Ben Avuyah

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Sunday, December 18, 2005

Sometimes I still get Angry

Here came the tears.

“Will it ever come back”, she asked, with one starting to trickle down her cheek. It was not an easy question to answer but the statistics, the studies, and clinical acumen all pointed in one direction.

“A little bit may return, but it won’t be the way you remember it, not with the same clarity or definition.”

More tears. I handed her a tissue and waited.

She was a well-put together and composed woman of seventy some odd years. And she was handling the news better than most I’ve seen. Her daughter and granddaughter were in the emergency room with her. I was sitting on a small stool across from her bed.

“Is Grandma done now”, chimed the little girl only to be shushed by her mother.

I had just finished conferring with the handful of doctors who had been, like myself, summoned on Saturday afternoon to put their heads together for this unusual ailment. What a horrible situation to have so much combined knowledge, and not an ounce of intervention.

The day had started out normally enough. Chronically late to shul, I had been making the social rounds at Kiddush after davening, catching up on the enclosed events of my insular Jewish community. Updating myself on the friction between this shul and that, weighing in on the Rabbi’s latest speech, and tentatively planning the next basketball league of out of shape, semi-mobile, thirty-something’s who still thought they could run the length of a court.

But then there was that buzz on my right thigh that is my call to arms. I walked to a vacant corner of the shul and spoke over the phone with an Emergency room doctor and, after listening in brief to the details, I told him I would be there shortly. I caught my wife’s eye across the room and pointed to my cell phone…she understood. I brushed past the couple that had invited us for lunch and told them I would be late.

And forty five minutes later here I was at the conclusion of my examination explaining to this lady, let’s call her Mrs. Trudeau, for in truth her name had a French ring to it, that the type of stroke she had just had, was distinguished for having an abysmal recovery rate.

Well I didn’t put in quite those terms, but I didn’t sugar coat it either. I believe that people have the right to truly know what is happening to them. I have always believed it.

“I had thought it was a migraine or something”, she said quietly wiping away tears, “I was just waiting for it to go away, but when I still couldn’t see on Saturday morning I came to the emergency room.”

“Even had we caught it within the first ninety minutes, the success rates of any of our surgical treatments for a central retinal artery obstruction are about as close to zero as they ever get”, I said trying to take the responsibility off her shoulders, “there was nothing you could have done differently that would have prevented this.”


I occasionally have this misfortune, this most humbling of duties, in which I admit on behalf of medicine in general, our impotence, our shortcomings, our fantastic failure at being able to “fix” neural tissue, or any extension of the central nervous system. It makes you wish for a laceration that you can cleanly sew edge to edge, an appendix you can remove in the nick of time, a pneumonia that you can bash over the head with a fourth generation flouroquinolone. But for Christ’s sake give me something I can fix! Not this, not sitting her doing nothing, not supplying tissues from the tissue box. We’ve got to be better than this, we must be better than this…but in the end, we are just not there yet. And it’s frustrating, and hurtful, and it just plain old stinks. Ten years of grueling post college training, and the best therapeutic in my armamentarium is coming out of a scented cardboard box.

Like humanity, the responses patients give to the adversities of life are varied. Yet within the randomness there are patterns.

Would she mount the Judeo-Christian response? Would she tell me how she trusted in God to know better which faculties she needed and which she didn’t. If so I could hold her hand and agree with her, but this had always been a difficult one for me to swallow, even back when I was one of true faith.

Or would her Denial melt into a Despair and Anger at having been so betrayed by her very own flesh?

I didn’t get to find out, she kept a patrician façade throughout our encounter, perhaps saving her true feelings for a more private place and time.

A few words to my colleagues outside her room, we reach consensus on what tests to run, what follow up appointments to make, and a regimen of preventative medicines; and I am back in my car for the drive home.


Now, I will have you know, I have dealt religion its last blow quite some time ago. I have not harbored beliefs of supreme beings, omnipotent rulers of the universe, or Greek goddesses, in the haloed confines of my mind, any more than I have Elvis sightings. Long gone are the days when I actually intellectually believed that someone up there was keeping track of human beings in a little book with a red pen.

But then why am I driving so fast? Why is my hand so heavy on the horn, why are swear words pent up behind my pursed lips, why are my jaws clenched tight enough to make my teeth grind?


Surely some of it is the frustration of being able to do nothing for someone so in need, but there is something else, something deep down.

What if there is a God who is in charge of everything? What if there is an entity of Hashgacha pratis, in which every event on earth is a string pulled from on high by this mighty master? What if every single other person that I know in my life, every authority figure, every one I have ever looked up to, is right and I am wrong?

And doesn’t a small part inside me still think this is true? Isn’t the psychosomatic equivalent of ten-year-old Ben Avuyah still quivering in his boots, submerged in my mind, afraid of the all-powerful God in heaven that smites at a whim. Even having dismissed this concept on the basis of sound rationale that neither I nor anyone else can challenge, isn’t it still at some level part of my very psyche? Have I not been indoctrinated with this concept so thoroughly that it is an unavoidable first assumption even all this time after I have bid it a, not so fond, farewell?

Like a rock in your sandal you can’t get rid of, it just rattles about, chaffing the skin, rubbing it raw.

Who would this guy be any way? This entity everyone else I know believes so completely in. This thing that has never demonstrated omniscience or omnipotence but says you should believe in him anyway, and then goes and puts out your eye, just fucking turns out the lights on you. Yeah, your life wasn’t hard enough, now try it this way!

What should the response be if you feel your supernatural creator just snuffed one of your headlights out for your own betterment? Groveling? Thanking? Begging?

Isn’t it more appropriate to say, “Hey, you piece of shit, I needed that (fill in portion of body)! …Do you mind! …. Asshole!”


Well, what the hell, I know it’s all stupid, because there is clearly no such thing as an omnipotent god of revelation, but what can I do, that outlook is built into me so fundamentally I have to actually work around it to think straight.

I made it home in record time from speeding, drove into my garage so fast I had to hit the breaks hard so as not to end up in my living room, and put the car in park. And here I go, Yarmulke back on, Shabbos coat back on, and off to another meal, where everyone can marvel at the amazing threads that God pulls together to weave the paths of our lives. Why? The proof is that little Moshe Pupick missed his bus, and wouldn’t you know it that was the day of the surprise test he didn’t study for anyway, so bashert! No? Yes! We all marvel.

Everyone but me, that is. I’ll stare down at my plate and hold my tongue, for my thoughts are not acceptable during these conversations. No one can stand to hear them. No one wants to think about them. They are bothersome. They create discord. They create unwanted questions. Questions that have no answers are best not raised, I’ve been told.

Well there’s no one to talk to, just this computer screen to vent my ire on. I don’t know if anyone else experiences what I do, because I am an Atheist, but I guess sometimes I still get angry at God.

24 Comments:

At 12:36 PM, Blogger respondingtojblogs said...

Welcome back BA, you've been missed.

 
At 12:37 PM, Blogger Orthoprax said...

Ben,

Wow, another great moving story. I can't say that I get angry at an anthropomorphic deity which I don't believe in, though I haven't come across much of such stunning _unfairness_ in my personal experience either.

But then again, I only very rarely get angry in any situation. Besides the highs of joy and the gratingness of anger, I have found solemn sorrow to be the most meaningful and moving of emotions.

 
At 1:00 PM, Blogger Ben Avuyah said...

Hi rtjblogs,
It's good to be back on the blogosphere, thank you for stopping by to comment !

HI Orthoprax,
Thanks for stopping by to comment, I wasn't sure if anyone would see this since I have not posted in a while.
I am sure as you continue in your medial career you will have ample opportunity to see the human condition in all it's variations.

Good luck on the interviews, BTW !

 
At 6:56 PM, Blogger Ben Avuyah said...

Thanks for stopping by to comment, Enigma, I agree with your viewpoint.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. My frustration stems from that fact that on those occasions where I feel the world is unfair and I want to discuss it in an open manner, I feel like I am surrounded by a people who are in active denial of reality.

 
At 9:06 PM, Blogger JDHURF said...

Wow, ben avuya that was an excellent post, very well written. It was like reading an excerpt from a book, or a good article in a magazine. I can relate to your feelings in this post, not because I am familiar with the feelings myself but because you expressed them so well. I am fortunate in this case because I was not heavily indoctrinated into belief in a god, as a child I never fully subscribed to the notion and in early high school I fully rejected the notion outright.
I strongly relate to your sense of frustration at not being able to openly communicate with your surrounding fellows in times that you feel the need most. I recently experienced this unfortunate circumstance. One of my high school friends committed suicide by walking into a train and I had to survive constant irrationality such as: “well he’s in a better place now”, or “he’s happy now”; I wanted to express my views but I felt that I mustn’t lest I upset the already bereaved. I know deep in my essence that he is not in heaven or in any spiritual realm, that he is just forever gone. Some have said that this is a cold and depraved view to hold, I disagree. I remember the fun we had, the good times that we shared, the love of life that he once shared with me and his other friends; I feel that all of these things are justification enough for his existence, and surely enough to console me. I don’t feel that there needs to be the belief in a “better place” to justify his existence or untimely death.
I have just now become acquainted with your blog, it seems that you have just now gotten back to posting on it. I hope that you continue to post. Know that when you feel that you are in the company of people that wouldn’t appreciate your views, there are those of us that would (and that have felt the same way).

 
At 7:40 AM, Blogger shmuel said...

Welcome back Ben, great stuff. I would seriously pay money for some more memoirs of yeshiva stuff. Your writings bring me right back to those years, with a hazy nastolgia that I just can't get anywhere else.

 
At 4:15 AM, Blogger Ben Avuyah said...

Hi jdhurf, thank you for stopping buy to comment. I am glad I was able to give over my perspective, and a little jealous that you live life free of this affliction.

What you say is very true, there does not seem to be any room for atheistic views during times of injury, disease, or death. One feels compelled to bite their tongue and remain silent.

I hope to gain a better understanding of why this is so by doing a little research...

Hi Shmuel, I will eventually get back to some yeshiva memoirs, but first I would like to toy with the idea of yeshiva science fiction. How's that for a genre !!

 
At 9:38 AM, Blogger The Jewish Freak said...

Dear Ben, I am so glad you're back. I have really enjoyed reading your previous posts.
I can relate to your experiences as a guest at the Shabbos table of others. One time I was relating an interesting idea that I read in a gentile book of Jewish history that ancient Israel as a nation has always had a conflict between the messy needs of the government, and the idealistic needs of the religious - an idea that seems just as true today as it was back then. The response that I recieved from my host (who is a brilliant physician) was: "If the B'nei Yisroel did what Hashem told them, they wouldn't have any problems". Well that was the end of that conversation. Unlike you , I can no longer enjoy these interactions and so I pretty much ended my Jewish social life (hence I am called The Jewish Freak). Keep up the good work! I will include a link to you on my homepage. - JF

 
At 10:00 AM, Blogger Ben Avuyah said...

Thanks for comming by to comment, JF, You are right, having these conversations where otherwise intelligent people seem to hit a wall of "faith", through which they cannot continue, are very frustrating. I am not sure I am ready to give it all up yet, because there are other areas in which I truly do enjoy the freindship and comeradery of the people around me.

BTW I read your post about reb Dovid, excellent stuff !

 
At 12:08 PM, Blogger Avi said...

Long gone are the days when I actually intellectually believed that someone up there was keeping track of human beings in a little book with a red pen.

My whole family and extended family believe this. I have nothing to say to them, and them to me. To them I am the Koifer. I try to hang on to some semblence of belief, but am fast losing it. The only reason I have any belief left is because I have difficulty in believing that this orderly and sensible universe came about by itself.

 
At 6:16 PM, Blogger Ben Avuyah said...

Hi Avi, Thanks for commenting, it must be tough to be on the "outs" with your whole family, I don't think I could handle it.

Hi Kiddush club, thanks for stopping by to comment, I agree with your summation. It's always heartening to see I am not the only one who has come to these conclusions.

P.S. I am a member of the kiddush club in my shul !

 
At 7:08 AM, Blogger M-n said...

Talk about making a comeback. Thanks for writing, BA.

I can't say that I'm ever angry at God, even vestigially. In reality, I never think about God as anything other than a literary construct. I can't even imagine how I would get angry or what it would feel like. It seems from my current vantage point that it would feel terribly phony, like mocked-up anger. Imagine being angry at Santa Claus for bringing you a bad gift. You could work up a lather, but deep down it would still feel like acting.

 
At 9:22 AM, Blogger Ben Avuyah said...

Hi Mis-nagid, it's good to talk with you again.

I wish I could attain that level of "mind over matter", in which what I knew to be true really trumped all those years of upbringing and indoctrination.

But I guess I am just slow to adapt to my new realizations and can't seem to shake my very visceral reactions to some situations.

Perhaps time will be my best remedy.

 
At 8:57 AM, Blogger M-n said...

Time, and more blog posts. Lots more. ;-)

 
At 9:56 AM, Blogger Ben Avuyah said...

KCG,

HUH ?

 
At 2:38 PM, Blogger Chana said...

It's interesting that you write this. Somehow I find it easier to understand you because you don't seem so remote. You're caught up in a real world, one where feelings and emotions can sometimes join the interplay, while many other people (who are extremely smart, don't get me wrong) focus more on the proofs, science and logic, which, while learned, doesn't allow the layperson (me) to follow.

In which I would say- or answer- that I am also angry at God. I consistently think of R' Joseph B. Soloveitchik wrote that if God stopped choosing men (prophets) then man had the capacity to call upon God (prayer). I've always seen the God-man relationship in that kind of setting. God may call upon man, may exalt him, may expect him to follow Him or to lead others depending upon his mission, but man is also weary and bewildered, angered by the things he cannot change.

I hate being helpless. I hate realizing that something is not within my power- or, as you said- that you are unable to "fix" the neural tissue. I want to do something, I want to call out, I want to try to help, but I can't. It's when I'm helpless that I become angry, and I want to know why? Why is it, why can't I change it, and how could God do it?

There are many "Why?" questions. The Holocaust is possibly the biggest. But I've always felt that, as I believe in a personal God, I don't need to restrict myself/ pretend it's all all right. Because it isn't, always.

I can be angry at God. All my emotions, my thoughts and feelings, can reflect upon Him. He's many things- a king, a father, someone I am close to but at the same time very confused by.

The anger is not in itself effective, but the questioning is. I live with questions. Every day another thought occurs to me, another contradiction, another questions. I exist in a living conundrum...

So sometimes you still get angry, even though you are an avowed Atheist. Let it be. You can be angry. You can be angry at your powerlessness and inefficiency and how you wish you could do something but you can't.

The same way someone would be angry on your behalf, if something had happened to you.

And even though you may not believe there is someone to direct this anger toward, perhaps the very feeling is bound up in your own humanity, in your desire to help and the way in which this must be crushed by, if you will, circumstances.

I don't think- and this is my personal opinion- that you must master a guarded, rational opinion towards life. Not everything works logically, nor does it need to. There can be contradictions, and confusion, and unhappiness and simple feeling. And that, too, is part of life...

 
At 8:32 PM, Blogger Ben Avuyah said...

HI chana,

thank you for stopping by to comment !
It seems you have done quite a bit of soul searching on this topic as well.

You make a nice point about the fact that human beings do tend to function less based on rationality than one would expect, given our reasoning ability.

Perhaps it is an inescapable facet of being human.

 
At 7:24 AM, Blogger Shlomo Leib Aronovitz said...

You feel what you feel. Nature is so indifferent to our sufferings that we sometimes wish stike out at it. If you think it will help things, strike out.

Let your sadness be sadness, and let your love be love. Emotions are not a meant as statements of overall purpose or some meter by which to gauge life's portent.

Kol Tuv
Kol Tuv

 
At 4:24 PM, Blogger Ben Avuyah said...

Hi SL,
Thank you for the kind words.

 
At 10:42 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Ben,

I found your story moving, like something that I frequently live myself. I don't believe in God any longer but my wife, my kids, my parents, my wife's parents, my grandparents, all of my siblings, and nearly all of my friends are devout Christians. It seems likely that they will never understand me.

Karl

 
At 6:25 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't know if you are still reading comments here, but I came across this entry and just could not help but comment.

I echo the earlier comments, that this is a great post. I also disagree with where you end up, although I am not Orthodox and do not have the kind of "indocrination" that you have had. Nonetheless, as a "good" Jew, I have struggled with my relationship with Gd and the Jewish community since I was about 10 years old... until recently. Several years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. As an educated, intelligent, problem-solving kinda person (and a parent with young children who have suffered enough thankyouverymuch), it was like hitting a brick wall... a HUGE brick wall. And it took me awhile to realize that sometimes you can't "fix" things in conventional ways... and that acceptance (of fate, divine will, whatever it is that brought me to this point in my life) is all there is. Does it mean I'm gonna roll over and die? Hell no! But it does mean that I am learning to trust -- to trust that maybe there is more than medical fixing to be done here, and that maybe I am exactly where I should be, especially since there ain't no place else to go right now.

I would be deeply saddened if my children were to be orphaned at this point -- and I would not blithely say that "Gd has a plan", since far too many children suffer in this world for that point of view to really make sense. But there is not a damn thing I can do to change it -- so I will cherish every day with them and make certain that if I am gone tomorrow, they will know forever that they were loved. For me, that is all we can do to "fix" things -- whatever our professional talents.

I suspect that your anger is not so much a relic of your orthodox upbringing as a general frustration -- with Gd, with the limits of medical science, with injustice whatever it's source. The anger comes from the idea that the tools you have to fix things (prayer, your scalpel) don't seem to work. What you don't seem to see is that, in the eyes and heart of a patient, that tissue box is almost as powerful as a scalpel. It is part of the realm of human relationships and human lives where fixing means more than repairing broken body parts. Every doctor (and I've seen more than a few) who has taken a moment to recognize my humanity and to acknowledge and sympathize with my suffering has helped me heal from the damage this disease has wrought on my body and my life. Please don't ever dismiss the power of what happens when you extend your hand, even if it all it contains is a "scented box".

Sorry if this sounds preachy... your blog is excellent and stimulated lots of thought.

 
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