Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: grief

  • Thinking of my dying grandmother at the Natural History Museum

    Roxana CazanAltoona, Pennsylvania, United States At the Natural History Museumin Salt Lake City, I am promised“the assemblage of nature’s ultimatemachine,” its precise lurking,one foot crossing the Silurian,its simian lurch trapped behindshatterproof glass.I zigzag through the dinosaur world,the tender bend of boney necks,their petrified savagery mintedinto thick layers of shale,their swift death on display.When I pass…

  • Five Untitled Poems

    Simon PerchikEast Hampton, New York, United States * Slowly the glass, half filled, halfmelting down for a slippernot yet hardened into light is flickering the way a moonstill sets itself on firethen changes into taking its time and you become an old womanwith a cane, around and aroundas if this rim at last remembers overflows…

  • Morning note

    Jeanne BrynerWarren, Ohio, United States Poet’s statement “Morning note” was a response to finding my husband’s note. Couples who have come through this type of grief know its depth. There are many gravesites on our journey. Names we dare not speak burn themselves inside our hearts. Morning note In a few moments I’ll let you…

  • Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych, and the five stages of grief

    Katharine LawrenceFlorida, United States Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. “Vermiform appendix! Kidney!” he said to himself. “It’s not a question of appendix or kidney, but of life and . . . death. Yes, life was there and now it is going, going and I cannot stop it.…

  • Heartache and complicated grief

    Laurie Elise GordonNew York, New York, United States “To whom shall I tell this heartache?” – Old Russian song Medicine is haunted by grief. In tense silences we may sense the specter. Grieving is a normal developmental process, but in some it gets interrupted. A grieving patient calls upon the physician’s most highly attuned empathy.…

  • Anticipatory grieving

    Constance E. PutnamConcord, Massachusetts, United States When my father was making his slow decline into the grip of Parkinson’s disease, I found it easy (embarrassingly so, in retrospect) to criticize my mother for what I confidently labeled her unnecessarily grim view of the situation. She always seemed to me to be looking ahead to how…

  • When did you last let your heart decide?

    Sukanya SamChennai, India This woman in labor is not my patient. But the nurses worriedly tell me that the baby’s heartbeat could not be localized. Both handheld Doppler machines had broken down in the labor room unit of our small tertiary hospital. I was the resident on duty. I use the Pinard’s stethoscope, my face…

  • Lost Babies: How a photosculpture is changing the etiquette of consolation

    Nancy GershmanChicago, Illinois, United States The mother who loses her full-term baby goes home with the five stages of grief (Elisabeth Kübler-Ross), funeral home pamphlets, and a support group calendar. But the well-meaning friends and family who await her return have little if no experience with consolation. They will prattle on about how So and…

  • Crossing boundaries: Visual representations of death and dying

    Mary ShannonPortland, Oregon, United States Introduction How do we as clinicians, caregivers, and fellow human beings talk about death and dying in our culture, or perhaps more precisely, how do we not talk about it? Many avoid the topic out of fear, denial, or discomfort, creating silent narratives that torment, isolate, and separate at a…