Stop It

Because my mother is aging fast and I am her legal health care proxy I have spent a lot of time around nurses this year. And they have been amazing. Their compassion and patience, no matter how demanding the patient, astounds me. Elderly people (like all of us but maybe more so) can be very demanding. I imagine it is scary for  my mother to be 91 years old. It's the end of the party for her...and she knows it. What we don't know is what happens next. When we discuss her “next great adventure”, I can see in her eyes that my mother is full of fear. For this reason I cut her some slack with regard to her increasing snappishness and irritability of late.

One of my mother's nurses is a wonderful woman from Jamaica. I don't think my mother has ever been so lovingly cared for before. Not even by her own mother. It's beautiful to see and puts my mind at rest when I can’t be there. Last week the three of us were having lunch: Rose (for that is this particular nurse’s name), my mother and me. “You look terrible,” my mother told me, spooning vanilla ice cream into her mouth and glaring at me with the same eyes that used to make my blood run cold as a child.

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

“Well, fine or not,” my mother said with assurance, “you look awful”

“All right! I'm a little stressed and it's showing on my face. Sorry!” I snapped while both my mother and Rose looked at me disapprovingly.

Finally Rose broke the awkward silence. “Cha! Cha, cha!” she spit out. Cha, I have learned from my time spent in that beautiful country and with several Jamaican nurses this year is a harsh guttural sound which means, essentially, “cut it out.”

“Jus’ don' do it,” Rose told me, her voice returning to its soft and soothing tone, a deep and mellifluous hum that brings to mind a soft hot breeze blowing through palm fronds. 

“Don't do what?” I asked her as my mother glared on. 

“Jus’ don' worry yourself. Don’ stress yourself out. You’re doin’ dat, no one else. Dat’s like a mental illness here in the states. People stressin’ demselves out. Dat’s why people die young. From stress. From worry. It'll kill you, give you high blood pressure and strokes and heart attacks and da like. I seen it wit’ my own eyes. Just don’ do it.”

“Who are you?” I wanted to ask, “Bob Newhart?” recalling a dated but hilarious skit starring America’s favorite pretend shrink. In the skit Dr. Bob’s patient “Katherine” has a lot of neuroses and fears. The first thing that Dr. Newhart does (in classic shrink fashion) is explain his billing procedure. "It will be $5 for the first five minutes and after that you don't pay anything," he tells Katherine.

"Well what if I need more than 5 minutes?" she protests in an anxiety-ridden whine.

"I can almost guarantee that we won't need more than five minutes," he assures her, and with that the session begins. Katheine's biggest fear, apparently, is being buried alive in a box. It's all she thinks about, all the time. As she pours out her heart to Dr. Newhart he looks at her with those big compassionate puppy dog eyes of his. Eyes full of empathy and understanding. As she goes on and on and on, totally freaked out by (but also sort of enamored of) her phobias Dr. Newhart looks confused. "Hmmmm - do you want to be buried alive in a box?" he asks her gently.

"NO!" she snaps. "Of course not. That's why I'm here!" After listening to Katherine for several minutes it’s now time for the doctor to give her the help she so obviously needs.

“Well Katherine,” he tells her, “I'm going to ask you to do something for me now and I want you to remember this. It's very important.”

“Should I write this down?” she asks, searching for a pen in her voluminous handbag.

“No. It's very simple,” the kind doctor assures her. “It's only two words, you should be able to remember that, no? I want you to”...he purrs softly at her across his big shrink desk before lunging forward and screaming in poor neurotic Katherine's face, “STOP IT!!!”

I watch this skit several times a year, when the waves of anxiety in my head reach tsunami strength. The skit serves to make me laugh and also to calm me down. And here was sweet and caring Rose, from the hilly countryside outside of Kingston telling me to do the very same thing.

“It’s not that easy!” I protested. “I can’t just stop it. It’s my mind. It runs and runs and stresses me out and I have a lot on my plate right now. A lot!” I put on my best stare down face, daring either Rose or my mother to question me and my internal stress levels.

“So take someting off da plate den!” Rose advised me sagely. 

“Impossible,” I insisted. “I have a career and a family and your care (I pointed at my mother accusingly) and pets and bills to pay and...”

But Rose cut me off.

“Everybody has dose tings. It’s life. Life is life. Up and down an’ around an’ around. It jus’ what it do. Jus’ don’ let it get you all worked up. Dat don’ do nuthin’ for you,” Rose said sagely and then got up to get some water.

“Ha!” I scoffed to my mother once Rose had left us. “As if it were that easy! Just don’t stress!”

“Well she might have a point,” my mother said slowly. “You do look worn out.”

“Well played!” I thought. My mother, tapping into my own personal vanity.

When Rose came back I told her what my mother had said, that if I could stop worrying and stressing out all the time I might look better.

“Cha!” she spit out at both of us. “You look fine. It has nuthin’ to do wit’ how we look. It’s our internal state what matter. We need to be strong. We need to keep da worry and the stress outta our heads. Dat what cause us to lose our mind. And once you lost your mind wit’ stress it ain’t comin’ back.”

That stopped me, surrounded as we were by residents of my mother’s assisted living home who have in fact lost their minds to age and Alzheimer’s and dementia. Or was it stress and worry?

“Jus’ make it your job,” Rose told me. “When all dat worry and stress come in you just tell it ‘get outta my house! Dis is my house! I make da rules and you are not welcome.’ Dat’s what we do in Jamaica. An’ life is sweeter there than here, believe you me.”

After lunch we went outside and sat in the shade. It was a beautiful summer day. Soft and sultry, the intoxicating scent from the flowers planted in the community garden wafting over to us from time to time. My mother closed her eyes, turning her face up toward the sun and smiling softly. She looked utterly relaxed. Rose pointed at her and gave me a look as if to say “you should try dat sometime.”

But I couldn't relax. I had plots to hatch, alliances to make, foes to vanquish, mail to open, children to shepherd, wars to wage, cats to herd, bills to pay, and on and on and on. And on. And all of those things, I realized while sitting there in the warm afternoon glow, were living in my head rent free and making me sick with nerves. 

Everything I “had to do” would get done...in time. With discipline and patience and without letting myself get distracted and overwhelmed with worry all of those things and many more would get done. So what was I doing sitting here stressing myself out?

After about twenty minutes I got up to leave. Rose and my mother, both dozing in the shade, opened their eyes slowly, regarding me lazily as if I were some sort of anxiety-ridden zoo animal. “Okay den,” Rose sang in her beautiful voice, “remember what I told you. Don’ let dem worries get you down. Keep ’em out your head.”

As I sped back to my office, my mind racing with the thought of my several pages long to do list, I considered what Rose had said. Of course in the case of severe mental illness, bi-polar disorder for instance, you can't just get in there and STOP IT! You need help and support and sound medical treatment. But I don't suffer from a severe mental disorder. What I suffer from is a series of self-generated disaster scenarios that I play over and over for myself - like a terrible song that you can't get out of your head. I like to ruminate. I like to catastrophize. And over the years and with decades of practice I have gotten very good at it. “This is my house!” I suddenly told my churning mind. “I make the rules. You can blah blah blah at me as much as you like but I'm not playing today.”

Suddenly and without making a decision to do so I took the exit for my house and not my office. It was two o'clock in the afternoon and I had a "gazillion" things to do before I laid my head on my pillow that night.

I got home, threw on my gardening clothes and headed outside. And that was where I stayed until dinner time. Pottering around, planting dahlias and hydrangeas and weeding the tomato beds. My only worry during that entire time was how was I going to keep the damn chipmunks away from my vegetables. I felt relaxed. I had fun. I effectively took a mental health day and as I am essentially my own boss I approved my absence. I removed myself from my all-consuming worries and self-imposed pressures. “It's all gonna be fine,” I told myself, channeling Rose as I weeded. “Everyting you have to do will get done in time. Worrying don’ do nuthin’ but waste time and make you sick.”

I still worry too much. The knot in my stomach is still there when I wake up some days but its ability to overwhelm me is waning. And when I do get all worked up, so anxious that even taking a deep breath or two feels impossible, I remember Rose…and Bob Newhart…and I remind myself that it is me and no one else who has the power to get in there and “Stop it!”