THE C WORD
Meena Awasthi, MD- pediatrician, poet, writer, mother
I used to wonder –
how does Papa tell people they’re going to
die, and then come home ready to play and live and tuck us in, to do what his patients never again would.
A dealer of life and death, going from door to door, bed to bed, with soft hands and a steady voice
– hedging, praying, trying.
Mr. Jones, yellow as a highlighter.
His sister sat on the chair, a plate of chicken
stagnating
between them.
He owns a fly fishing shop.
His grandkids had a lemonade stand last Saturday, and he was their first customer.
He is balding, but in a handsome way.
His wife passed some years ago, but he knows just how she’d look at him.
He used to just get up and go, he says, exploring the world as if it were his backyard.
His hospital gown is untied in the back, falling down his shoulder bones, and
he is cold.
Apologetically smiling, I stood near the wall,
hands behind my back,
while our attending knelt at the bedside.
“Pancreatic cancer, is that one of the bad ones?
How much longer for someone with this diagnosis?
What do my treatment options look like?”
Mr. Jones asked, preoccupied with statistics and chance.
“When can we get started? Will they be cutting me open?
Doc, when can I get out of here?”
The answers were formalities, bestowed with hope, but
everyone’s eyes were having a separate conversation.
In our seven minutes with Mr. Jones,
we transformed his clock into a timer, counting down six months of jaundiced misery, of hospital food, nausea and chemicals and needles, six
months left to laugh and kiss, to think, to be alone with his failing body,
to remember every good and bad thing he ever did, to watch medicine drip, drip, drip into his veins like sand in an hourglass.
In those minutes, I felt every emotion I possess, and I felt his emotions, too.
I was full, but I felt I could hold a thousand times more anguish, if it meant his would be lightened.
And though the news was somber, the room was distended by a strange peace, an honesty blanketing us all,
the silent acknowledgement that death has come for one of us, and it will come again.
Perhaps when we are not looking,
but perhaps our skin will yellow or our hearts will abandon us or our cells will stake out
adventures of their own. When they do,
who will tell us? Who will tell me I am dying? Who will hold my hand? Who will sit there with me,
in an ironic stillness, feeling every feeling while I feel
none at all?
I see now why you shepherd people, Papa, guiding and protecting them,
shouldering their grief when they are weak, offering to share so they may
breathe
a moment more.
You are the honesty, the constancy in an upside down reality.
You are the one they sit with.
You are the peace they seek.
– meena
About The Author
Meena Awasthi, MD- pediatrician, poet, writer, mother
Meena is a Pediatric Emergency Medicine Fellow at Memorial Hermann in Houston, Texas.
She wrote this poem in honor of the compassionate care delivered by her father and my husband, Dr. Sanjay Awasthi, oncologist.