What Matters Most: Poems About Love, Loss, & Trauma

Chapter 16: Poems about Loss and Trauma

Several tragic and disturbing events collided in late July of 2000. 

I had built a successful private practice that began in 1998. I had started undergraduate school in 1984 as someone with almost no social skills and I had turned that weakness into a strength... and built a career around it. I learned how to help others who are struggling with emotional and psychological issues. 

I had no idea that I would run across anyone who would purposefully seek to destroy that career but that was what happened. That is part of a larger story involving a villain that appears in my autobiography and other books. Let's just say that he was someone who became obsessed with me and was hurting my clients and others. I don't know if he thought I was a threat or what. He convinced five of my clients to file a grievance with my licensure board. 

This was a career that I built over a period of many years. I had worked hard to achieve something very valuable and now some guy posing as a therapist who wasn't actually a therapist was providing therapy to my clients and they were getting worse. This might sound totally crazy that anyone would be seeking psychotherapy from two people at the same time, one of which was not even a psychotherapist. Well, he claimed to be a "support person." 

And they didn't realize that he was making them worse. They needed someone to blame and couldn't complain about a "support person" or try to sue that person. This is NOT to say that I didn't feel bad that they got worse. Over the years I have had to accept that there are some things you can't control and that includes the choices and actions of another person. 

I find myself getting defensive about this because when my psyche was being examined and I was asked about my clients not getting better, I stated something to the effect that it wasn't my fault. This psychologist misunderstood the exact tone and intention of my words as a lack of concern for my clients.

This is a complex story that is described elsewhere. The point is that I was seeing a very successful career being destroyed by someone who I underestimated. My famous last words to Lynn, my wife, were "what can he do?" The answer was he could convince five of my clients to blame me for their problems. 

I am writing a poetry book right now and so I will ask you, dear reader, to check out my other books for more information about these issues. I hope that just as when you hear a song and thinking "what's that song about?" you will similarly want to learn more about the backstory and inspiration for these poems in this book.

At the same point, the love of my life, Lynn Denise Krupey became seriously ill in late July of 2000 - that's when I remember first noticing the changes. I had felt powerless to do anything about this. I titled my autobiography "Memoirs of a Healer: Autobiography of Bruce Whealton." I wasn't a miracle worker and I couldn't heal Lynn from the genetic and terminal disease that she was born with. I felt powerless. 

Losing Lynn occurred with no closure. 

That story is very complicated. She faded away out of my life. We never "broke up" or "separated" and then got divorced. 

I had given her a ring in 1994 and yet we didn't actually have a wedding. If we had gotten married this could have affected Lynn's access to medical care. There was a state program that covers the medical expenses for people with Cystic Fibrosis - the deadly disease that Lynn was born with. They had strict income requirements. 

It seems totally crazy that a person born with a terminal illness would have to live in poverty to qualify for medical care but that's what we faced. When you are born with a condition like this, it's not for an insurance company to pay for a condition that exists from the time of one's birth. Access to medical care seemed to be tied to Lynn qualifying for this state health care program.