Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Ordinary Light

by Tracy Smith

Tracy Smith,  Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton, was recently appointed U.S. Poet Laureate. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, is fascinating and inspiring. It is the story of an ordinary/extraordinary daughter in an African-America family whose incandescent memories are a picture of her America. 

This is really the story of a daughter and a mother. There is hope here in her book for our country during what is, for some of us, a dark time.

NYT Review, April 2015

Tracy Smith PBS Interview. (seven minutes)

Latest Edition

by Carol J. Rhodes 

Grade school, first bicycle,
high school, first date, first kiss,
college, first car, first job,
third floor walk-up flat.
Bought latest edition of Cooking for One. 

Engagement, marriage, honeymoon,
newness of sleeping in the arms of love,
instead of a kiss at the door.
first house, dinner parties, trips.
Gave Cooking for One to a single friend.
Bought latest edition of Elegant Meals for Two. 

Children, carpools, Little League games,
empty nest, daughters-in-laws,
doctors, hospital, funeral,
strangeness of  small apartment.
Gave Elegant Meals for Two to newlyweds
across the hall.
Bought latest edition of Cooking for One.

Author Bio: Carol J. Rhodes lives in Houston, Texas with a household zoo of two poodles and four cats.  She plays bridge once a week, and always has an online Scrabble game going with her best friend.  She can be reached at: rhodes.cATatt.net

Two Poems by Jane Seskin

OFFICE VISIT

At the Doctor’s
they’re quick to put you
in a brightly lit room
without a clock, close the door
so you think you’re next,
but honestly, you’re not.

I’m always cold sitting
on the paper-covered exam table,
wearing the short-sleeved gown,
magazine left outside,
shut away from the hallway action
where the staff is merrily chatting.

For years I’ve sat quietly,
patiently, nervously. Isolated.
But now, now I’m in mode of
older smart ass and I-won’t-follow-
your-rules, so I push open the door
… and yes, at long last I am seen.

GRIEF-WORK

I wrote my Mother
a love letter
on a yellow legal pad
a year after her death.

I described workshops taught,
poems published, trips taken,
friends seen, men dated
and at the end

recounted
the incredible loss I felt,
from her absence
in my life.

Then I burned the four pages
in the bathroom sink,
spooned the ashes
into three baggies,

got on a plane to Florida
and scattered the words of love
behind the condo
where she lived with my Dad,

in the park
of the assisted living complex
where she died
in her sleep,

and down the very middle
of her well-kept grave
where I watered the ashes
with my tears.

 

Bio: Jane Seskin is a clinical social worker and the author of Witness To Resilience: Stories of Intimate Violence. You can follow her on Twitter: @jsauthorshrink

About My Mother

February 10, 2015
by Marla Lukofsky

Marla Kissing Mommy

Yesterday was the anniversary of my mom's death. On that day back in 2006, in the afternoon, my mom took her last breath, in her own bed, just as she had wanted, just as it should be. She was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia one year after my dad died. It was terminal.

I remember when I went to say the mourner's prayer for 11 months at synagogue. I met so many people in the same situation. They were of great comfort to me. This daily prayer and those people there helped me get out of bed every morning. It was there that I met one of my now dearest friends, out of my tragedy...

Full Text PDF:  Download Marla's Mother

This piece was written by Marla Lukofsky, an inspirational Keynote Speaker, Stand-Up Comedian, Writer, Voice-over actor, Speaking Coach, Cancer Survivor. Email: mmlukofsky7ATaol.com

 

 

 

On the Death of a Colleague

Dylan Thomas famously intoned. “After the first death there is no other” – but perhaps there are many types of “first deaths.”  That of a child, that of a parent, a lover, sibling, and in Dr. Srivastava’s case – that of a beloved mentor and colleague.

“I marvel that in a hospital that routinely and efficiently deals with life, death, and all the intervening drama, the passing of our colleague has shattered the established structure for coping with loss."

"There seems to be an expiration date to grieving, a point when it becomes tedious to others.”

If you go to the pdf of " Download Srivastava Grief," you will need to scroll down on page one to get to the essay.  NEJM does not make it easy to share its pieces.

Let Me Cry Instead

I see human skulls
in the leaf formations
on the trees
outside my bedroom window
dangling craniums
stark against the setting sun
must be all this grief
that I have been experiencing
my own, and everyone’s

we try our best to keep it in check
these losses that pile up
personal set backs
planetary horrors
the global warnings
that we are becoming undone
there must be a silver lining
which we can grasp onto

some wise people
direct us to the moment
if not silver, then maybe gold
if not gold, then maybe oxygen
hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen
the elements of life
the persistent material
that is, after all, spiritual

but I feel too shitty
to embrace
a cosmic solution
for our collective pain
at least
not in this moment

let me cry instead

Deborah Golden Alecson
September 14, 2014

Singing Into the Cosmos

The poet, Frank L. Meyskens, Jr., M.D., is a distinguished oncologist. His new book "Believing in Today" concerns loss, grief, and imagining one’s own death. Some of the poems deal with the poet’s own mortality and, such as the one featured below, were inspired by his father’s death. Others are reflections on aging and what looms ahead.

 

The Final Song

Once again we rushed to be with you
a long scary ride in the pouring  rain,
arriving at midnight ten hours later
exhilarated and exhausted.

You had been failing badly for several days
now gasping, eyes shut , becoming aware
of our presence when my brother began
to sing “You are my sunshine.”

Your eyes opened and in a strong voice
you began to sing, song after song,
and for an hour we sang with you,
you correcting us when we didn’t get it right.

And then you returned to wherever
you had been and for the next three days
you said your goodbyes, one by one,
as your friends and grandchildren called.

It has been nearly six weeks now since you sang yourself
into the cosmos, never will I forget that divine  moment,
my chest then heaving, my heart now aching,
my eyes glistening at the finality of that moment.

Related articles

On His Deafness

Prodigal Patient: A Reflection on Loss

by Richard Ratzan, M.D.

Last week a patient died. It was not on my watch. And he was a hopeless alcoholic whose death was a long time a comin'. Yet his death has unhinged me and many - most - of my colleagues, from nurses to doctors to aides - in a way that no other death has affected an Emergency Department staff in my 40 years of practice. I did what I ordinarily do when an event intrudes upon and usurps my consciousness - I analyzed it from the perspective of a writer whose assignment it was to understand it well enough to convey to a reader what and how and why it meant what it did for us. For I intuitively realized that only when I could write about it for a reader who did not know Jamie (name changed) would I have achieved clarity of comprehension for myself.

To read the full essay:   Download Prodigal Patient C2S

Rich Ratzan is a poet, classical scholar, ER doc and much more.  He can be reached at:  richratzanATyahoo.com

World Enough and Time!

The Times had a fine article on the Literature of Death recently, and two thought-provoking pieces came to our attention at the same time.

1. Why there are no big milestones to achieve in my life by Heidi Wilk

[In] minutes my world crashed around me. My husband had a seizure while picking our daughter up from daycare... He was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour.
My husband is going to die young. We are not going to grow old together. The moment of diagnosis was the saddest and darkest time of my life. Not where I expected to be at 32.  Why?  Download Wilk Barankin

2. The Joy of Old Age (No kidding) by Oliver Sacks
Eighty! I can hardly believe it. I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over.
I feel glad to be alive — “I’m glad I’m not dead!” sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect. (This is in contrast to a story I heard from a friend who, walking with Samuel Beckett in Paris on a perfect spring morning, said to him, “Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?” to which Beckett answered, “I wouldn’t go as far as that.”).  Download Sacks 80

 

Leave a Message

When the wind died, there was a moment of silence
for the wind. When the maple tree died, there was always a place
to find winter in its branches. When the roses died, I respected the privacy
of the vase. When the shoe factory died, I stopped listening
at the back door to the glossolalia of machines.
When the child died, the mother put a spoon in the blender.
When the child died, the father dug a hole in his thigh
and got in. When my dog died, I broke up with the woods.
When the fog lived, I went into the valley to be held
by water. The dead have no ears, no answering machines
that we know of, still we call.

 — BOB HICOK, the author of the forthcoming “Elegy Owed,”
which includes this poem  This appeared in the NY Times Sunday Review, December 16, 2012.  It can be viewed better there.