The first threshold. Maybe it’s birth. Crossing into this world and leaving that Other world.
But there is an earlier threshold that has to be crossed first. The two people have to cross the threshold from being sexual partners to being parents. At some level the empty space of no baby has to be filled with the conception/decision of the birth so that the baby can be actually conceived and cross the threshold into this world from whatver place babies/we come from.
I imagine a circle of thresholds/doors/cliffs/ bridges–one leading to another like spokes of a wheel. Some we are able to cross easily, others are more difficult. Some we retreat from waiting for the right time, some we approach and recoil from, and then there are some we never cross.
Society clearly knows about these thresholds and has attempted to assist us/ shield us from them by ritualizing these rites of passages, these bridges, into ceremonies–funerals, inaugurations, graduations, baby showers…. They all appear to be designed to assist us in the process.
It is so obvious that is ignored/taken for granted that for all of us our lives are framed by two thresholds–our birth and our death. Each one leading to some unknown, uncharted place- perhaps growth, perhaps life, perhaps death, perhaps a catastrophe or some wonderfully ecstatic state.
I am 23 years old working at a state mental hospital, fresh out of college. I have to make a home visit to a patient. She has missed several of her therapy appointments. When I get to her apartment, her two young sons let me in. Their mother is standing in a catatonic state at the edge of the kitchen sink. She is non-responsive with her hands locked/fused to the edge of the sink, staring blankly out the window, as if she had been frozen in time by some catastrophic experience. Her sons tell me that she has been there for days. We take her into the hospital. When I get to work the following day, I inquire about how she is doing. She has had a massive stroke overnight and died. I am asked to tell her sons. I don’t want to, but I return to the apartment and sit the two boys down and break the news to them. I remember thinking that I was too young to be doing this. I felt helpless, useless and impotent. I wasn’t ready/prepared to be inflicting such painful news on these two boys–forcing them to cross a threshold too early in life. It was a threshold I didn’t want to cross either.
Many years later it is my turn. I am at a hospital. This time it is my mother. She has been hospitalized for surgery to deal with the long-term complications of diabetes. The gangrene had started in her right toe. The doctors amputate one toe, then all the toes, then her right foot. But the gangrene continues to spread. Now they want to amputate her right leg just below the knee. I am in her room. Just her and I. I want to talk to her about the surgery. I tell her that she doesn’t have to do it, at least not for me. It is her choice, her life. Whatever she decides is fine with me. I know that she is a very vain woman, and that living in a wheelchair will be difficult for her, but she will never have to experience that. She will never leave the hospital alive. She tells me that she has to do it for my Dad. I say okay, but … The surgery is not successful. The surgeon meets with myself, my sister and my Dad. He tells us that there is nothing further he can do. She is being kept alive now by machines and mechanical appliances. The surgeon asks us to decide what we want to do, and walks away. My sister and father look at me, to me, to make a decision they clearly can’t/won’t make. Once again I am asked to step up to the edge of the cliff and cross over. I make the decision. I tell them that mom has a living will and I will see to it that her wishes are respected. I tell the surgeon. She enters hospice and is withdrawn from the machines. We watch her for seven days as she wrestles with her final threshold. She finally crosses over. My sister and father have never forgiven me. Sometimes I can’t forgive myself .
Lately, more now than ever, I wonder about how/if we can possibly develop the capacity/incapacity to deal with life’s thresholds. At times life is just too much for any of us. I know that we each have different thresholds to pain. Not just physical pain, but perhaps more importantly to mental pain and anguish in ourselves and others.
But how do we learn what to do with these doors/cliffs/bridges/passages/journeys–cross-over, avoid them, ignore them, retreat from them…?
I imagine, with no way of knowing, that how we learn to navigate thresholds starts early on, probably while we are still in the womb. What a shock and a joy to be born. To come into this other world leaving behind the safety and security of the womb. Perhaps the way this is experienced by the baby and dealt with by the parents makes a lasting impression/impact on the baby about thresholds and what awaits on the other side–a cruel joke, a loving presence, an absent mind, a nirvana or a catastrophe of unspeakable dimensions.
Patients coming to my office are about to cross a threshold, but I doubt that consciously they know this. Once the patient crosses the threshold into my office, they have entered into another place–perhaps it can be imagined by me to be a place where the capacity to deal with thresholds can be developed. But for the patient they just want to get rid of the pain or the problem. I imagine if I were to start by talking to them about thresholds, bridges, journeys they would look at me like I am crazy, so I keep my mouth shut until…. Until we reach the first threshold. And we inevitably do. But once the patient makes the decision to call me and have a consultation, they have decided at some level to begin the journey, the passage–to develop the capacity as much as they can to deal with their thresholds.
And I know/sense that if I can resist trying to save them/rescue them/ protect them/ shield them from experiencing their thresholds, perhaps they will be able to decide to cross over and discover what has been waiting on the other side for them all their life.
Dr. Brody