"Every day I am an actress, with a smiling face I play my part......."
Is it acting or is it coping? I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Bruce Jackson, a doctor that I've known for many years, recently commited suicide. He was new to Boone when I first became a nurse, some 20 years ago. He was very patient with me and took the time to help me learn. He called me into the birthing room on my last day of orientation and told me that I was going to deliver my first baby. I was getting ready to start night shift, and, if a nurse is going to unexpectedly need to catch a baby, night shift is the most likely place for that to happen. He wanted me to catch my first baby with a doc standing right there, talking me through it. He put his hands right on top of mine and showed me how to help ease the baby out. I remember the exhillaration! When the baby came out, a big splash of amniotic fluid came out behind it (as it usually does) and he looked at me with a huge grin and said, "Uh oh! You know what that means!? Once you get your feet all wet, you're addicted." And he was right. I was. That was 20 years ago. My hands still do exactly what he showed me. 1200 babies later, I still remember that very first one.
A couple of years ago, Dr. Jackson asked me if I wanted to start my own practice in Boone. I had been laid off and was working as a nurse - back in the same hospital where I started, doing night shift again like a new-bee. Returning to Boone as a nurse-midwife has been a dream of mine for many years. Since before I even went to graduate school. I jumped at the chance. But things did not go well for us. Dr. Jackson had changed a lot. He had a lot of anger sometimes. It was a side of him I didn't know existed, and it troubled me greatly. We couldn't make it work. So I closed my practice and several months later, after Jacob had graduated, I moved here to the Eastern Shore.
Dr. Jackson was a very good actor. At least in a public sense. I don't know about his personal life. I only know that he struggled with one relationship after another, personally and professionally. I wonder if everyone else was as stunned as I was by his suicide. I had no idea that his soul was that troubled. Should I have known? Should he have acted his part so well?
When people struggle with the darkness of depression, is it wrong for them to smile and live "normally" outside of themselves? Are they acting or are they coping? In my own battles with depression and sadness, I know I have acted well. As a single mom, I acted well for the benefit of my children. They often knew when sadness was sitting on my shoulder, but they, too, learned to act as though she wasn't there. I always knew when Jacob knew my sadness was hanging around again, though. He stayed closer to me, touched me more, and tried to make me laugh. When I couldn't laugh, he worked hard (and always succeeded) at making me proud.
We were acting, maybe, probably - okay, we were. But we were coping. More often than not, I don't acknowledge it as acting - I see it as my way of coping with the heavy weight of Sadness. Moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other, interacting with the rest of the world, smiling -pretending or not - that always seemed to lighten the burden of her.
I have thought about Dr. Jackson every day since I heard about his death. Not obsessively, but persistently. I see his face. I hear his way of speaking. And I keep wondering how a person can act that well? Can carry that much rage and hide it? Though bits of it leaked out, I don't think many of us knew he had that much rage inside. And only rage, it seems to me, could motivate such an act. I wonder how he could hurt his children so. And his mother. And his brothers and sisters. I have been praying and praying and praying.
I reach out my hands. It took me such a long time to learn that one simple thing. Just to reach out my hands when times are tough. I wish that Dr. Jackson could have done the same thing.
Peace to you. Peace to Dr. Jackson's family. In time, I know. Peace to them, too.
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