Tom Dooley

Once a month, I work in the memory care unit of a nursing home.  My business partner and I have a couple of hours to squeeze in massages between everything else being done to residents after they eat lunch.  ( Despite some recent person-centered training, this staff still does most things "to" residents rather than "with" them.)

One thing that happens every time we visit is the Sing Along.  The activity aide puts in the same familiar VHS tape with the same familiar songs.  She goes around trying to cajole residents into singing, moving, dancing, or shaking one of the many bells-on-a-stick things they have floating around.  For the most part, this is effective because music itself is enlivening.  I have seen  people who can't speak their own first names sing every word of some obscure song that was popular in their youth.  I fully expect that when I am in memory care, the staff need only mention "Friday" and I will be off with my own warbling rendition of "Friday I'm in Love."

As I am trying to finish up some massages with less responsive people during the Sing Along, I don't often listen to the music or pay attention to the video.  Today, I found myself facing the overly gigantic TV screen as the video played.  I was mesmerized by the home basement office green screen effects and the main singer's unfortunate porn star mustache.  This video also featured the lyrics to every song as subtitles.  I tried to concentrate, but the person I was working with had fallen asleep with his hand gently, but firmly, wrapped around mine.  He seemed content with simple human warmth, so I watched the video a little more.  I looked up just in time to learn the full lyrics to "Tom Dooley."

Holy. Domestic. Violence.

Did you know "Tom Dooley" is about some guy who lured his poor girlfriend to a secluded place so he could stab her to death?  The song is about his upcoming public execution.  It's a deceptively cheerful little earworm.  I used to find myself whistling it in the car on the way home from the nursing home.  Today I realized how deeply strange it was -- this song about a murderer playing on the big screen while one woman sang along with every word in a bright, clear soprano, tapping out the beat on the arm of her chair.  On the other side of the room, the activity aide had another woman up, dancing a shuffling two-step while Mustache sang about the "white oak tree" where Tom Dooley would hang.  To death.

Music pulls us together and is powerful enough to expose our hidden humanity, as this recent video shows so powerfully.  On the other side, though, music tells our darkest buried stories.  ("Strange Fruit," anyone?) It gives us a framework to relate in the daytime things that would make us cower in shame or fear if we tried to speak of them in conversation alone.  Music wraps our nightmares in foam and crash pads so we feel safe enough to fall right into the middle of them.

Cutting for Stone

I like novels that make me cry. I enjoy that total absorption in a fictional world that opens up some fiercely protected emotional reserve and pulls it out -- all with the gentle force of words. Only words -- put together in a specific way by a human mind that has all the same organic parts as yours and mine. It feeds my fragile optimism to realize that a person, just a person, can produce a fictional world so real and powerful that it makes me cry.

I recall three contemporary novels that have this particular power: The God of Small Things by Arhundati Roy, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, and now, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.

I believe I came to this book a little late. I put out a plea on Facebook for something good to read, and at least four people mentioned this book. I found it in the new books section of the library. Only one of the five or six copies was available for check out. Somehow, this "new" book already had the darkened pages and slanted spine of an often-read book. I had just seven days to get through 550-plus pages.

I finished it in three.

The story, if you don't know, follows twin brothers, conjoined towns separated at birth, and their lives at a hospital in Africa. This is a gross over- simplification of a complex story, but I hesitate to summarize a story so perfectly compact. Yes, despite the heft of the book, the story was compact, contained. Every possible loose piece that could have rattled off into space found a way back into the puzzle of the story. Tragically deceased mother, troubled absent father, brothers drifting apart by distance and betrayals -- it all comes back together. Despite the tragic tones of the resolution, the ending of the story was deeply satisfying. Overall, this book has the feel of a life well and fully lived -- I grieved for the end but still felt grateful for the journey.

So now I will add my recommendation to that of my four or five (or more) friends. This is a well-crafted, lovely book. It is elegant in language and precise in construction. It reflects, I believe, the best of author's other profession (Verghese is a doctor) as well.

Last Things

His organs were failing, and the doctors felt he had only a few days.  He was stretched out in an easy chair, soft winter sunlight warming his ashen skin.  A few cubicles down, his family quietly sobbed as they spoke to the doctor about hospice.  He didn't want to hear about hospice, so he slept on.

I asked him if he wanted a foot massage, and he smiled and nodded.  I gently removed his shoes and took his feet in my hands.  "You're like a cat in the sun," I said.  He smiled and sank back into a doze.

As I massaged his feet, I realized -- this is the last massage he would ever receive.  Barring some miracle, my massage was the last one of his life.  The thought hit me with all the force of a fall from a great height.  How could I live up to this responsibility.  I paused, my hands resting on the tops of his feet, until I felt his breathing, and I felt how calm he had become.  The sun still fell across his face, his eyes were shut and he had a small smile.  It was a moment of ease for him.  In the midst of months of worry, treatment and blood tests, here was a small moment of peace.  I held that peace as I finished the massage.

Massage Dog

When she comes to the clinic for treatment, she soaks her hands and feet in ice for hours, in order to stave off possible neuropathy from her chemo.  She speaks softly, with a musical cadence that makes me think of rocking chairs and lullabies.  She smiles when she sees me because this means "the end of ice." 

She loves to undress for her massage, but today she can't.  The cold of the ice lingers and she is unable to warm up her thin frame.  She climbs onto the table, fully dressed, and slides underneath four blankets.  She shivers, and the deep breaths she takes, trying to relax, waver with her shivering.  I spend the first few minutes just doing gentle compressions over the blankets, defining the outline of her body and gently wrapping the blankets closer to her until she stops shivering. 

I uncover one leg, wrap my hands gently around her calf to continue compressions.  She smiles in the way I know -- the smile that comes before some beautiful thing she means to say. 

"There's a dog!" she says, clearly delighted.  "A big, shuffling dog, sniffing around the bottom of the blankets." 

I pause, hands still on her leg.  "Is this a good thing?"

"Oh, yes.  It's a wonderful dog, just sniffing around." 

We continue the massage.  Somewhere during the session, the nurse comes in to check on her.  She tells the nurse about the dog.  The three of us decide the dog's name is Bennie -- short for Benedryl. 

I don't often hear about someone's visual experience of a massage.  Whether it was the Benedryl or the open mind of a lovely person -- I appreciate the experience.

This is my dad's dog, by the way.  As far as I know, he has never been present at a massage.

The Hardest Day

10 a.m. appointment:  Woman my own age, recently cut short a trip abroad because of intense abdominal pain.  Doctors at another medical facility recommended hospice.  She says to me, "I know I'm not going to live a long time, but I think I have at least a little while left."  Just wants to relax her shoulders, which have crept up to her ears as she tries to power through continued pain. 

1p.m. appointment:  New client, 10 years younger than me, and "cuter than speckled puppies."  Loves to be active and is frustrated by the illness that keeps her hobbled.  Cries a little during the appointment, talking about her lost muscle tone.  I tell her --because it is the truth -- that she has better muscle tone than many "healthy" people I see.  She acknowledges but seems not to believe what I say.  There is something in her eyes as she leaves that I can't quite identify.  As I drive home, I realize.  It was terror. 

Later, updated news from home:  Grandmother (recovering from heart attack in the hospital) has damage to over 50% of her heart.  For a 90-year-old woman, this is not unexpected.  I call her and we talk.  She tells me my sibling is the favored child, but she feels okay saying that to me because I  "knew it already."

Finally, time to put the day to bed: enough food to eat, a warm place to sleep, and a partner to tell all this to. 

Gratitude.

Take this Compliment. Take it!

I think I'm pretty good at what I do, and sometimes I'll even say this to people.  But sometimes the intensity of someone's gratitude catches me off guard.

A while back I had a client -- patient -- in a medical facility.  A person facing a chronic, critical illness where treatment caused debilitating side effects, up to and including time spent in hospitals.  I was one of several appointments she had that day.  She struck me as a practical woman -- plain-spoken, realistic and unsentimental about her troubles.  And out of the blue she said:

"The treatment is worth it for this massage." 

A compliment so intense it almost paralyzed me.  How could my little massage justify such discomfort?

I know hyperbole when I hear it.  I know what she said was not strictly, literally true.  I also know that the truth in it had enough gratitude in it (from her, to me) to make me question whether I deserved it.  But who am I, in the midst of all her setbacks, to offer her another setback by questioning her experience?  Better, I think, to try my best to gracefully, gratefully, accept her compliment.

Women Who Think Too Much

I remember quite a few things about massage school, but the thing I remember most vividly is this exchange during a moment of intense frustration in an early technique class:

Teacher:Just get out of your head.
Me: I've been living in my head for 36 years, so I'm not going to get out just this second.

I believe I have met my in-the-head match. I gave a manual lymph drainage treatment to a woman who asked that I "narrate" the treatment so she could understand what was going on. At first I thought: "Yay! A client who really wants to take charge of her health!" But, after about 10 minutes of trying to talk from my head while working from my head and body, I was exhausted. And the questions kept coming. I could almost feel the different parts of my brain trying desperately to keep up. It was spinning plates while standing on one foot in a tub full of jelly.

I'm out of my head now. It's all worn down up there and won't be back until later. The sign on my door says:"Gone breathing."