Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of four books, most recently Gently Between the Words: Essays and Poems.. Taylor-Troutman, who earned a graduate certificate in Narrative Healthcare from Lenoir-Rhyne University, serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church in North Carolina. He and and his wife, also an ordained minister, parent three children. His story “Good as New” appears in the Spring 2020 Intima.
I see his body, but I do not see him
So begins Meghan Wang’s poem “My Grandpa” (Spring 2013 Intima) and her words cut to the core of the grief I have known in watching an aged loved one. I have lost people before their actual deaths. I know that sight is a metaphor for understanding. That is the double-meaning of the poem’s line:
It’s hard to see him like this
“This” is the state of illness, of dementia, of old age. In the poem, “this” is a diminished state — a shadow of what Grandpa once was. He was a person who had been seen as “lively” and “talkative.” Someone who would bring delight to his granddaughter by throwing her into the air. Now, the poem’s speaker watches him shuffle slowly along:
He looks at me — confused, frustrated,
As though searching through a maze he once knew by heart
Grandpa does not recognize his granddaughter. He looks but, initially, does not see.
Meanwhile the granddaughter sees her loved one not only by what is visible but also in light of what is remembered. The past is in sight as well. And this causes grief.
But, gradually, with the help of an attentive uncle and an old photograph, there is a dawning for the old man. Thanks to this new insight, he looks again and now sees his granddaughter.
My short story “Good as New” centers on the struggle of how we see one another through the lens of illness. It is hard to see the suffering of our loved ones. For many of us, whether religious or not, there is a hope, perhaps unspoken, that something extraordinary or supernatural would occur, thereby restoring that person back to health and returning that person back to us as he or she once was. And this is often called a “miracle.”
When writing my short story, I thought about the Spanish word mira imbedded in the English “miracle.” Mira means to look.
Perhaps the greatest miracle is to look at a loved one who has been diminished by disease and still see that person — to have that person “in sight” through a look of love. Kafka wrote: Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.
Wang’s poem ends:
I tell him my name
He smiles again, and motions for us to sit down.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of four books, most recently Gently Between the Words: Essays and Poems.. Taylor-Troutman, who earned a graduate certificate in Narrative Healthcare from Lenoir-Rhyne University, serves as pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church in North Carolina. He and and his wife, also an ordained minister, parent three children
©2020 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine