Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Two Death Poems and Three Death Haiki

Death Has A Sound
By Marla Lukofsky

Death is the deepest of silence.
It's a quiet unlike any other.
Do you hear that?
Be still and listen.
There it is.
A quiet unlike any other.

See "The Hospice Flute."

GENTLY INTO THE NIGHT
By Sue Mayfield Geiger

I watch carefully as the hospice team changes his hospital gown and rolls him over.

The I.V., catheter, and oxygen are removed. Deep breaths heave in and out of his body.

I stroke his forehead and thank him for being a wonderful father.  I go home.

The phone rings early the next morning, and I know.

 

Comment:  Writing death haiku was a tradition in Japan.  The three greatest haiki poets, Basho, Buson and Issa's Death Poems follow.

Basho
    Sick on a journey,
my dreams wander
    the withered fields.

Buson
    Winter warbler --
Long ago in Wang Wei's
    Hedge also.

Issa
    A bath when you're born.
A bath when you die.
    How stupid.

Rugby World Cup

Adam Kleeberger, center, of Canada was brought down by Japanese players during their Rugby World Cup match in New Zealand.   

Help One Robin

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain:
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.         Emily Dickinson

"Doors Swinging Open" by Frank Bruni, in the September 27, NY Times, is a story that brings the Dickinson poem to mind.  It chronicles the journey of Energy Maburutse, a young man with osteogenesis imperfecta from rural  Zimbabwe, to Lynn University in Florida. 

K'NAAN: Somali Native Son

The moving piece in today's NY Times begins with these words:  "One has to be careful about stories. Especially true ones. When a story is told the first time, it can find a place in the listener’s heart. If the same story is told over and over, it becomes less like a presence in that chest and more like an X-ray of it.

The beating heart of my story is this: I was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. I had a brief but beautiful childhood filled with poetry from renowned relatives. Then came a bloody end to it, a lesson in life as a Somali: death approaching from the distance, walking into our lives in an experienced stroll..."

Read the NY Times piece:  "A Son Returns to the Agony of Somalia."

I had not heard of K'Naan.  My loss.  A musician and a poet, his rap is important, brilliant.

Here is a link to one of K'Naan's songs:  Somalia

Dysmorphia

"Dysmorphia is less of an illness and more of a lifestyle.

A vaguely Greek etymology cloaks the shapeless disorder in ancient allure. Even the word, stolen from my second psychiatrist, hisses through the teeth – diss  and erupts in the mouth MORPH before finally sputtering out eeaa to coat the tongue in thick, paralyzing ash. I swallow down the sediment. Appropriate: the word is trapped in my mouth as this mind is trapped in my body.

This is an important piece."  Full text here: Download Dysmorphia

For more information see:  Dermatology Central and the book "The Broken Mirror: Understanding and treating body dysmorphic disorder by Katharine A. Phillips,  Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. 1996. ISBN 0-19-508317-2.

 

Zen Teachings

Aldous Huxley Quote

Goodbye/24 by Susan Gottlieb

In 1964, Susan Gottlieb, a 20 year old, is charged with caring for her 54 year old mother who has recently undergone brain surgery. Susan learns that communication with her mother will be more difficult than she ever imagined. The other aspect of this relationship is that even though the embolism has been removed, alcoholism and false pride are still a part of the mother’s life. To read this moving essay:  Download Goodbye-3  You may contact Ms. Gottlieb at: Email.

 

 Author (20) and Mother              Author Currently

 

 

A Thing of Beauty

A world-famous collection of waterlilies incongruously resides in a  little west central Texas city plagued by heat, drought and wildfire. Here are hundreds of hardy and tropical waterlilies blooming day and night.  See the NY Times article: Texas Waterlily Refuge.  The multimedia link is pretty amazing.

Water lilies float
Serene and motionless as
Raindrops splash the pool
                                                                        Basho

Michael Hart - Project Gutenberg

Mr. Hart, Thank you!

Michael Hart, who was widely credited with creating the first e-book when he typed the Declaration of Independence into a computer on July 4, 1971, and in so doing laid the foundations for Project Gutenberg, the oldest and largest digital library, died on September 6, 2011 at age 64. Obit.

Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The project tries to make these as free as possible, in long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any computer. As of June 2011[update], Project Gutenberg claimed over 36,000 items in its collection. Access PG.