In Memoriam

I was raised to see the best in people, even when it isn’t there.

When I was young, I took this to mean that there was a silver lining to every person. No matter how much damage a person did, how many people they hurt, there was some part that remained good.

I followed that worldview, and it led me to Dana Whitehorn and Dr. Lizbeth Roe. They showed me a new way to see.

Dana was my neighbor in highschool. She loved books and sports, and wore pink sneakers everywhere she went. At the beginning and end of each summer, she and her sister, Michelle, hauled out their parents’ old ice cream maker, and they sold soft-serve on the corner across from the school.

I knew both of them well. Dana was the first girl I ever kissed on the lips. Michelle followed us around on bikes for lazy summer afternoons. The three of us joined in on neighborhood games of hide and seek in the cornfields, even though our parents told us not to.

Seeing the best in Dana and Michelle was easy for me. We had fights, but nothing that lasted more than a day. I have fifteen years of happy memories of the two of them.

In the fall of 1984, Michelle drowned, and Dana started going to therapy. A new doctor moved to our town: Dr. Lizbeth Roe. Dana was Dr. Roe’s first patient.

The changes started slow, and were hard to notice, because of the mourning the Whitehorns were all going through. But I caught Dana making offhand comments about her childhood that shocked me. Her parents had abused her, she said. Dana’s mother beat her as a child, threw shoes at her and locked her in the closet with Michelle.

Dr. Roe had helped Dana remember. The two of them dove deep in their therapy sessions, to the subconscious roots of all of Dana’s problems. That was the reason she was always afraid to disobey, she told me. I didn’t remember her ever being afraid to disobey. That was the reason she and Dana didn’t like going to church, where they had to sit beside their abusers. But Michelle loved going to church; she liked to sing with the choir and play games in the pews afterwords. Dana’s memories and mine were growing apart.

After two years of therapy, I hardly knew Dana anymore.

We went our separate ways. Dana went to school to study agriculture; I started studying to become a doctor.

A few years ago Mrs. Whitehorn died of cancer. I attended the funeral, and Dana was there. “Good riddance,” was all Dana had to say to me. She stood out of reach of her father, never looking directly at him, and he seemed to be used to it.

I forgot about Dr. Roe until I saw an article in the paper, just a few months before Mrs. Whitehorn died. She lost her license after a malpractice lawsuit. And as I drove home from that funeral on a spotless, starry night, I thought of Dr. Roe, and what she did, and what she could have done. An epiphany struck me.

What Dr. Roe did -- planting memories, chasing trauma that wasn’t there -- could it be undone? Why couldn’t I do the opposite?

When Mrs. Whitehorn died, she became a memory. She had been a good person, but Dana turned her into a monster. The world didn’t need more monsters; it had plenty already. And I could help.

I still see the best in people, and now I show it to others. But what I see has nothing to do with innocence or an unshakeable, deep-down good. I tell lies, and make the world better for it. Because the best in people doesn’t have to be real. It’s just what we remember.

So, I got my degrees and my license, and I visit the grieving and the lonely. Together, we raid the past. We find the good, and if it isn’t there, I plant it. Abusive parents become tragic heroes. Violent alcoholics become unrecognized visionaries. A debtor spent everything they had to make their family happy.

It doesn’t work for everyone; only those who really want to believe it. What I do is dishonest, but at least it does some good. That’s more than a lot of honest people can claim.

I help people. I really do.