2023

T.S. Eliot was slightly off: I consider May, not April, the cruelest month.

May 8: A birthday, Maril’s. She died of pancreatic cancer—too soon after her brother, my step-father, died of the same disease.

May 10: A diagnosis—the date I learned I had pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia, two days before my 14th birthday.

I was supposed to see Jane for abdominal pain, but within minutes of meeting her, she told me that her boyfriend hits her. Once, so hard that he fractured and dislocated her jaw. She has a lot of bruises, but only in areas covered by her clothes. To the unknowing, Jane appears neatly put together, whole. But, underneath it all, she is unraveling, coming undone.

It feels like wading into cold ocean water. A bit of a shock, and then so refreshing. I step hesitantly out of my office, and then amble down the hallway toward the exam room to see my patient. Both of us will be unmasked. The natural state now requires getting used to all over again.

My routine clinic day was interrupted by a startling message. During a moment of extreme stress, a long-term patient of mine left a threatening voicemail on my colleague’s phone. The target of her anger was me. It was difficult to discern her garbled speech in the recording of her screaming, but I heard loud and clear that she intended to find me at my clinic and physically hurt me – or worse.

I had just returned from my parish of ministry. Little did I think I would not be returning to my office. Visiting the homebound in person was to become a way of the past. COVID-19 had raised its ugly head and my life would never be the same.

“Your love makes me feel alive,” she says, eyes on the floor, blank faced, looking anything but alive.

This once bubbly girl with a jazzy soul and a voice bursting in major chords, weeping  over the beauty in Chopin’s Preludes, as lights soared beneath her slender fingers moving across ivory keys. Who attended college until her senior year only to suddenly withdraw with a forest fire burning through her mind.