I used to tell myself that my work in health communications was about more than earning a paycheck or typing words on a page. Yes, I didn’t provide clinical care, but didn’t I make a small contribution, too?
I hoped so. Then, I switched specialties from behavioral health to end-of-life (hospice and palliative) care. In my new organization, I assumed that writing and educating about adult and child grief-recovery (my assigned beat), was about more than selling services or outfoxing algorithms.
I assumed wrong.
One day, my supervisor reminded me that grief recovery wasn’t reimbursable. So I would expand my scope to all services. I would learn by shadowing some clinical colleagues, starting with a chaplain’s house call.
In that meeting, I remember thinking that visiting the home of a terminally ill patient would be a happy reprieve from that silent, watchful administration wing. On the opposite side of that building, my clinical colleagues smiled more. They could chat and laugh.
On the appointed day, I met the chaplain in the lobby. Robert seemed excited to have someone in his red pick-up truck. As we exchanged childhood and career stories, the sound of my own voice and laughter startled me. When we exited the highway, he said, “You’ll just love our 91-year-old patient John.”
About a half hour later, I followed him across a sidewalk to the patient’s front door.
Inside, John played host. He asked all the “how-are-you-today” questions. A retired educator, he listed that week’s other visitors, including former students. John had less than three months to live. But in that sunlit room where I listened to two men chat and tease each other, time stalled and expanded into a sweet forever.
“What do you do?” John asked me.
“I write,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear or see my jadedness. He eased himself out of his armchair to shuffle-walk toward a back room.
He returned with some typed pages. “I write, too,” he said. “Helps me sleep. Here!”
“But these poems are for your fam–” I started.
“—No,” John interrupted. “I want you to have them.”
At our next supervision meeting, I conjured John’s face, his kind voice as I reported on the visit and its tick-the-box learning outcomes. My (now former) boss approved.
I said nothing about those poems that, these days, in my home office, I often re-read.
Aine Greaney
Newburyport, Massachusetts
2 thoughts on “A Gift of Words”
Beautiful reflection on the tension between healthcare operations/administration and the clinical, human practice of medicine. Makes me think about all the patients who’ve left footprints on my heart like John and his poems did on yours.
Thank you, Sara. “Footprints on my heart” is a really great way to put it. John was a man to really remember. Later, after I had left this organization, I learned that he had posthumously funded his CNA’s ongoing education.