These past few days I have been in New York City, where I have been attending the National Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association. (Remember Malfoy Manor and the Death Eaters from The Long Haul entry last summer?) I was honored to be chosen as one of the six fellows for the Association’s Teachers Academy: during this year I will be working on developing a curriculum (if you could call it that) to help treaters both within the VA and without to better be able to “listen to war,” to borrow from the title of my upcoming book (which will be an edited collection of some of last year’s posts).
I had a busy day yesterday, and I returned to my room to find within my RSS feed two “replies”: one to me directly on this blog, the other to recent entries on TIME’s blog Battleland concerning the recent death of Dr. Peter Linnerooth. As some readers may know, I have been profoundly affected by the news of Dr. Linnerooth’s death and have discussed my thoughts at length in the recent posts Listen First, Then Do: In Memory of Dr. Linnenrooth and VIP Treatment for VIP Healers.
What a way to end the day. As the title of this post suggests, I suddenly found myself thrust into two different worlds, though somehow apparently on the same planet. Both replies left me speechless, though in quite different ways. I guess I could subtitle this entry “Same Word, Different Realities.”
I’m still not quite yet sure I’ve recovered.
First, from Mark Thomspon’s entry on Battleland, entitled The VA on Dr. Peter Linnerooth
Department of Veterans Affairs
Jan. 14, 2013, Statement on Dr. Peter Linnerooth
The loss of Dr. Linnerooth is tragic and our condolences go out to his wife, family and friends…
Our records and review of the situation show that:
–The VA offered Dr. Linnerooth a chance for employment with the regulatory condition that he obtain state licensure within two years. His appointment, which began in 2009 with the Santa Cruz Vet Center, was temporary for two years pending his obtaining a license. This was understood by Dr. Linnerooth.
–More specifically, on July 11, 2011, he applied for a position with VA Sierra Nevada Health Care System (VASNHCS) because his wife had accepted a position at the facility. In his application, he provided a statement that he would sit for the necessary licensing exams by August 2011. He was extended a job offer with the requirement he would be licensed before the expiration of his appointment and if not, he would be terminated.
–On October 20, 2011, Dr. Linnerooth was boarded on a temporary appointment because he had not yet received his license, and he officially transferred from the Santa Cruz Vet Center to Reno VAMC on November 20, 2011. On November 28, 2011 he was given an official letter from HR advising him that his termination was imminent without proof of the required licensure.
– When he did not produce a license, Reno VAMC was forced to follow through with termination on December 5, 2011 (specific rules/laws here are Public Law 96-151 and Title 38 United States Code, Sec. 7402).
–The Reno VA offered to take him back once he completed his license requirements.
–To VA’s knowledge Dr. Linnerooth was not told he was allowed any type of extension on the two-year term limit due to Family Medical Leave Act use or other reasons, as a facility has no authority to grant this.
–The Reno staff also says they did not limit his access to PTSD treatment. They informed us they never would have done this. They were aware of the treatment he was receiving in Minnesota…Our heart goes out to Dr. Linnerooth’s family and friends.
Even now, I’m speechless.
Let me just say this: it’s hard to speak for an organization. I fully recognize that. The rhetorical cards are stacked against you from the get-go, after all.
The VA has an even more daunting task. On the one hand, VA’s are physical buildings, scattered throughout the land. In that way, to speak “for”the VA, one often must enter the world of metonymy, where parts stand for wholes, where physical structures stand for all the people within them, like “the White House” or “the Congress” or “the Reno VA.” At the same time, the VA is an organizational structure, non-physical, so when “it speaks,” one must use personification, the transformation of the nonphysical to the human physical, into “someone” who can be the subject of verbs, such as when I have spoken of “the VA” in this very paragraph.
Therefore, a reply such as this puts an organization in a real bind: it appears, grammatically, as if an interaction is happening between two people, yet rhetorically the whole enterprise has a certain “David and Goliath” quality to it.
Unfortunately, this story didn’t have a “David and Goliath”-type ending, so a reader is having to be left with the task of conjuring up an image of Goliath as an earnest, somewhat anxious, tragic figure who struggled, yet failed against the forces of Fate that were, sadly, so much larger than he.
Or, even better, with a patient, yet reality-based Goliath who did all he could to prevent an inevitable Philistine destruction while negotiating with a young shepherd-boy who just couldn’t seem to get his act together and find the brook ten feet away from him.
But here’s what still, to this very moment, leaves me speechless:
First, grammatical: what’s this with the ellipses (i.e., the two “. . . “)? An ellipsis signifies something is being left out or, sometimes, a pause. What was left out at the end of the first paragraph? The word but? And why the pause at the end of the final paragraph? Why not just make a separate paragraph? Would that have made an orphan line on the next page?
But this is the kicker: Our heart goes out . . .
So Goliath has a heart.
I cannot understand why the writer of this release both wrote and then released this sentence. (I’m still stupefied, even as I type.) One would have thought that the construction should have read ”Our hearts go out,” for that would have shifted the message rhetorically to the right level at the right point, saying essentially that “even though we have to speak as One, we are Many, and each of us is touched by the death of one of our own.”
But instead, one finds the “Royal We.”
I’m sure I will pay for the following, but I’m in this far, so here goes: if this weren’t so deadly serious, literally, I could easily imagine Carol Burnett speaking that line in her faux upper-class, high-pitched voice of the Queen, rotating her forearm in a faux wave à la royal fashion, with Harvey Korman snickering in the background.
I’d suggest that Central Office consider doing a root-cause analysis (or whatever the latest au courant term might be) of its PR processes.
But then . . .
I see the signal on the dashboard of my blog that I had received a comment.
It was for my recent post Taking Him On Home. It was from the writer, “Josh.”
My heart skipped more than a few beats.
This is what I found when I opened the entry:
I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to share this. It took a long time, an immeasurable amount of courage, and quite a bit of coaxing from friends, brothers, and family for me to finally seek help for the problems that I experienced (and still experience to no lesser of a degree some years later) after my deployments. When I finally did, I sat through many sessions with many VA doctors, some pretending to listen and care, and even more who made me feel as though I was bothering them by asking them for the help that I so desperately needed. So I eventually swore off the VA and seeking treatment altogether. That is, until I was referred to you by my friend and brother, Porthos. Of course I was still quite apprehensive but after meeting with you several times and reading your blog only to find posts like this, I’m reminded that there are not only doctors, but people that genuinely care. And that has given me back what I lost many years ago…hope. So thank you, Dr. Deaton. Thank you for caring. And thank you for giving me hope.
Here was my response. It took me a while to complete. The tear came to my eye probably around the third paragraph or so.
Josh,
As you can tell from my posts, “lack of words” has never been one of my problems. I would say that your words leave me “speechless,” but that’s not quite right. That word sounds too scary, too distancing.
I’m “speechless,” for example, when I think about what has happened to you in other treatment settings. I know you. I know who you were the moment I met you. I know who you have been as we’ve interacted. It isn’t as if you’ve hidden anything from me. I am “speechless” that anyone can come to work at a VA anywhere and not have been able to see so clearly the man who you really are. I know such misconnections happen daily in VA’s across the country, yet I remain “speechless” that they happen with men who have, from Word One, been as genuine and forthright as you have been with me.
So, instead, let me say that your comment leaves me “silent,” yet silent in the best of ways. We are no strangers to silence with each other, are we?: What honestly can be said about so much that you have experienced anyway, correct?
I know that you, like many of your brothers and sisters, have feared silence, for it has been in silence that The War Within has sidled up to you to tap you on the shoulder. I am so glad to know, though, that you have now not only realized, but also felt that Hope has always been there, waiting in the wings.
I think it’s important for you to know that I have not “given” you Hope. Hope has always been in you. If you hadn’t already had Hope in your soul, you’d have never walked into my office in the first place. If I have been of any help, let’s say that I have been able to make more possible the opportunity for you and Hope to get reacquainted.
For that, I am glad. And for having given me the honor of being in your presence, both literally and in cyberspace, as you and Hope have started to catch up on Old Times, I most sincerely, deeply thank you.
When one listens to War, one has to be prepared. I’ve been doing this for thirty years. I’m glad to report that, still, I’m never quite prepared.
Thank you, Josh.
And once again, to the family, friends, and patients of Dr. Linnerooth: I am so, so sorry.
May he rest in peace.
