing up for work, too impaired to call for back up leaving John bed ridden without catheterization for a morning till his son could be reached to rescue him. It was increasingly a tragedy to see the decline in Canadian home care up front, the problems with senior care, eventually exposed by Covid when whole nursing homes of seniors would be abandoned in Canada and the military would have to go in to care for the invalid.  

When John turned 65 his sons and family arranged for a grand birthday celebration at a Kerrisdale restaurant the family had so enjoyed.  It was great to be there seeing so many colleagues, like his esteemed and wonderful colleague,Dr. Keith Marriage, theadolescent psychiatry head and a slew of other bright lights, dignataries, and just  plain family and friends who John had known for so many years.  A thing I loved about John was his friendship network included neighbours, colleagues, deans and celebrities but when I’d visit his home to sit in the sun on his back veranda and talk often there’d be a gardener or mechanic he’d met or someone from his parish, visiting as well. John didn’t have a pretentious bone in his body and was the most approachable humblest kindest man.  Gracious is the word that best described him.  

John’s pain was so bad in latter years that it interfered with his work, his outings and our attending courses together. One of the last we attended was the  Pain and Suffering course at Regent College with the esteemed Dr. Edwin Hui, Christian Theologican, scientist and physician. It was one of my most extraordinary experiences.  The class was small and mostly Dr. Hui encouraged discussion. It included John, who obviously knew pain more than any one and despite his best efforts struggled with the notion of the ‘glad gethesmane’. The others attending were an older still beautiful combat nurse from several tours and wars, a young ICU nurse and a young academic who’d been exposed to the terrors of communism in China. I was so moved as Dr. Hui brought out the deeply emotional personal stories of suffering each shared.  Each class we'd pray together. The message coming home that we were not alone.  

As I’ve said John himself wrote the story of his accident and being touched by God. It’s so deeply moving, I can’t add to it here.  His Christian Catholic transformative experience was awe inspiring.  He would always say he was thankful for his injury because it allowed him to become the man he was today and know the depth of love that he did now for his wife and his children, and his fellow man. He didn’t like the man he’d been before. 

John and I, both psychiatrists had found the church more fulfilling for us in our times of greatest need. We’d both felt we needed God. We shared our love of Victor Frankl and Ernst Becker. 

‘I was too selfish. Too self centred. I didn’t love my wife as much as she loved me. I wasn’t capable of that kind of love. I needed to have God show me the love he had for me before I could experience the love that Pru and others gave me. I feel like I was given this second life so I could love my family and learn to love my friends in a way I could never have before.”

When asked if they’d like to die so many who became quadriplegic by accident in the first year thought of it but amazingly when the researchers followed up a year later it was extraordinary the desire for life that they almost all shared. John felt he had been given a second chance.

The pain though was beyond anything I’d ever known myself or as as a clinician.  He had the best pain clinician and was dependent on methadone in the last years with many episodes of his medications and bladder infections leading to frank delirium and psychosis.  I responded to his call once when he was psychotic with pain, wanting to crush himself below to distract himself from the unbearable pain at the base of the spine. I’d treated countless pain patients and many quadriplegics so knew too well by report that tailbone pain John described as a cross between 'burning and a knife twisting in his tailbone.’  His dog or his cat would come close to him when he’d be at his worst and need to be taken into bed. The last couple of years he rarely got through the dinner and I’d help with getting him into bed. He was a very modest man and though I was a doctor he hated to ask for help.  

In the last year before Covid when he was finally hospitalized he was unable to stand the pain beyond 7 pm , the nurse using the hospital lift , a much more robust affair than the former home model, to get him lying down .  His struggle was that the amount of pain medication he needed for any kind of relief began in later year to make him drunk and drugged, He fought for lucidity.  I knew this struggle so well with my cancer patients who wanted to have their minds functioning but their bodies were at war with them. The amount of opiate their bodies needed resulted in their being unable to think.  Being with John through these latter years was like knowing a Christian stoic of the early years.  He so wanted to participate in conversation and would so love to listen to Helen talking of the children she was saving in the Sudan. He was so upset to hear she was caught up in gun fights, ricochets,with the Ak47 gangs shooting at her as she struggled to help find a solution for all the war orphaned children.  Then he’d be slurring his words as we helped him to bed.

I didn’t see him the last six month after covid.  He always said he’d love my visits, hearing my Harley motorcycle engine,  pulling up outside his Kitsilano home or the St. Vincent’s LangaraHospital. He’d worked as a young man on the sheep farms in Australia riding his motorcycle between stations.

 “We didnt’t wear helmet back then, mate.”he’d tell me. 

He ‘d use a ham radio to communicate and was interested in my Hamm radio experience offshore sailing.  

“That was the only communication we had in the outback then.”he’d say. I loved listening to his tales of the sheep and ‘roos’. 

His wife Pru developed cancer the last couple of years and they struggled together till the end. “She’s my best friend,’he’d say. ‘I just wish I could do more to ease her pain.’ 

I only learned from his son that Pru had died.  Straight shooting Luke, who’d I’d gone moose hunting with years before  , phoned me to say his mother had died.  John wasn’t doing well after that. I tried phoning but couldn’t get through.  Only family were allowed to visit in Covid.  Then Luke called to say John had died and the date the Celebration for Life was..    It’s often like that.  Great loves dying shortly after one another, only slightly staggered in time.  Pru months before, then John. I was sad for the boys.

  I’ve missed John this year.  We could have talked about the spiritual war wagering now in the world,  the persecution of Christians, the closing of churches while sex shops, pot shops, liquor stores and gambling sales remained open all in the name of science and pseudoscience. He’d have something wise and reassuring to say. We’d end up laughing and talking about Judas,Martha and Mary or the Prodigal Son. I liked that the priest today quoted Nouwen.  John and I loved Nouwen’s book, Prodigal Son.  We loved the Rembrandt painting he’d chosen for the cover. I told John how I’d seen the original in St. Petersburg.  We prayed together. I’ll miss that most: praying together with John.