Do- Overs?

I have now gone for the longest time without seeing a patient in 42 years.  It still seems very strange.  I am also still getting messages, questions and requests from people I have seen in the past.  So many seem to think that I will still see them, even if I've closed the practice to everyone else.

Part of me feels as if I am waiting for the next stage of my life to emerge, and I guess I am, but a large part of me is very content to let that happen after the summer has slipped by.  We have been very busy down here at the beach house.  I had thought "wow" I will be here all summer I will have so much time to think and reflect.  But the truth is that although ideas have been racing through my head, between babies, friends, and activities, there has been no time to really make them clear or get them into any distilled form. I looked at the calendar and found that almost every day will be busy until September 14, at which time things will get busier as our last grandchild is expected then.

What has been interesting is that so many of the the thoughts that flare-up in my mind have been memories of things I did wrong.  Most of them relate to patients.  The things I did wrong with patients fall into a few major categories: there were many who I like so much that I underestimated how crazy they were, and thus encouraged them to keep trying at things they really couldn't do.  There were others who fooled me into believing they really wanted to get their act together and overcome the emotional and physical options they faced, but once they got some form of disability check they disappeared.  There were still other whom I just did not like.

These thought come up much more than memories of the many people who did well, the many who really thanked me, the many who kept in touch long after the treatment ended.  It would make me happier if my mind wandered in that direction.  But so far, it hasn't.

I guess I have what is called a high Zeigarnik Effect.  I remember the unfinished much more than the finished.  They say that has some evolutionary adaptive value and that's why it is so common.  I find it frustrating to remember how frustrated I often was. And now the world has moved on and there is nothing to be done.

I must learn to move on also.  The wind is blowing very hard off the water; it blows away as mcuh as it can.