Solomon in the NICU
Solomon was asked, “Who is the real mother?” “Get a sword," he said, "and cut the child in half.”
There are ten hunched figures around a table: five family; five staff.
The family traveled thousands of miles to seek refuge in this country, and still speak little English.
No words can ease the taut cord of mistrust at this table.
Many words go through the translator; they are as futile as the medical attempts to cure the baby’s illness:
A genetic anomaly “incompatible with life.”
Who truly desires this baby’s benefit?
Parents who want “everything” done to prolong his stay on this side of the great divide?
Doctors who wish to lessen his suffering (and their own), caused by each tiny, sterile stab into his tender flesh?
The only motion: vibrating tension in the taut cord of mistrust.
At last, when every other word has been expended, the Imam’s voice rises sweetly,
Chanting ancient verses of life, of death, of submission to God’s will.
Tears flow.
And now the cord is slack.
Like Solomon’s sword, the timeless song has cut right through to the heart of our shared sorrow.
Kate Lufkin Day, August 2017
There are ten hunched figures around a table: five family; five staff.
The family traveled thousands of miles to seek refuge in this country, and still speak little English.
No words can ease the taut cord of mistrust at this table.
Many words go through the translator; they are as futile as the medical attempts to cure the baby’s illness:
A genetic anomaly “incompatible with life.”
Who truly desires this baby’s benefit?
Parents who want “everything” done to prolong his stay on this side of the great divide?
Doctors who wish to lessen his suffering (and their own), caused by each tiny, sterile stab into his tender flesh?
The only motion: vibrating tension in the taut cord of mistrust.
At last, when every other word has been expended, the Imam’s voice rises sweetly,
Chanting ancient verses of life, of death, of submission to God’s will.
Tears flow.
And now the cord is slack.
Like Solomon’s sword, the timeless song has cut right through to the heart of our shared sorrow.
Kate Lufkin Day, August 2017
Things to Do at a Sleep Study
Fill out paperwork. Sign and date it in three places.
Try to identify the smell of the place.
Eye with some concern the wires hanging on the wall of your room.
Notice that the bedside table has no room for your glasses, cell phone, watch, or drinking glass, nor does it have a reading light.
Wonder if you will sleep at all.
Open the peach-colored foam drapes, and find a window overlooking a service drive behind the hospital--not a two-way mirror.
Fill out more paperwork. Sign and date it in three places.
Hope to goodness they don’t interrupt your study to put a CPAP machine on you, but give them permission to do so.
Get in pajamas and brush your teeth. Use toilet again, because how are you going to do it once you’re wired up?
Smile because the technician putting electrodes on your chest is female, and you had been just a tad uneasy about that. Learn that her name is Alice.
Sit patiently in the extra-wide chair while Alice attaches 20+ electrodes to your scalp, face, chest, legs and abdomen.
Allow Alice to lead you on your new leash to the double bed with the thin, periwinkle blanket. Expect to be cold in that bed.
Try not to think about the video camera aimed at you.
Rearrange thin, hard pillows, but do not strip off any leads.
Read part of a New Yorker article about people in China who murder their doctors out of frustration with a callous healthcare system.
Remember with gratitude that your son, as a foreigner, was privileged to receive excellent care in a Chinese hospital.
Leave magazine, book and glasses next to you on the bed, as you cannot reach any other surface.
Stretch up to turn off light switch that is positioned for someone standing next to the bed—without detaching any electrodes.
Roll over.
Feel your heart thump, thump, thump.
Roll over.
Doze.
Roll over. Note cold feet.
Doze.
Sleep, dream.
Roll over.
Ask Alice—who has entered to adjust electrodes on head—to disconnect you so you can go to the bathroom, and to turn up the temperature in the room a bit. Ask for time: 3:30
Get back in bed and re-connected. Roll over. Feel heart thumping.
Wake up to Alice announcing, “We are ending the study now.”
Receive with equanimity Alice’s praise: “You did really well keeping your electrodes on.”
Note that glasses and reading material are still on the bed, not on the floor or crushed under Alice’s feet.
Shower, remove globs of goo from hair; dry with thin, sandpapery towel and motel-style hair dryer.
Look out window: it is still dark at 5:45.
Drive home; make herbal tea with husband who just got up; eat a half-slice of toast with peanut butter, and a half with marmalade; take morning meds.
Realize they did not have to put a CPAP machine on you. Smile.
Go back to bed and sleep two hours uninterrupted.
Kate Lufkin Day, Aug 22-23, 2014
Try to identify the smell of the place.
Eye with some concern the wires hanging on the wall of your room.
Notice that the bedside table has no room for your glasses, cell phone, watch, or drinking glass, nor does it have a reading light.
Wonder if you will sleep at all.
Open the peach-colored foam drapes, and find a window overlooking a service drive behind the hospital--not a two-way mirror.
Fill out more paperwork. Sign and date it in three places.
Hope to goodness they don’t interrupt your study to put a CPAP machine on you, but give them permission to do so.
Get in pajamas and brush your teeth. Use toilet again, because how are you going to do it once you’re wired up?
Smile because the technician putting electrodes on your chest is female, and you had been just a tad uneasy about that. Learn that her name is Alice.
Sit patiently in the extra-wide chair while Alice attaches 20+ electrodes to your scalp, face, chest, legs and abdomen.
Allow Alice to lead you on your new leash to the double bed with the thin, periwinkle blanket. Expect to be cold in that bed.
Try not to think about the video camera aimed at you.
Rearrange thin, hard pillows, but do not strip off any leads.
Read part of a New Yorker article about people in China who murder their doctors out of frustration with a callous healthcare system.
Remember with gratitude that your son, as a foreigner, was privileged to receive excellent care in a Chinese hospital.
Leave magazine, book and glasses next to you on the bed, as you cannot reach any other surface.
Stretch up to turn off light switch that is positioned for someone standing next to the bed—without detaching any electrodes.
Roll over.
Feel your heart thump, thump, thump.
Roll over.
Doze.
Roll over. Note cold feet.
Doze.
Sleep, dream.
Roll over.
Ask Alice—who has entered to adjust electrodes on head—to disconnect you so you can go to the bathroom, and to turn up the temperature in the room a bit. Ask for time: 3:30
Get back in bed and re-connected. Roll over. Feel heart thumping.
Wake up to Alice announcing, “We are ending the study now.”
Receive with equanimity Alice’s praise: “You did really well keeping your electrodes on.”
Note that glasses and reading material are still on the bed, not on the floor or crushed under Alice’s feet.
Shower, remove globs of goo from hair; dry with thin, sandpapery towel and motel-style hair dryer.
Look out window: it is still dark at 5:45.
Drive home; make herbal tea with husband who just got up; eat a half-slice of toast with peanut butter, and a half with marmalade; take morning meds.
Realize they did not have to put a CPAP machine on you. Smile.
Go back to bed and sleep two hours uninterrupted.
Kate Lufkin Day, Aug 22-23, 2014
Beth El
This is a poem I wrote about the Wedding at Cana passage in the Gospel of John. I have come to see this passage as John's version of the Transfiguration. I hope the poem expresses what I see.
“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” John 2:11
Jacob's pillow marked the spot in olden times:
the heaven-earth place, where
all God’s angels come and go,
climbing up and down on their appointed rounds
from there to here to there and back again.
(A discontinued, wingless model,
these messengers went on foot.)
"How holy is this place!" cried Jacob,
"And I did not know it."
Beth El is the belly button of the universe.
Well, the umbilical cord, really: the connection
is not severed and healed over,
but alive, flowing, life-giving still.
Fast forward a millennium or two to Cana,
to a wedding feast with throngs of guests
thirsty and expectant.
Among them, a small gaggle of disciples
following their rabbi everywhere:
did not he promise they would see
angels if they stuck with him,
angels of God ascending and descending
on the Son of Man?
Their eyes on only him,
they don't even notice when the wine runs out.
(She does, but she's a mom -- that's what moms do.)
Jar after jar the servants fill with water
to the brim: enough to cleanse a thousand pious pilgrims.
Then they dip a cup and take it to the steward,
who lauds and magnifies their host,
the hapless schmoe who was too cheap to buy
enough wine in the first place.
Yes, the bridegroom gets the glory for the wine.
But now the disciples are struck dumb and quaking,
like Peter, James and John upon the mountain
in all those other gospels.
What have they seen? The wine, transfigured,
fingers their rabbi as the real Host, the Bridegroom.
The veil hiding heaven from us is torn.
The place where heaven kisses earth,
where all the angels climb up and down,
he is it: Beth El.
And they themselves are guests at cosmic nuptials:
they find themselves attending, here and now
the wedding that is the feast to end all feasts.
Fast forward once again
to us in church: the droning voices,
dim light and musty air,
the cup, the bread.
Who sees heaven torn open here,
the Host raising another toast
to the Bride and all her family?
Who finds the angels of God
showing his or her stunned and speechless self
to a choice seat,
handing round the pinot noir?
Kate Lufkin Day
April 3, 2006
Rev. May 13, 2008
“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” John 2:11
Jacob's pillow marked the spot in olden times:
the heaven-earth place, where
all God’s angels come and go,
climbing up and down on their appointed rounds
from there to here to there and back again.
(A discontinued, wingless model,
these messengers went on foot.)
"How holy is this place!" cried Jacob,
"And I did not know it."
Beth El is the belly button of the universe.
Well, the umbilical cord, really: the connection
is not severed and healed over,
but alive, flowing, life-giving still.
Fast forward a millennium or two to Cana,
to a wedding feast with throngs of guests
thirsty and expectant.
Among them, a small gaggle of disciples
following their rabbi everywhere:
did not he promise they would see
angels if they stuck with him,
angels of God ascending and descending
on the Son of Man?
Their eyes on only him,
they don't even notice when the wine runs out.
(She does, but she's a mom -- that's what moms do.)
Jar after jar the servants fill with water
to the brim: enough to cleanse a thousand pious pilgrims.
Then they dip a cup and take it to the steward,
who lauds and magnifies their host,
the hapless schmoe who was too cheap to buy
enough wine in the first place.
Yes, the bridegroom gets the glory for the wine.
But now the disciples are struck dumb and quaking,
like Peter, James and John upon the mountain
in all those other gospels.
What have they seen? The wine, transfigured,
fingers their rabbi as the real Host, the Bridegroom.
The veil hiding heaven from us is torn.
The place where heaven kisses earth,
where all the angels climb up and down,
he is it: Beth El.
And they themselves are guests at cosmic nuptials:
they find themselves attending, here and now
the wedding that is the feast to end all feasts.
Fast forward once again
to us in church: the droning voices,
dim light and musty air,
the cup, the bread.
Who sees heaven torn open here,
the Host raising another toast
to the Bride and all her family?
Who finds the angels of God
showing his or her stunned and speechless self
to a choice seat,
handing round the pinot noir?
Kate Lufkin Day
April 3, 2006
Rev. May 13, 2008
Joseph of Arimathea in the PICU
Poem written after a particularly difficult week at the hospital, where I am a chaplain.
Who is it who caresses
the motionless toddler in PICU?
Who is calling her name,
brushing back tears?
Mommy stands out of reach,
dry-eyed and expressionless. She
will leave shortly to have a cigarette.
Daddy comes in to curse and blame,
a hero of self-justification. He
will not touch or address his little one.
Mommy's boyfriend is in jail now, having
thrown this blooming girl into her playpen
with such force that she will not cry again.
Whatever he might wish to say to her
will not be said or heard here.
Yet someone sits at the bed.
Reaching around the tubes and wires,
he touches the un-bandaged spots
and talks to her. No kin the law
will recognize, he has come in his
wheelchair: just a human being
in this inhuman story, doing
the last loving things that can be done.
He will stay until the end.
Kate Lufkin Day, January 2013
the motionless toddler in PICU?
Who is calling her name,
brushing back tears?
Mommy stands out of reach,
dry-eyed and expressionless. She
will leave shortly to have a cigarette.
Daddy comes in to curse and blame,
a hero of self-justification. He
will not touch or address his little one.
Mommy's boyfriend is in jail now, having
thrown this blooming girl into her playpen
with such force that she will not cry again.
Whatever he might wish to say to her
will not be said or heard here.
Yet someone sits at the bed.
Reaching around the tubes and wires,
he touches the un-bandaged spots
and talks to her. No kin the law
will recognize, he has come in his
wheelchair: just a human being
in this inhuman story, doing
the last loving things that can be done.
He will stay until the end.
Kate Lufkin Day, January 2013
Another Fall
I'll let this one speak for itself.
But it’s springtime
not the time for endings,
losses, deaths.
It’s time for apple blossoms,
redbud and dandelions,
lilac scent and green scenes.
Yet here is another Fall,
and I tumble to a barren place
that still bears my body’s imprint.
Didn’t I just feel that hurtling sensation
that thumping near the throat, vague nausea?
“Look out below!”
Yes, I did.
And yes, I do again, even though it is spring.
Kate Lufkin Day, May 8, 2013
not the time for endings,
losses, deaths.
It’s time for apple blossoms,
redbud and dandelions,
lilac scent and green scenes.
Yet here is another Fall,
and I tumble to a barren place
that still bears my body’s imprint.
Didn’t I just feel that hurtling sensation
that thumping near the throat, vague nausea?
“Look out below!”
Yes, I did.
And yes, I do again, even though it is spring.
Kate Lufkin Day, May 8, 2013