Just Who Was Louie?

From: James Algiers <james.algiers@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 9:35 AM
Subject: Re: Hello
To: Sally Jensen <sally6784@gmail.com>

Sally, 

I awoke this a.m. again realizing that depression is oppressive and possessive ; it guts your spirit, destroys ambition, causes time to be suspended and removes one from contact with vibrant society. I have buried Louie many times in the past six months, have written his final letter, "Letter to Louie," have mailed it,sent it, sealed it but have found no substitute for my friend Louie.

An old shoe has a better place than the memory of Louie.

The inordinate possessive presence of Louie in my life

is not understandable

until one asks,

"Just Who Was Louie?"

I guess Louie was a time, a memory, a jogger of an aging brain, a lost contact with the past, someone whom I knew, respected and admired but someone whose passing meant more than a passing.

Many friends, almost all of my generation who have left this vale of tears, have gone on their way, and yes, are gone.

But why does "Louie" mean so much more?

Finally, I have come to the conclusion that it isn't He, it is I.

I am struggling to maintain contact, relevancy, meaning, in a constricting personal world; a world which as it constricts is becoming oppressive,smothering, uncomfortable, and poses solitude for involvement, withdrawal for active involvement, for activity.It is called Depression.

Never in my 88, now almost 89 years have I experienced the insidious entrance of 'depression into my life.

Never have I felt " Lower than a gnat's a--".

But now I know of the condition; of how one feels, of how responds, sighs instead of smiles, of just what it is to be depressed. I listened to depressed patients and friends, counseled them, prescribed for them, and successfully treated many over the years.

But this is different; it is oppressive, destroying, at sometimes near overwhelming. It seeks cause for understanding and regaining control.

It truly has little relationship to Louie's death and passage; that happens, but my problem is the discovering of my personal mortality; my recognition of my personal mortality in the awareness of possession of the cancer in me, not  else; of the fact that no longer is that condition a diagnosis of someone, but now it is a possession of mine.

It belongs to me, it might become me, it might destroy me.

And the treatment of the cancer is oppressive, is male destructive as the injectable Lupron therapy destroys maleness; produces "hot flashes" muscle mass reduction, destroys libido', and encourages depression. Never, in the past have I felt these feeling, never have I been devoid of goals and feared in the future.

It is a world unexplored in the eighty eight years of personal experience.

Should these feelings be shared, would others be helped to learn that everyone is affected?

Is this of "Letters to Louie" worth?

What think you, really think, but just… what do you think, Sally?  

JLA