Tag: Spring 2011
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Living well before we die
Caroline Wellbery Washington DC, United States Imagine having a passion for dying. Imagine 1,500 doctors and nurses at their annual meeting, gathering to support each other in that passion. These men and women are America’s hospice workers, and their conference is sponsored by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM). In the…
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Teaching death
Boris D. Veysman New Jersey, Piscataway, United States This story “Teaching Death” by Boris D. Veysman was originally published in Academic Medicine, 2005 Mar; Volume80(3):290.© 2005 Association of the American Medical Colleges Publication. “God! You chose me to watch over the life and death of your creatures. I now turn to my calling.” The…
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What about the blood?
W. Roy SmytheTemple, Texas, United States My beeper went off again. I got up out of my seat in the empty hospital cafeteria, walked over to the wall phone and dialed zero. Zero is exactly how much energy I have for anything right now, I thought. As a senior cardiothoracic surgery resident in my ninth…
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In the OR
Kelly KleinMichigan, United States I work at a large teaching hospital as an Emergency Department social worker. It is easy to get lost in a place that large, so I am accustomed to helping people get to various areas of the hospital. But on this day, I was not prepared for the charge nurse’s request…
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Bold Flavor – Full Pockets
Jan A. Jahner Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA Poet’s statement: Fairly new to New Mexico, I am excited by the cultural and spiritual diversity that thrives under the high desert sun, and the stories that want to be told. The intimacy of an encounter in the unguarded moments of serious illness and dying is a…
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Reverse birth
Helen Foster Richmond, United States Poet’s statement: I can’t remember if the TV show Ben Casey began or ended with the symbols for man, woman, birth, death, and infinity, but endings and beginnings intertwine in my heart, and depth perception comes from overlapping images. Here’s a poem overlapping birth and death. Toads and babies.…
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Immigrants, all
Eric Pfeiffer Tampa, Florida, USA Poet’s statement: I am so lucky. My poems write themselves. I only listen. Immigrants, all Old age was a foreign country when I first came here, another language spoken, and customs hard to understand. But I have learned the language. Sometimes I even dream in my new tongue though…
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Beech Leaves
L. N. Allen Trumbull, Connecticut, United States Poet’s statement: This poem is about resurrection, no matter how improbable. Beech leaves When birches, cottonwoods, sourwoods, hickories yews, willows, ginkgos, and even miserly oaks— Jove’s own tree—have cast away their summer leaves like shunting off grandparents to nursing homes where they can die unseen, beeches hang…
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Continuation Day
Shaista Tayabali Cambridge, United Kingdom Poet’s statement: When I was 18, I was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, and poetry began to define the landscape of my soul. It saves me now, from needles, night sweats, ulcers, glaucoma, and the general terrors of global happenings. I write, and my soul takes flight. Death is a…