In the club car that morning I had my notebook
open on my lap and my pen uncapped,
looking every inch the writer
right down to the little writer’s frown on my face,
but there was nothing to write
about except life and death
and the low warning sound of the train whistle.
I did not want to write about the scenery
that was flashing past, cows spread over a pasture,
hay rolled up meticulously —
things you see once and will never see again.
But I kept my pen moving by drawing
over and over again
the face of a motorcyclist in profile —
for no reason I can think of —
a biker with sunglasses and a weak chin,
leaning forward, helmetless,
his long thin hair trailing behind him in the wind.
I also drew many lines to indicate speed,
to show the air becoming visible
as it broke over the biker’s face
the way it was breaking over the face
of the locomotive that was pulling me
toward Omaha and whatever lay beyond Omaha
for me and all the other stops to make
before the time would arrive to stop for good.
We must always look at things
from the point of view of eternity,
the college theologians used to insist,
from which, I imagine, we would all
appear to have speed lines trailing behind us
as we rush along the road of the world,
as we rush down the long tunnel of time —
the biker, of course, drunk on the wind,
but also the man reading by a fire,
speed lines coming off his shoulders and his book,
and the woman standing on a beach
studying the curve of horizon,
even the child asleep on a summer night,
speed lines flying from the posters of her bed,
from the white tips of the pillowcases,
and from the edges of her perfectly motionless body.
Thank you so much to Julie Christine who writes at Chalk the Sun for the gift of “Velocity,”from Nine Horses, a collection by one of my favorite contemporary poets, Billy Collins. The drawing by my daughter of my daughter and me is all the more significant when I imagine us standing on Morro Bay Strand, wordless, with speed lines trailing from our shoulders.
Until September 11th, I had taken for granted the sense of security I felt as a woman who had traded in Northern Irelandfor America. Foolishly, I had too quickly dropped my guard, almost forgetting anything can happen. I grew complacent and smug, confident that – unlike her mother – my American daughter would never have to look twice at an unattended shopping bag that had been simply forgotten by someone in a hurry, or that she would never find herself standing stock still with her arms over her head to be searched before proceeding through airport security, or wonder while poring over international headlines, how a complete stranger could hate her because of her nationality; or, that she would find out on Facebook that two bombs exploded at the finish-line of the iconic Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 140. Little Martin Richard, the eight year old boy killed in the blast had just hugged his father who moments earlier crossed the finish line. Anything can happen – it always does.
Even though it is a big American city, I always think of Boston as a small town, buzzing with excitement when the Red Sox are at Home as they were today. The weather was perfect for the home game and for the Marathon – warm and dry, the promise of victory hanging in the air. Before those two bombs exploded at the finish line, with the kind of chilling choreography eerily reminiscent of explosions that time and again shook Northern Ireland to its core, Boston was celebrating with winners already across the finish line, and Red Sox Nationjubilant with the walk-off win.
I imagine some people in the crowd guessed or hoped those blasts were just celebratory fireworks, the way we convince ourselves it’s only a car backfiring on the freeway and not a gunshot, or it’s just a clap of Monsoon thunder, not a bomb going off on the railway line. But then there was that plume of grey smoke, the unmistakable stench of it, the scream of sirens, the blood on Boylston Street, and the sickening, renewed fear of being under attack, once again in the aftermath of those two planes crashing with such force into the heart of a city, on another clear day that had been full of possibilities, the Manhattan skyline sparklingin the sunshine.
Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head Before he hurls the lightning? Well just now He galloped his thunder cart and his horses
Across a clear blue sky. It shook the earth and the clogged underearth, the River Styx, the winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself. Anything can happen, the tallest towers
Be overturned, those in high places daunted, Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one, Setting it down bleading on the next.
Ground gives. The heaven’s weight Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle lid. Capstones shift. Nothing resettles right. Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.
Anything can happen. The Boston Marathon is but another stark and sobering reminder of this truth. Still, no one would have expected it. No one would have expected Newtownand the harrowing irony of the Marathon’s 26th mile marker dedicated to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting.
Looking on, from my living room on the other side of the country, I should know by now that the finish line of a signature race is, for some person or people, not an unexpected place at all; rather it is “a legitimate target.” And, with over 25,000 assembled for the event, the potential for a tremendous loss of life. A profound sense of sadness and weariness accompanies this awareness, because it reconfirms what I know, that it is impossible to defeat terrorism. At the same time, it is impossible to live in constant fear of it, otherwise you might never go outside, as my mother often told me when I was a young girl growing up in Northern Ireland.
Usually, we were at a safe distance from “The Troubles.” Except every night when we turned on the news or the odd time that our kitchen window shook because a bomb had exploded somewhere close – the time the car-bomb exploded outside Halls Hotel, or when my brother, as a journalist, had to interview the grandmother of three little boys murdered, burned to death on July 12, 1998. Richard, Mark and Jason, just eleven, nine, and seven years old, had been asleep when a petrol bomb was thrown through the window of their home. Or an otherwise typical Saturday night out in Belfast, when my college friend Ruth and I returned to her brother’s house, only to find out that her car had been stolen and set ablaze as a barricade across town somewhere.
Years earlier, I remember watching grainy black and white images on a tiny television set, the evening news, and a reporter in the street relating the events of a Sunday in 1972, when during a Civil Rights march in Derry’s Bogside, British soldiers shot into a crowd of unarmed and peaceful civilians, killing thirteen of them. Bloody Sunday. As a young woman, visiting home from America, I remember the bombing of Omagh and being horrified that it could happen after what had happened in Enniskillen.
Never again? Think again.
Physically untouched by all these, but changed nonetheless. Ostensibly, I survived The Troubles. I just managed to avoid being in the wrong place. The images are indelible and iconic: Father Daly waving a blood-stained white handkerchief on the streets of Derry; aging veterans of the World Wars, medals gleaming in Enniskillen; the carnage on Market Street in the heart of Omagh.
When I heard about Boston, I thought immediately of Omagh, when the Real IRA loaded a non-descript car with 500 pounds of explosives, parked it in the middle of the little market town, and detonated it when it could do most harm. Immediately, glass, masonry and metal ripped through the crowd of shoppers, mostly women and children, the sheer force killing 21 people immediately. One of them was a woman, pregnant with twins. Some of their bodies were never found. Hundreds were injured.
I will never forget the Omagh bombing. It was on a Saturday when mothers were shopping for back-to-school supplies and uniforms. Those responsiblecalled in a warning, and with unimaginable cruelty and callousness led the police to divert the crowd not to safety but to where they would be the most vulnerable. It happened during my daughter’s first trip to Ireland. Not quite eight months old, she was the surprise for my mother’s 60th birthday party. I remember that night, holding her tight as I watched the news in my parent’s house, the accounts from witnesses forever changed and devastated by the blood that flowed in the gutters and the bits and pieces of people lying on the street. One of the volunteer nunsrecalls the scene before her at Tyrone County Hospital. A war-zone. A killing field:
“Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. People were lying on the floor with limbs missing and there was blood all over the place. People were crying for help and looking for something to kill the pain. Other people were crying out looking for relatives. You could not really be trained for what you had seen unless you were trained in Vietnam or somewhere like that”
How could Omagh happen after Enniskillen, where over twenty-five years ago at 10.43AM on Remembrance Sunday, the IRA detonated a bomb without warning, killing eleven ordinary people and injuring sixty:
How could Boston happen? And what can we do? Like Newtown and Omagh, New York and Enniskillen, we will find, long before the answers, the highest expressions of humanity and kindess within the hearts of ordinary people who will emerge as heroes.Mr. Rogers calls them “the helpers.”
While we struggle to find the words to explain the inexplicable – again – we can remind our children – and ourselves – of the helpers and their humanity that shines through the darkest days:
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.
In the mid-1970s, I was a bored teenager, convinced there was nothing to do on a Saturday morning in Antrim. But if the recent activity on the Olde Antrim Photos Facebook page is anything to go by, we had the kind of extended childhood we hope for our own children. If the weather was fine, we played rounders and football, and we built forts with great mounds of cut grass on the field between our house and Lough Neagh. We jumped off the roof of the maisonette garages into the barley field and played hide and go seek until we were called in for our dinner.
If we stayed inside because it was raining, which happened frequently – it was Ireland after all – we could read our comics, talk on the phone as long as the shared line was available, or watch Saturday morning television which offered three channels: BBC1, BBC2, and UTV. I think we were able to pick up RTE. I vaguely recall watching The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Joe 90, and The Banana Splits and then something happened. At 9:30 one Saturday morning in 1976, The Multi-Colored Swap Shop exploded on our tiny television screens with three hours of unheard-of live TV that featured pop music, cartoons, roving reporters who might show up near where we lived, live call-ins, and even a kid-friendly version of the news. Hosted by a Radio One breakfast program host, Noel Edmonds, who now hosts the UK version of “Deal or No Deal,” the main premise of the show was that children could call in and “make a swap.” Noel would answer on his red rotary dial phone, and the kid on the other end of the line would describe what it was that he wanted to swap and the item he hoped for in exchange, so you had fairly low-tech transactions – a tennis rackets traded for an alarm clock, a doll house for a board game, vinyl records for different vinyl records. The best swaps made it on to the Top Ten Swap Board, and if you were one of the lucky kids who happened to be in the vicinity of Swaporama, you could swap something in person.
Day 15 of The 2013 Health Activist Writers Challenge takes me back to those times when I was tempted to call Noel Edmonds to “make a swap.” Today, however, I am swapping stories with Katie, in a Guest Post Swap Day, to learn more about Type 1 diabetes, while she learns more about breast cancer.
Katie chronicles her thoughts and feelings on living with Type 1 diabetes over at her blog, Diabetic Advocate. Until WEGO Health connected me with Katie, pictured here appropriately enough on St. Patrick’s Day, I have had a very limited knowledge of it. It made me realize just how easy it is to forget that disease and suffering comes in many life-altering forms and that we can never underestimate the power of community.
Yvonne and I are participating in the HAWCM challenge and have been paired up to swap blogs for the day. I don’t know if any of you reading this have a personal connection or understanding of Type 1 diabetes. What I do know is that if you are following Yvonne’s blog you are part of a community of people that gathers for support, love, empathy, information and camaraderie. When thought of in this way, blogs about diabetes and cancer are quite similar.
Living with a chronic illness or a life threatening disease is exhausting, scary, challenging, never-ending, surprising and life altering. Luckily, for people living with diabetes there is something called the Diabetes Online Community (DOC). The DOC is a compilation of every person who blogs about diabetes. Discovering this community about a year ago literally changed my life.
I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes on Thursday, October 26, 1995. I was 12 years old and looking forward to trick or treating in 5 days (btw – there should be a rule that no one can be diagnosed with diabetes before or on the following holidays: Halloween, Easter, Thanksgiving or Christmas). Living with diabetes never made me feel incredibly depressed or anxious; however, about 15 years after diagnosis I started experiencing major burnout. I don’t know what flipped this switch, but suddenly getting through each day was incredibly challenging. Food had become an enemy, and taking insulin suddenly gave me anxiety. I felt lost, hopeless, scared and alone.
Out of desperation, one night I started Googling about Type 1 diabetes and anxiety and by the grace of God I found blogs like Kerrie’s Six Until Me and Texting My Pancreas. I spent hours that night laughing and crying. It was the first time in many years since being diagnosed that I felt there were hundreds, no, thousands, of other Type 1 diabetics and they were all going through the same thing as me.
After that night I started reading blogs every day and eventually launched my own. I learned new tricks, discovered new technologies, and most importantly, received encouragement and support to keep fighting and to not give up. My health, both physical and mental, is stronger today because of the DOC.
I am just one blog out of thousands, but I am part of a larger community of people who have found health advocacy an incredibly important part of their journey to good health. I truly believe that no matter what challenges you face in life, there are people out there going through the same thing. I encourage you to reach out, ask for help and you will discover a whole new family just waiting to welcome you with open arms.
Thank you for taking time to learn a bit about me and about the DOC. I wish you health and peace on your journey.
This post includes a 1930 video of the Radical Amputation of A Left Breast. Viewer Discretion Advised.
I discovered the elegance of Lois Hjelmstad‘s poetry and prose in March 2012. Tentatively broaching the subject of my return to work, having undergone a mastectomy just 47 days earlier, I wrote in Resuming Old Ways of the final pre-operative surgical procedure – the administration of the nuclear medicine for a sentinel node biopsy to be performed the next day at some point between the removal and reconstruction of my right breast.
The pre-op procedure had been conveniently reduced to a specious “X” next to “Nuclear medicine” on the Surgery Scheduling Information sheet in my Cancer 101 notebook that is always at hand. Highly probable that my surgeon had already discussed the procedure with me and answered all my questions, but even at this late hour, I had not moved much farther beyond “You. Have. Cancer.” Thus, I showed up. Obedient and vaguely prepared with a stack of paperwork and disclaimers and a half-understanding that this nuclear medicine, a blue dye, would enable my surgeon to see if there was any cancer in the lymph nodes. If so, she would remove them all. Just like that.
Following the obligatory mix-up with the out-patient registration department, I proceeded into Nuclear Medicine, pausing to wonder about those who had preceded me through those double doors. A cheery nurse, diagnosed with breast cancer some years ago, told me it would be all over before I knew it. Encouraged and unaware that she had omitted the part about the procedure necessitating three injections of radioactive dye directly into and around the nipple of my right breast, I settled in. How I wince, even now, as I write of it. But more powerful than the sting of his injections, was the kindness of the radiologist who, right before he administered the medicine, said my name and told me:
I am so sorry you’re here.
I will never forget him for making enough time to make that connection with me as a human being who did not deserve to be there. No one does.
I published the post and was subsequently introduced to Lois J. Hjelmstad, who remarked:
“Along those same lines, I’d like to share a journal entry from my book, Fine Black Lines: April 19, 1991 – The doctor was gentle and thorough as he put the needle into my nipple, threaded in the tiny tubing and took x-rays. …The nurse kept her eyes on my breast. She said she couldn’t bear to look at my face. The ductogram was excruciating–but it was not conclusive. We will have to repeat the procedure next Friday.
And even though I haven’t had nipples for over twenty years, they still hurt when I typed that. I’m sorry you had to go through that procedure.
The irony is: that nurse has since died of breast cancer and I’m still here.”
Since then, it has been my privilege to learn more about Lois through her evocative prose and poetry. Finally, I bought her book, Fine Black Lines, yesterday. Another gift of poetry to myself. This 50th birthday celebration may just go on indefinitely.
In November, I asked Lois if she would write a guest post for my blog. She agreed. In breast cancer culture and in the medical community, there is a collective willingness to use language designed to soften the blow and a preference for words that sanitize and trivialize. Made-up words and euphemisms are flung around in myriad ways to minimize the savagery of the disease. “Mastectomy” is code for “amputation.” The latter makes me shudder.
Why are euphemisms so acceptable in the cancer conversation? Medical euphemisms, like “lumpectomy” I used to toss around as though it were like lancing an inconsequential wart, instead of what it really is – a partial amputation. The surgery to remove my breast and reconstruct would be trickier than the “simple” lumpectomy I had anticipated. In fact, as her meticulous notes would later confirm, “dissection was very difficult given the very small circumareolar incision used for the skin-sparing mastectomy.” Because it required additional time and effort, not to mention skill and patience, my surgeon recommended (and I nodded sagely as though I knew what she was talking about) a skin-sparing mastectomy which entailed removing only the skin of the nipple, areola, and the original biopsy scar to create an opening through which she would remove the breast tissue. Duly spared – spared, no less – the skin would then accomodate a reconstruction using my own tissue. Simple.
Reading through the details of my surgery, you’d never know cancer and its treatment could be ugly, savage, or even that it might hurt. At times it sounds downright regal, befitting a fanfare of trumpets, especially that climactic moment when my breast tissue is “elevated off the pectoralis and delivered from the wound.” Amputated.
******
GUEST POST: DAY 14 WEGO HEALTH ACTIVIST MONTHLY WRITING CHALLENGE
“Well, yes, Lois Hjelmstad had written an occasional poem when life got intense, but she planned to continue teaching piano until she was 96. And she definitely planned to reach 96.
Life changed her plans. The night before her first mastectomy, Lois wept as she wrote the poem, “Goodbye, Beloved Breast.” She did not know, of course, that the poem would lead to an award-winning book, Fine Black Lines, or that the book would lead to a national and international speaking career and to two other award-winning books.”
Perspective of a Double Amputee
There seems to be renewed discussion in the blogosphere about the language of breast cancer, specifically comparing “mastectomy” with “amputation.” The recent Sarcastic Boob blogand comments are especially succinct.
At the end of this blog, Scorchy posts a black and white film from the UK in 1930 depicting a breast removal surgery.
Viewer Discretion Advised: “Radical Amputation of the Left Breast.”
P
As I was born in 1930, it particularly caught my eye. Scorchy did advise viewer discretion, but, curious as I am, I decided to watch it anyway. I made it to the end, past the stitches, but I could not eat dinner.
My editor looked at me over her reading glasses and said, “I sense your feelings about all of this might be deeper than you are expressing. ‘Second Surgery?’ This poem should be called ‘Double Amputee.’”
Double amputee?! I was shocked. It had never occurred to me that my mastectomies were actually amputations. I didn’t feel comfortable with the word. It sounded way more serious than what I perceived I had endured, although I have to admit that my perception changed when I watched that damn film yesterday.
I rushed to the dictionary to learn that amputate means to cut or lop off, but that amputee means one who has had a limb amputated. In discussing the definitions, my editor and I thought about the historical reasons such a distinction might exist. Amputee seemed to reflect men’s experiences.
Undoubtedly, men have suffered more loss of limbs than women, if for no other reason than men have been involved more directly in war. [That has changed, of course.] And men have had more accidents because they have been allowed and expected to be more active. But the restriction of the termamputee to limbs belies not only the broader use of amputate but also the psychological truth of cutting off a breast.
I took the idea to my breast cancer support group for discussion. Most of the women were horrified to even consider that their mastectomies were amputations.
Then we talked about how our culture has viewed breasts and how form has replaced function in much of Western Civilization. And even as we argued that losing a breast could not be compared to losing an arm or a leg, some interesting questions arose:
How long did women have to fight for the right to choose a modified radical mastectomy over a complete radical mastectomy, let alone a lumpectomy over either of those?
How many women walked around disfigured or with a falsie on the loose before an adequate prosthesis was invented, let alone breast reconstruction?
How important is it to have our bountiful bosoms restored?
There are obviously different levels of amputation. Losing an arm or a leg generally has far greater consequences than losing a finger. But an amputated limb can be replaced with a prosthesis that allows some functioning. In fact, people have been fitted with artificial limbs that allow them to ski, bicycle, or even climb rocks. [And there is much more sophistication now in 2013.]
A breast, of course, can also be replaced with a prosthesis or reconstruction. However, neither of these simulates any natural functioning. If you are young when you lose a breast, you lose the ability to nurse a child. [If indeed you are lucky enough to have a child after breast cancer.] If you are past menopause, you lose the artifact of that experience. In either case, you lose the contentment of cradling a child to your bosom and the pleasure a breast brings to you and your mate during sex.
A prosthesis or reconstruction is only superficial. It looks good—score one for beauty pageants—and fills a void in your clothes.
If I had to choose between losing a breast and losing an arm or a leg, I would sacrifice the breast. But that awareness does not contradict the fact that I am an amputee.
I wrote that passage TWENTY YEARS AGO and people are still using the term “mastectomy” to cover up the truth. Everyone should watch the old black and white film from the UK.
*********
Lois Hjelmstad is an international speaker and the author of three award-winning books:
Lois has spoken more than 600 times in all fifty states, England, and Canada, in many venues including CEU and CME for healthcare professionals.
Hjelmstad was featured in the October 2001 issue of Rosie Magazine and appeared on The Rosie O’Donnell Show.
She and her husband of sixty-four-plus years, Les, live in Englewood, Colorado, where she taught music for forty years. They have four grown children, eleven grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.
