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How It Was When You Stopped Knowing Me

Susan Rooke May 31, 2013 1 Comment

Susan Rooke

When I cannot help remembering, I recall
that the end of your memory arrived
in a Texas spring so wet it churned the rivers,
ripped white frame houses from the banks
and sent them rampaging on the currents
like Pamplona bulls turned loose into the streets.
There were bridges on those rising rivers, and
I cannot help remembering that I crossed them

driving south, looking down to see the sharp horns
of shingled eaves tossing, slinging muddy foam
in the floodwaters down below. I drove hours

just to get you, because you’d lost the knack
of getting anywhere yourself–a block away,

My Friend the Scholar Comes at Last to Attend His Father

Norbert Hirschhorn March 29, 2013 1 Comment

Norbert Hirschhorn

He considered the wasted moult of a once
large, ferocious creature: mouth agape,
muscles twitching with every rattled breath.

Agapé–my friend the scholar marveled
at the homograph, and the thing that feasted
on his father. He laid a futon at the foot

of the high white bed, some books, a laptop,
a thermos. Nearby, an emesis basin,
dentures, bedpan, glass half-full of beaded water.

for the Ten Days

Madeleine Mysko November 2, 2012 No Comments

Madeleine Mysko

We say goodbye, her hand goes up (but not
in time to catch me), then the breach: I kiss
my mother on the cheek. Oops, I say,
you’d better wash your face. We laugh, of course–
that’s the better way to make it through
the chemotherapeutic calendar.
But it’s no joke. Her white cell count is low.
I see my mother back away from me.

I’m treacherous. I’ve not observed the Ten
Solemn Days of Abstinence. Oh what
to do but put a finger to the lips,
and teach the mouth never to kiss, never
to take a breath, or utter Mother, while
stepping lightly past your door, O Death.

About the poet:

Madeleine Mysko is a registered nurse and a graduate of The Writing

House Call

Kendra Peterson August 3, 2012 No Comments

Kendra Peterson

I approached my father in the yard of his most recent home, a small, run-down duplex shack. His hair was whiter than I remembered, his old blue sweater shaggy. He was clipping the hedge in his careless but enthusiastic way; when finished, it wouldn’t look good, but it would look clipped.

One of his eyes was red and tearing up. A splinter had flown into it as he trimmed the boughs above his head. He hugged me nervously, and we went inside.

He pushed a stack of newspapers off the sofa, and we sat down and awkwardly tried to talk. The cramped living room was dirty, and

Out of This World

Katelyn Mohrbacher March 30, 2012 No Comments

Katelyn Mohrbacher

When I met Jasper, I was a third-year medical student doing a nine-month rural clerkship, and he was an eighty-year-old man in a coma.

Family members surrounded Jasper–a tall, broad-shouldered man–as he lay in the hospital bed. His wife, Esther, a petite, lively woman also in her eighties, stood by his head, grasping the bed rail. At the foot of the bed stood their son, a middle-aged man with a baseball cap on his head, his hands fisted in his pockets. Flanking the bed were his sisters (both nurses), one with curly hair and a baggy sweatshirt, the other slim and well-groomed. A warm summer breeze wafted through the room, bringing the scent of fresh-cut grass.

Jasper had been admitted two days

Genuine Touch

Jonathan Gotfried May 13, 2011 No Comments

Jonathan Gotfried

I was a medical student doing my fourth-year rotation on the oncology floor. The floor offered many new sights, and from the first, I was struck by the two mammoth massage chairs sitting in a corner at the end of the longest corridor.

Their exaggerated curves were plastered with jet-black faux leather adorned with stitching details. Long, smooth armrests of oak jutted out on either side. The remote control was a virtual supercomputer offering thousands of programs designed to enhance one’s massaging pleasure–kneading, fast, pressure, heat, full-body massage. On either side of the plush headrest, strategically placed speakers would play soft classical music, drowning out the low hum of

Unresponsive

Addeane Caelleigh May 6, 2011 No Comments

Addeane Caelleigh

Do the trees, like us, dream
of falling, falling into the earth’s flat embrace
or share the lilies’ dread of being ripped
from the dark earth,
ungrounded?

Maybe they are more like my friend Annie,
who dreams of being on stage naked
but unembarrassed,
continuing her favorite lecture
to the unseen watchers beyond the lights.

I hope my mother, who has been sleeping so long,
is like my friend,
unafraid and doing what she loves,
with no fear of being ripped from life
or falling into the void.
I hope that somewhere beyond the tubes
and beeps and the clasp of my hand
her true self stands,

Past Medical History

Don Stewart January 28, 2011 No Comments

Donald Stewart

My career in medicine began when I was three years old.

Holding tightly to my father’s hand at the end of a dark hospital corridor, I couldn’t keep up with the heavy, sibilant stream of conversation flowing between Daddy and Dr. Mashburn, the man who had delivered me, who had sewn up my chin after I’d slipped in the bathtub a month before and who was now explaining the details of Mommy’s condition. Something, I knew, was making her bad. Sometimes her arms and her back hurt so much she couldn’t even pick me up.

My attention slipped away from the confusing drone of grown-up words and fixed on a bright black-and-white picture shining down from a lighted box on the wall. The

Life, Preciously Poured

Kate Benham September 17, 2010 No Comments

Kate Benham

You pour a cup of pecans
Like a kid catching raindrops
In a bucket.
Careful not to spill,
Your fingers playing tremolo on a
Violin-string cup measure.

Your bed-tucked
Mouth, warm, with
Tongue searching the lips
For forgotten first lines of bedtime stories
Like misplaced glasses, resting on your head.
I read to you, now,
In hospital beds.

Forehead wrinkles stacked
In three creases–
Your crossword face,
Mouth-chewed pencil between your lips,
Scooping for synonyms
As you now scoop sugar.

Patient tablespoons of vanilla
Heaped with the effort
Of standing up for fifteen minutes

Love spelled in spilled flour
By hairless eyelid blinks.

This mother’s day coffee cake
Streuseled with memories of able-bodied bike rides
Suspended in white hospital gauze.
It tastes like

Mom

Diane Guernsey December 5, 2009 No Comments

Diane Guernsey

By this time next week, my mother may be dead.

In a sense, she’s been dying for a long time. This leg of her journey is the last in a decades-long trek with Parkinson’s disease.

She lies there, her head small and delicate on the pillow. Her hair is a wispy white thatch; her throat muscles are rigid, as if she’s just lifted a huge barbell. But her breaths come slowly, with long pauses in between, as if she’s nearly too tired to go on. Her brown eyes stare up sightlessly, lids half-open.

This nursing facility is part of a stepped-care retirement center where my parents moved more than ten years ago, anticipating the day when my mom would need

Maman

Paul Gross November 20, 2009 No Comments

Paul Gross

At a recent religious service I attended with Maman, my 87-year-old mother, I watched her fumbling attempts to find hymn number 123, “Spirit of Life,” in the hymnal. I held my book up, opened to the appropriate page, so that we both could sing from it.

She glanced up momentarily, tightened her lips, hunched forward and resumed turning pages, finally arriving at the song when the congregation was singing the second verse, which she needed help finding–what with her poor vision and the swirl of notes and words on the page.

As this ritual repeated itself, hymn after hymn, it occurred to me how much cozier it would be if my mother and I could share from the same hymnal.

Giving Care

Ronna L. Edelstein June 26, 2009 No Comments

Ronna L. Edelstein

When I was six, my family and I spent a week in Atlantic City. I loved the Boardwalk with its saltwater-taffy aroma and colorful sights, but I feared the pier that jutted far out into the Atlantic. One moonless night, my big brother bet me a bag of taffy that I couldn’t walk to the pier’s end by myself. Never one to back down, I accepted his bet. But the farther out I walked, the more frightened I got. It felt like one more step would send me off the pier’s edge and into the bottomless black water. My parents rescued me by dashing to the end of the pier and carrying me back to safety.

I spent the next half-century living

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: ill parent

How It Was When You Stopped Knowing Me

My Friend the Scholar Comes at Last to Attend His Father

for the Ten Days

House Call

Out of This World

Genuine Touch

Unresponsive

Past Medical History

Life, Preciously Poured

Mom

Maman

Giving Care

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: ill parent

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