Longing

Just before my father died, a perceptive, insightful hospice nurse arranged for a group of young army veterans to visit his bedside and read him a military message of honor. Dressed in full uniform, the men read a formal letter of appreciation for my father’s service during the Korean War.

My father was very weak after several months of treatment for glioblastoma. When the men saluted him, my father raised a shaky arm to salute them back. It took a long time for his hand to reach his forehead, but it did. The men waited patiently by the side of the hospital bed we had placed in the middle of his living room. Later that night, my father slipped into a comatose state; my sister, mother, and I waited beside him as he took his final breaths.

I lean back in the reclined hospital chair, and the nurse places my baby heart to heart on my bare chest, for the first time. She covers us in blankets. Me with my mask, long hair up, a giant blanket covering my body, and a little pink and blue knit hat under my chin. I stare at the clock, the second hand, because I don’t know what else to do. A few beeps brings me back and I stare at the monitors beside the isolette. He forgets to breathe, his heart rate dips too low, his tubes on his legs, arms, nose and mouth get tangled. It is a relief when the nurse comes in to say time to put him back. I untangle his hand from mine, a fairy hand around my pointer finger barely covering my finger pad. The nurse helps me settle him into his incubator. Standing beside his machines, watching his vitals normalize under his clear plastic cocoon, I still feel his tiny warm body, heart beating, on my chest.

My work as a physician often centers around helping mitigate trauma held by my patients. Recently I realized that my work also revolves around helping my patients manage their longing.

People long so deeply, and for so much. They go through countless medical procedures for a chance to become parents. They trial numerous medications and lifestyle changes to lose weight, feel less pain, or sleep through the night. They yearn for relief from the panic and depression that prevents them from leaving the house, working, and making friends. They pray that their cancer will stay in remission amid traumatic memories that resurface with each test and scan. They long to affirm their gender identity – to look in the mirror and see themselves as they feel inside and be fully embraced by their loved ones and society.

I work in three public hospitals. Each has its own mandatory training process. I completed the hand hygiene modules at two of them and submitted those certifications to the third. I was told that the training is site-specific, that I’d need to also do the training at the third hospital.

At first, I felt frustrated. How can hand hygiene be site specific? Is my flu vaccination site specific?

Then I realized my feelings ran deeper than frustration. They spoke of longing.

I came to this work to help people.

My hope is to be supported by a system that enables care rather than obstructs it.

I wonder if there is anyone alive who does not suffer from a case of acute longing every now and then. I used to think that once I reached a certain age, or a certain level of maturity, or a certain financial condition, I would be rid of such feelings. I realize now that there is no such milestone. Longing does not ever retire.

I started writing poetry seriously during COVID, but my relationship with writing began much earlier. I remember writing my first poem when I was ten years old, about the sun being the biggest ball of fire: a bold metaphor, I thought. I showed it to an adult at school—who laughed and said that it was juvenile. That only Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Tagore were worthy of being called poets. That everyone else was plainly pretending.

Hay que volar, hay que encontrar, su propio futuro. (You’ve got to fly, you’ve got to find your own future.) —Lin Manuel Miranda

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Gracias, mi hija. (Thank you, my daughter.)

I struggle to stand up from my kneeling position next to my patient’s bed, touched by her choice of endearment. I’m a second-year medical student, and her kind words have a potent antianxiety effect. Realizing I’d asked her everything that I needed to, I now ask a question I’d been wanting to: Where’s your crossword puzzle? (¿Dónde está tu crucigrama?)

I long for the days when I didn’t need to worry about food recalls. I barely recall the time when I wasn’t concerned about them, but I now look for recalls right after my morning coffee. (Maybe I should look before.)

I long for the days when the phone rang and I’d think, “Who’s calling to say hello?” rather than, “Who’s calling to tell me who’s in the hospital?”

I long for the days when people would call and ask, “How are you?” in a light-hearted way, rather than with the tinge of gravity they use now, since my husband’s cancer diagnosis of last year.

As a little girl, I had a family of dolls. One doll was an outlier, due to my older brother’s pranks. He had cut her long blonde hair (assuring me it would grow back). He’d also used dark-colored permanent markers to highlight her eyes, cheeks, and lips. She looked absurd—almost freakish. That’s when I became familiar with the word yearning: I yearned for her to be accepted by the other dolls for who she was, not how she looked.

Dear readers,

I think it was a Unitarian minister who introduced me to the idea that anger is generally a response to a wound. That truth is viscerally apparent to me every time I straighten up and bonk my head on a corner kitchen cabinet. Ouch! My fury at the cabinet is something to behold.

It’s often easier to express rage than it is to express its underlying vulnerability–like hurt or yearning.