A Meditation on Rumi

This summer, while vacationing in Maine, I stumbled upon a beautiful and simple necklace from Heather Murray at a craft show in Bar Harbor. The necklace is a clean, curved line of silver with a flat gold orb at one end. Etched all along the piece are these word from Rumi: “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do”. I was instantly drawn to the piece. What a beautiful sentiment! I wanted it to be mine to remind me to pursue the things I love and to always remember what is beautiful about the things that I put my heart into. I’ve been wearing the necklace ever since.

Nursing is one of those professions where you are almost guaranteed to have days where you say to yourself “why am I doing this?” It is physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding in a way that commuting between home and a cubicle is not. There are, of course, other unpleasantries about the job that keep others far from the health care field. As a nurse-mentor of mine remarked the other day “We are, perhaps, the only educated individuals who, voluntarily, deal directly with poop”. Quite an astute observation, I would say. It is particularly important to me as I begin my nursing career that I remember to see the beauty in the job I am doing; to remember how exceptionally privileged I am to be with individuals when they are most joyous, the most vulnerable, the most despairing, when they are coming into this world and when they are leaving it. It is also important to me that I remember that nursing is only one facet of my life and that I need to take time to nurture the other aspects of my self.

When I put on my ID badge last week for the first time, I found myself continually glancing down in amazement. BSN, RN. What a wonderful reality! I think I love nursing to such a passionate degree because it took me so long to find it. Growing up, my mind was firmly shut against any career other than medicine. On days off from school, I trooped around the hospital behind my father  in a lab coat several sizes to large during rounds and imagined the day that I would join the staff and we’d be side by side as not just father and daughter, but as colleagues as well. I never paid attention to the fact that much of the time I spent with hospital staff was with the nurses. They were the ones taking me under their wings, showing me the intricacies of patient care that involved not only compassion, but cutting-edge science and medicine. It wasn’t until I was forced, by the unfortunate circumstance of my father’s illness, to become a caregiver myself that I felt how naturally the role came. Suddenly, and without warning, that dream of becoming a physician shrank away and, like a childhood sweater outgrown, no longer seemed to fit. It was a difficult time; the letting go of one aspiration and the realization of another that I had not yet fully embraced.

Now that I have come to the end of this particularly journey, I can’t remember being more excited about anything else in my life. I am finally a member of an institution where I have wanted to belong since I was in grammar school. I always thought that my father would be part of the realization of this particular dream, and it’s painful to know that I will never receive a surprise visit from him on my floor. Part of me knows that his spirit is firmly embedded in the hospital and that makes the transition easier. I think I will be looking at my ID badge with absolute giddiness for some time. I hope to never get over the awe I feel about becoming a nurse and being truly responsible for helping to effect change in the lives of strangers. Nursing, for myself, is not merely just a “job”, it is a philosophy and a vocation imbued with a certain beauty even on the worst and most frustrating of days.

Reverb 10 for December 29 – DEFINING MOMENT

December 29 – Defining moment. Describe a defining moment or series of events that has affected your life this year.

Those who have lost loved ones are probably familiar with the point in the grieving process where you realize that the person is never coming back. Obviously, you’ve known all along that death is pretty permanent, but it still takes quite some time before the less rational parts of your being accept the fact as well.

When my father’s portrait was placed in the lobby at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, I realized that there was the end, right there, on the wall. The portrait “unveiling” was like a period at the end of a sentence of the last paragraph on the last page of a book. Full stop. “Well, that’s that”, I thought. It’s amazing how we are born, we live and carve a path on this planet, we die, and all that is physically left is a painting on a wall in a lobby of a busy urban hospital. Dare I say millions of people will come to pass that portrait? They will read the accompanying plaque and wonder about the man behind the spectacles. There is no more knowing him. I have avoided stopping and staring at the painting when I am in the hospital for fear that someone with “catch” me and wonder what the heck I’m doing with my nose practically pressed up to the thing. I think about my dad, bodiless, floating around somewhere, watching me watch him. I get an odd feeling in my gut – the same feeling I get when I misplace something. I know that I KNOW where the darn thing is, I just can’t find it, can’t grasp it. It drives me nuts. Just where could he be? Where on earth could I have put him? I usually have to open up the box I keep in my closet of “mom and dad” to find him. I guess in a way, he does come back. Just not in the way I would like.

The portrait is so life-like, so warm and golden in its tones, that you almost expect him to wink as you pass by. But Hogwarts, HUP is not and I don’t expect to see my father’s visage floating in and out of the frame any time soon. My auntie Jackie, who lives in Richmond, on the same street that she once padded down barefoot as a child when it was a dirt road, told me of how she regularly talks to her deceased husband. Sometimes, when she visits him at the cemetery, she even yells at him. “I just go and cuss him out when I’m mad at him for leaving. Nothing wrong with doing that once in a while.” And I think that’s ok. It’s ok to be angry with people about being left behind and all the things they didn’t say and the questions they didn’t answer.

The aunties, or Daisies as the elder matriarchs in our family have come to be known, remind me that my grandma ‘Ree – whom I seem to greatly take after at times – did things a whole lot crazier than talking to dead relatives, so there should be no shame in it. I’m guessing there may be some days when I take a chair in the lobby and look across the corridor and have a word or two with my father; maybe even yell a little bit.

Reverb 10 for December 19 – HEALING

December 19 – Healing. What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011?

People, in general. This person, in particular.

Dessert crepes at Beu Monde in Philadelphia with "Flat Jesse"

*I know you’re intrigued by the little cardboard man in the photo, but you’ll have to ignore him as he is not the subject of this post. As it is, I am probably risking life and limb posting this picture here, but it’s a risk I shall take nonetheless.

2010 has been that fragile year just after the death of my father where people walk on eggshells and constantly ask you how you are doing. It’s like the rest of the world is on a surveillance mission to see if you’re going to go completely off the deep end during the grieving process. It also seemed that, in 2010, we were continually remembering my father but never really putting him to rest because of a series of events to honor him had been scheduled throughout the year, not to mention a grand portrait unveiling in November. Because I was perpetually busy during this time with classes and clinical rotations and a two-week vacation to Maine, I didn’t really consider myself in need of any healing. Afterall, I had plenty of support from mental health professionals as well to keep a tight reign on anything that might resemble a downward spiral towards depression. It’s only in retrospect that I realize that my friendship with J provided healing because she continually reminded me why life is worth living, why it can be exciting and beautiful, how the smallest acts can renew your spirit, how faith can remind you that you aren’t alone on the planet, and that taking time to be with other people is one of the most important things you can do for yourself and others.

J is a phenomenal person. In fact, she greatly reminds me of my father in that she is a carrier of that ever annoying trait that makes her seemingly immune to passing judgment on other human beings. I, on the other hand, seem incapable of forming snide opinions of people within seconds of meeting them. These opinions, no doubt, tend to drastically change over time as I get to know others.  I am usually able to keep them in the confines of my own head, but sometimes they slip out and it’s like I hear my father’s voice come out of J’s mouth and I just want to ask “how can you like everybody!?”.

J is also one of those dependable people that are increasingly difficult to find in the world and that seemed to make all the difference in 2010. I wrote an earlier post about how much I appreciate my mother because of her dependability but, she is my mother afterall and part of that comes with the territory of bringing a wee one into the world. J, is beholden to me in no way whatsoever, yet I have been able to count on her for an inordinate amount of emotional support this year. And she has been supportive in exactly the way that I need: the strong, silent way. No loaded questions of “well, just how are you these days?” or “everything alright at home?” I didn’t have to lie about my emotional state and I didn’t get any of the overly-saccharine sympathy that I had come to detest. Every comment and question and suggest was always honest and genuine.

J and I took a lot of walks in 2010 as I, yet again, tried to recommit myself to some sort of fitness routine. It’s pretty difficult to get myself to commit to walking in the freezing cold at 9am let alone to convince someone else to do it with me. At one point, we were up to 5 miles round-trip which seemed to amaze others with whom I would share this information. Our walks provided a kind of self-renewal that I hadn’t even realized that I craved or needed. Even if I balked on some mornings, J would inevitably persuade me to lace up my sneakers and off we’d go. I always felt better at the end of the trail. It was great to accomplish something. 5 miles every week was a veritable Mount Everest for me in terms of conquering my inability to commit to any fitness routine. Beyond, the steps we logged, we engaged in lengthy chats about anything and everything of a personal, ridiculous, serious, or sad nature. It was free psychotherapy. I learned to become a better listener on these walks. I tried to learn to not get so worked up about stupid, small stuff. J tends to make me want to be a better person, so mostly, I did a lot of trying on these walks: try to not interrupt, try to not judge, try to listen for what isn’t being said.

Unfortunately, our walking schedule took a major nosedive with the fall as we geared up to finish nursing school and I struggled with two unhappy kidneys. Now, J is headed off to the wilds (or at least suburbs) of North Dakota to begin her nursing career while I remain in Philadelphia to start mine. In 2011, I will still take walks, though. If I’ve learned anything at all from my father’s death, it’s that you can still talk to someone even when they’re not next to you to hear you. I’ll just be sure to keep it in my head.

Reflection on Handwriting

If you want to have a really bad day, I recommend reading the sentiments written by others about your father shortly after he died. Because if there is anything worse than your own personal grief and pain, it’s reading about the pain of complete strangers almost two years after the fact.

When I was walking down the hallway and ran into the chaplain, I knew we were going to talk about my dad and I knew that she was finally going to give me that little book that had been displayed in the hospital chapel so that faculty, staff, coworkers, and colleagues could reflect upon what a {insert your preferred adjective here} guy my dad was. And, of course, it was fitting that she present me with this neat little package of highly charged emotions right before the highly charged, emotional event that has come to be known as “Dad’s Dedication”. Needless to say, the notebook sat in my backpack until I passed it off to my mother after the portrait had been unveiled and canapes had been consumed.

It didn’t occur to me until yesterday when I was thinking of every way possible to procrastinate, and further put off writing a rather tedious research paper, that I decided to rifle through my mother’s room to find the notebook. I clicked over to Hulu on my computer and put on “Parenthood” for background distraction and proceeded through the pages. It’s never good to attempt these things with complete silence. If reading the sadness in another person’s handwriting is much more difficult than thinking about your own sadness, then not being able to fully deduce what someone has written because their handwriting is illegible is infernally frustrating.

Wait, what did you say about the time when _____ happened? Is that a ‘k’ or an ‘r’? Reading someone’s thoughts about another person is like an archaeological dig where you discover things that you never ever knew. Things that suddenly put that life into context and unravel mysteries. Couldn’t you have thought to print neatly? When someone dies, you realize just how much you didn’t know about that person. Even when you shared the same living space with them for 24 years, you still weren’t privy to the day-to-day goings-on of another man’s life. And why would you be? We all lead separate lives to some extent. There is no possible way to completely know another human being. I find myself wishing for just another snippet or anecdote that will allow me to better hold on to those memories that are already seeming very distant and murky.

[This is for another entry, but if I could have a superpower, it would be that I could read minds.]

The best part about reading those two dozen or so entries was realizing how devastated other people felt. When someone dies, people offer their condolences because it’s considered polite human behavior. I am still shocked and awe struck by how sincere and genuine other people’s sentiments have been, how emotional they still become when I pass them on campus or in hallways. It’s almost too much to bear. And that’s the worst part. Because if there are other people feeling as ridiculously awful as I feel, then the whole terrible bad dream of prolonged illness and death must certainly be true.

If some people had better handwriting, though, I’d at least be able to thank them for taking the time to share their sadness.

Grandfather in the Corner

We wind the clock every Sunday because that’s what we’ve always done; pulling down on the metal chains to raise the heavy brass weights that keep the pendulum in motion for all time. I thought it was called a grandfather clock because of my father’s father. Thought that its dark wood harbored a long, illustrious family history. But it wasn’t so; my own father bought it somewhere  in New Jersey long after he’d left my grandfather in Virginia. He’d  have told me that it was too nice a clock for black people to have owned “back then”. That’s why it came to us after – after Richmond, Virginia and segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. It takes up residence in a corner of the dining room now. I don’t care so much about where it came from as I used to. What matters is that the broad-faced sun and sliver of moon rise and set over the roman numerals the way they’ve been doing all my life. The clock in the corner is nothing but dependable. It keeps memories of time for me now like he once did. I tick off the many moments in my life to its hourly gongs.  It sets the rhythm for the day, just like a heartbeat.

Something Someone Said

The word itself is weighted like an anvil that falls heavily, squarely, and hammers you into the ground in a single, swift stroke.  It is cavernous and dark, stretching on forever like a tunnel, except that there is no light at the end of its long length. It is deafening. It silences the rest of the sentence with a jet-engine roar. It is the moment at which hope is extinguished.

I saw his mouth forming the word cancer before I actually heard it. There is certain predictability in an oncologist’s presence. They do not bring tidings of comfort and joy.

Dad immediately said, as he always said, “Now, don’t go getting all upset.”

Growing Up Is Hard to Do

I had intended to enter a recent essay contest sponsored by Real Simple magazine, but time got away from me and the deadline for entries has passed. The topic for the contest was “When did you first realize you were an adult?”. I’ve got no chance of winning $3,000 now, but I still want to put forth my own thoughts regarding that question.

I used to think that I’d feel like an adult when I left Philadelphia, drove off to New York City with a car full of belongings, and made my new home at Barnard College. I was 18 and, at that time, being an adult really meant one thing to me: being able to do whatever the hell I wanted without needing to solicit my parents’ permission. I pretty much figured that college would provide a plethora of such opportunities. But, like I said, I was 18 and pretty stupid.

In college, I ran into all sorts of obstacles and challenges that had me whipping out my cell phone – sometimes in hysterics, other times in tears – to call home and beg my parents to tell me what I should do. “Should I be pre-med?, What major sounds best? How much vodka constitutes a trip to the ER for stomach pumping?” and so on and so forth.

When being an adult at 18 wasn’t quite working out, I figured that age 21 was the magical number and I’d just bide my time as an adolescent until then. Shortly after turning 21 and consuming a few alcoholic beverages legally, I found myself thousands of miles from Philadelphia and New York City in South Africa. “Now,” I thought “I am truly an adult.” Afterall, what kind of child lives alone in a foreign country where she doesn’t know another soul? Things went swimmingly – I went to classes, learned how to drive a stick-shift on the opposite side of the road, dated a man from Cape Town, and traveled the Garden Route all by myself, all without managing to get myself killed – until I ended up horribly ill for the last 3 months of my stay. Instead of whipping out my cell phone this time, I was trudging down the stairs to my residence hall’s public phone in the wee hours of the South African morning to, yet again, consult my parents on whether or not they thought I had some life-threatening plague. When all was said and done and I was safely returned to the United States, an Infectious Disease specialist diagnosed the tiny parasite that had been causing me – and my parents – months of long distance agony.

By this time, I felt that it was obvious that I was still miles away from being a real, live adult and conceded to wait for college graduation. College graduation was all about entering “the real world”, or so I was told over and over and over again by the long ago graduated, so-called adults I encountered. The short of it is that neither graduating from Barnard, nor entering the “real world” made me feel any more like a capable adult. I felt like a pubescent boy, occupying a body that didn’t really fit. I was all gangly and awkward limbs that I hadn’t yet grown into.

If I still thought that being an adult had anything to do with age, I would say that I was thrown headlong and rather unceremoniously into adulthood at age 24. The exact age I am at this moment – give or take a few minutes, seconds, or whathaveyou – and the age I was when my father died. I realized that I was an adult the exact moment I stepped foot into my father’s hospital room and knew that he was no longer breathing. The initial feeling was like being stranded in a vast ocean only to realize that your life boat has just deflated. I could bail water as furiously as possible, but that still wouldn’t change the fact that I was on my own in a way I had never been before. There was no longer any man in the world who would always put me before himself. It was a slow realization, actually. When I found myself getting through the viewings and the funeral and the burial without breaking into millions of tiny pieces, I began to feel that I had finally grown into my capable, adult self. I was making my own decisions, forging my own life path in school and at work, and being a supportive sister, daughter, and aunt to my family. Despite unimaginable heartbreak, I was still standing on my own two feet and all with my cell phone tucked quietly away in my purse.

Father’s Day Special

This American Life is on NPR (WHYY in Philadelphia) every Sunday at noon. Every week Ira Glass narrates the life story or stories of rather ordinary Americans – people few others would be interested in except for the complicated themes that highlight their lives in ways no one would have previously expected.

This week?

“Go Ask Your Father”, a broadcast about a man and his father and a big “what if…?” What if we could choose our parents? What is truly wonderful about This American Life is that you can palpably feel the characters’ emotions in these stories in ways that tend to make me physically uncomfortable, upset, anxious, or undeniably optimistic and hopeful. This is a lost art – storytelling. This week there is confusion and anger, sadness and suspense, capped off by a DNA test where the man opens an envelope while tape recording himself. The paper crinkles audibly on the tape, the man tentatively reads the results, and, then, there is nothing but static-y radio silence when the news hits him like an atom bomb. I can sense the outward ripples of his emotions as they come over him, one by one, in waves.

If I could have chosen my father, I would have chosen someone who wouldn’t have died when I was 24 years old. It sounds cruel, but it’s one of many truths regarding how I feel about my father. I would have chosen someone exactly like my father, but a younger version of him – someone who would still be around to give me advice, tousle my curls, and call me by secret nicknames even when I am 40.

Biology 241

I miss my father at the strangest and, frankly, inopportune moments. For instance, when I am trying to innoculate trypticase soy agar plates with bacterial specimens for Microbiology lab. I’m diligently swabbing my plate when my memory hits ‘rewind’ all the way to the 6th grade.

It was at the tender age of 12 when my father decided that it was high-time I became well trained in the scientific process. Shouldn’t all 12 year olds be familiar with staph. aureus, aseptic technique, and the nuances of managing millions of microbes? Other kids were growing tomato plants under various light sources or turning potatoes into transistor radios – things the average parent could easily handle. My dad, though, was nothing if not a scientist. Dad thought it would be brilliant for me to investigate the actual efficacy of the anti-bacterial sponges that had come into vogue among anxious, germ-phobic housewives.

One summer evening, he came through the front door bearing a heavy cardboard box loaded up with agar plates, mechanical pipettes, sterile swabs, sterile saline, bacteria/fungal/yeast colonies, and other tools of the trade. Free bacterial specimens are no doubt just one of the perks of being well-liked at a major academic institution. Needless to say, it was a long summer of science. My experiment was housed in a small, vacant room in our basement whose floor tiles emanated the sickly-sweet smell of microbes for months after the school year had started. This less than thrilled my mother who didn’t register the same joy I felt over successfully nurturing a colony of staph. aureus or discovering a perfectly round clear zone around a chunk of sponge.

Dad and I were bosom-buddies in our love for discovery, for that eureka! moment. To my 12 year old self, that summer was filled with annoyingly tedious moments – Dad demonstrating the proper innoculation of an agar plate, Dad helping me create my very first lab notebook, Dad pulling me from other activities to ask “Have you checked your plates today?” Yet, no one was prouder when I found a blue first-prize ribbon dangling from my presentation board in the school gymnasium.

My grief isn’t palpable in many of the everyday moments where most would expect sadness to rear it’s ugly head. My memories of him are tightly woven together with certain life events. I don’t merely miss his presences in the house. I miss all of the things we’re not going to discover or being able to call him after one of my labs to report on our latest experiment or recounting how I got to see a new procedure at the hospital. When I’m driving my car, I remember him frustratedly teaching me to parallel park between trash cans he had set too close together, which leads me to memories of learning to drive a stick shift in South Africa that remind me of the phone calls when he would ask “When you coming home, girl?” even though he knew my departure was still 6 or 5 or 4 months away.

It’s only natural that Dad would pop up in Biology 241 and whisk my mind away from my droning professor to that little room in our basement in the summer of 1996 that held not just the smell of microbes, but also the possibility of discovery.

Spring’s Beginning

Dad died in the earliest moments on April 3rd. Conan O’Brien was on the television, his wide mouth open in a laugh muted by the remote control. It was just 10 minutes past the end of my brother’s birthday; a blessing perhaps. Jesus died the following week, but the vague promises of redemption remembered from years of Catholic education didn’t provide an ounce of solace. 

Where is my holy spirit? 

There was nothing there to catch me when the hard hospital room floor rose up while I crashed down. Conan was still laughing, but I only heard the shrieks I uttered. I think I was clutching my chest like the victim of a heart attack as more unfamiliar sounds escaped my throat. The coolness of the wood was refreshing against the warm tingling inside my head, but there was my mother and the hospice doctor tugging at my arms to right me again. 

“He is still your daddy,” she said. 

I’ve sat with deceased patients before, washed them, whispered to them. There was never such terror before. Where did he go? I forgot how quickly the body grows cold without the steady thump of the heart to warm it. I forgot how quickly the fingertips and lips become pale, how the jaw slackens, and the cheeks hollow. The sound of silence is the worst of all – no crackling breaths, no beeping machines, no agitated sighs. 

They made me sit in the pink vinyl chair beside the bed. I reached out for the hand that lay on the blanket and lightly brushed the skin. The only softness remaining in its dark hairs. His head lay on the pillow as if he had just breathed a deep sigh in his sleep. He must have breathed too hard – he let his soul escape. He blew it right out of that diseased body and into some other realm.

Where did he go? Just over my shoulder? Behind me? There is such a delicate membrane between the here and there. 

Heaven seems absurd and contrived. There cannot be such simple answers for life’s big questions. Either your heart beats or it does not.