Wyzga On Words

When Death Calls During The Holildays.

I did not hear the crash but I vaguely recall hearing the sirens in the wee small hours of Saturday morning. Although I thought it was a dream.  At the top of the street yellow police tape cordoned off a good long section of El Camino Real.  By 0730 hours the car was gone but the sheriffs department was still sweeping up - and would continue to do so for another 5 hours - and the utility guys were working on the fractured street lamps.

The bodies fell just outside a seasonal Christmas tree lot and over the grim day the chain link fence girding the lot blossomed with grocery store bouquets of all sizes and shapes wrapped in their holiday cellophane.  The sidewalk swam with lit candles in memorial pillars of the kind favored here.  Tucked among the candles were photographs, prayer cards, a runner's medal, a few six packs of Guinness beer -  strange because what was a memory might also have been what killed.

The weather here has been cold.  And I have been deeply troubled by this loss: the brutal death of 4 young people, all local to this town, graduates of the local high school, with families and friends right here.  How does a car break in half like that?  Two concrete light posts, one sheared off at the sidewalk.  The cops say that the BMW was traveling 125 mph, incomprehensible on a street with signal lights every few blocks.  But maybe at 0130 hours in the morning all they saw was a pathway of green.

Is it that death in this season reminds us of the intimacy of the holidays?  Or is it the holidays that remind us of the randomness of death?  I can't say.

Last night I stood outside the tree lot leaning against a palm tree, my hands deep in my jacket pockets zippered up against the chill winds that beat in off the ocean. I could make no sense of what I was looking at: the incongruity of Christmas trees being sold on one side of the fence and this spontaneous memorial on the other side.  I knew I was there to stand in silence and in sorrow.  And breathe.  

I was reminded of a sweet folk song my sister used to sing.  The words went something like this:

Bring me a rose in the wintertime

when it's hard to find

Bring me a rose in the wintertime

I've got roses on my mind.

A rose is sweet most any time

and yet,

bring me a rose in the winter time

it's so easy we forget.

Remember to be kind to each other, a little more so now. 

Transforming Fear In The Aftermath of School Massacres.

 

Members of the Healing Story Alliance scrambled to gather and post resources which might be of use to you and your children:

Click here to access: Transforming Fear in the Aftermath.

And feel welcome to share this material around the world.  We all seem to need something.

The Appointment In Samarra.

 

A Syrian father weeps over the body of his son killed by suicide bombers in Aleppo. [Manu Brabo/Associated Press]

Many storytellers are familiar with "The Appointment in Samarra."  I've told it on a number of occasions; but in the version I learned the merchant was a father and the servant was a son. 

For some reason I've had this story on my mind as day after day I witness incomprehensible death in Aleppo.  These losses seem to track some of the death and destruction that is part and parcel of my working life as a litigation consultant.

Maybe we have appointments with Death.  Who am I to say?  But do we really want to act in ways that deliver each other to the meeting? 

Here is a version of the story as retold by W. Somerset Maugham in 1933:

The speaker is Death:  "There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me.  She looked at me and made a threatening gesture,  now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate.  I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.  The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.  Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?  That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise.  I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

Letting Children Share In Grief.

My thesis to complete my BS degree in nursing addressed suicide in young children.  "Young" as in under the age of 10 years.  As a pediatric nurse I was often at the bedside of children who were dying.  There were times the parents simply could not share in the grief of what was coming.  One of my roles was to support the child in the process of death and dying.  

I believed then - as I do now - that children have an exquisitely accurate grasp of loss if we are attuned to and support them.

Adults, however, want to shield children from death, dying, grief, loss and all the messy details that are associated with the end of life, even if it's just a pet goldfish.  We can flush the dead one, replace it with another and who knows the difference?  They are small and gold.  Larger pets are a bigger issue - no pun intended.

Can you imagine that there might be ways to invite children into the grieving process?  Catherine Saint Louis writing for the NYTimes, "Letting Children Share in Grief," sensitively and carefully talks about how protecting children from grief might worsen the process of loss.  Recognizing that not all solutions fit all folks equally, Saint Louis offers valuable stories and resources which might be of use to you, your loved ones and clients.

 

Q&A Tuesday: Where's The Story? Read The Obituary Pages.

Q:    Where can I go to read good and not-so-good stories?

A:    Look no further than the obituary pages.

As some of you who have read my posts already know, I love reading the obits. I've mined the pages like a gravestone rubber trolling through a cemetery looking for the perfect headstone.  Yes, gravestone rubber, not robber.

Open your local or national newspaper to the Obituary section.  While it's illuminating to read the stories of the famous folk who have passed on, skip over those professionally scripted ones.  Go instead to the columns of stories written by family members for their loved one.  Sometimes there will be a recent photo, or one taken decades ago as if the deceased never aged. 

You will get good at identifying those obituaries that read like a shopping list of items - all achievement but little affection.  Those are the ones chock full of content, and little else.

Then you will find those that are so full of life you might wish that the deceased had lived next door to you.

What makes the stories different?  The latter ones take the content of a life and put it into context we can relate to.  We understand - or at least recognize - this person.  We have some idea what they held in their affections.  They come alive for us. 

Whether you are writing a brief, a case summary for ADR or getting ready for trial make the story about your client one we can relate to.

And a good exercise I was taught: write your own obituary.  Feel how it sounds when you read it aloud.  Is it true to your life? Do you wish you lived next door to this person?  Shared a cold brewski on a hot summer night?  Or maybe a cup of coffee.

 

Do Not Swim, Hike Or Go To The Hospital Alone.

Let's begin here.  "The Short Life and Lonely Death of Sabrina Seelig" as reported by Anemona Hartocollis for the NYTimes reads as a cautionary tale: don't take Ephedra; make sure your jury relates to the story of your dead client; be aware of struggling hospitals, and so on.

What happened?  A 22 year old college student took Ephedra to stay up all night to complete a paper.  Feeling ill in the morning she called 911, an ambulance was dispatched, she was taken to a struggling Brooklyn hospital where she was given sedatives, strapped to a bed, slipped into a coma that evening unattended by the hospital staff and died 6 days after admission.

Her lawyer lost her case for any number of reasons.  I was not there nor part of the trial team.  I do not know.  What is reported is that there was (as there will always be) conflicting testimony, an uneven balance in the gaggle of experts, blame on the plaintiff for bringing about her own death, and juror distancing:

"After a day and a half of deliberations, the jury of four men and two women returned its verdict: Wyckoff and the individuals working there had not been negligent.

The jury did not seem to identify with Ms. Seelig."

As I have written and spoken before, the decision-maker must have some connection to your client.  The decision-maker does not need to have lost a sister or daughter or loved one to death.  The decision-maker does not need to have experience with medical malpractice.  But that decision-maker must be reminded of the values of safety, trust, and vulnerability, taught the medical rules including the simple four-step process of differential diagnosis, as well as the hospital rules of charting, monitoring, and vital signs. 

So often these cases turn on the inevitability of the outcome.  Apparently, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center was just the place.  Excerpt.

"In 2007, when Ms. Seelig was a patient, the state ordered Wyckoff to hire a management consultant to improve its governance and finances. Five years later, it is still struggling. The Brooklyn district attorney has been investigating allegations of mismanagement. A three-month investigation by The New York Times, the results of which were published in March, found a history of insider dealing and positions being given to people with political ties. The hospital officials involved denied any wrongdoing. The hospital does not carry malpractice insurance." 

One thing is for sure: if we have not yet gone to an emergency room or a hospital for treatment, we know someone who has.  One day we will most certainly be there ourselves. 

Here's the rule: Do not go to any hospital alone.  If you must, let someone know where you are going and when and why.

Several years ago I created a website for Vincent DeAngelo, an accomplished, highly-regarded medical malpractice attorney in Hartford, CT.  Mr. DeAngelo insisted that his website provide critical information to the public in five areas of potential medical malpractice: Vbacs, emergency rooms, medication errors, hospital infections, and nursing homes.

Click here to access DeAngelo's educational website complete with detailed downloadable pdfs you can read to learn more about these areas and information to take with you before going to the hospital.  

Our moms were right when they told us not to go swimming alone.  From the grave Sabrina Seelig is reminding us not to go to the hospital alone.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Deoderant.

A friend recently returned from a trip to Paris.  We met at a local cafe for breakfast quiche and lattes so I could see her photos and hear her stories. 

After the wonderfully exclusive armchair tour de france, our conversation turned to work.  She has seen her hours as a storyteller get cut as school programs have turned away from music, literature, arts and the like.  There is no money to fund the extras.

Litigation consulting is no different, I said.  Fewer cases are going to trial because they are so costly; lawyers are turning away clients because of new laws on what fees and bills they can collect; lawyers tiring of the rigors of the litigation trail are themselves consulting on cases with colleagues, and the like.

Where's the hope?  She reminded me of the prayer: give us THIS day our DAILY bread.  While we would love to have the security of weekly or annual bread, it doesn't work like that.

A father who lost his daughter to a drunk driver - the first daughter in the family to graduate high school with honors and go to college - mourned that higher education is no protection.

I continue to revisit the Steve Jobs story: money is no protection from death.

And so it goes.

Why deoderant? I use a form of deodorant that dispenses the product in a dose with a few turns of a little wheel.  It's what I need for the day.  The toothpaste on the brush is what I need for the day.  The water in the bottle, the electricity that fuels my computer, the phone service that allows me to share a call with a sister.  It's just enough.

Do I want more?  You bet I  do.  And in the wanting is a humble thanksgiving that my needs are met with assets and resources moment-by-moment.

I am reminded that you can go to a brightly lit theater and not return home.  You can date a girl and never know that you will save her life.  You can lose a 6 year old daughter on the operating room table. 

May we be free from suffering and the root of all suffering - and give us this day our daily deodorant.  Thank you.

What We Will Miss With The Demise Of Written Letters. UVA Captures The Civil War Online.

I was going through a cardboard box the other day. It's one of many on the top shelf of a closet in my home.  It holds written notes and letters that date back 40 years.  Opening envelopes, visiting places and people, and reading long departed handwriting is more than a comfort.  The written word sets a moment in time.  I am reminded of who I was when, what I thought was important, who colored my life, and so on.

On February 20 2011, my friend and colleague Stephanie West Allen blogged about the importance of letter writing: Notes and letters - Long may they live!

She followed up that post with another on April 11, 2011, Writing Letters to the Future.

Ours are not frivolous gestures.  Or a nod to a quaint notion.  I wonder who will recall us, say 150 years from now just as we are able to recall the lives of those who lived life during the Civil War. 

Life During Wartime recounts the efforts of

"A team at U.Va.'s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library has been posting on "150 Years Ago Today," an online blog started in 2009 that features transcribed Civil War letters and diaries. Now that the nation is in the midst of the Civil War sesquicentennial, which runs until 2015, there's renewed interest in the bloody conflict. And reading the words of the participants themselves provides a new, more intimate level of understanding.

Accessible from the Special Collections home page and fully searchable by name or date, the blog features correspondence by such Confederate notables as Robert E. Lee and Gen. Elisha F. "Bull" Paxton, who briefly commanded the Stonewall Brigade. But it also includes the words of the everyday people who shouldered muskets on the battlefield, suffered deprivations on the homefront and struggled to grasp the equality promised them in the Declaration of Independence. By posting these primary source documents online, the Special Collections Library is presenting the war's daily triumphs and tragedies to the world.

This enormous project started fairly simply. "Twelve years ago, Mary Roy Edwards volunteered to start transcribing our Civil War letters and diaries," says Ann Southwell (Grad '73), a Special Collections' manuscript cataloger who heads the effort. "After a while we decided we should put them up on a blog. Then we got the idea that we could do the entire war day by day." Edwards, the wife of former U.Va. architecture professor Charles R. Edwards, eventually transliterated more than 3,000 pages from the items at Special Collections. Another volunteer, John P. Mann IV, has been diligently working on letters written by Col. Edward T. Warren of the 10th Virginia Infantry. Southwell herself works on the project every evening after work."

As you are drawn into the entries that recount the lives of those who lived life during wartime, one thing is striking: not much has changed when we go to war.  What matters most is still faith, family, friends, and the girls we left behind.

My hope is that as more of us read about the terrors and losses of war, we may shed some of our "rock logic' that makes Us right and Them wrong. Perhaps we can adopt a more fluid frame of mind that allows for more commonality, understanding and grace under fire.

The article reports on the interest generated in other countries:

"Nonetheless, the blog is attracting attention—it's received more than 20,000 hits as of early May. "We're getting a lot of hits from people in Russia, Ukraine and India," says Southwell. "I hope they're not using these letters to learn English!"" 

I hope we and they are using the letters to learn peace in our time.

 

Nurses Hold the Space for Patients, Families to Tell Their Stories.

I am delighted to have been invited to join Kathy Hansen's blog, A Storied Career!

Just in case you missed us, over the next several days I'll be re-posting the interview she conducted with me and began publishing on April 9th.

Here's the second post

"Capital Punishment Is Little More Than Revenge."

Mikhail Khodorkovsky writing for the Sunday NYTimes, "Notes From a Russion Penal Colony," relates a story about how one prisoner "refused to cut a deal with his conscience" and thereby helped Khodorkovsky, himself a prisoner in Penal Colony No. 7, Segezha, Russia.

Why is this story important to me?  Because of something a mother told me yesterday.  Apparently, her son is caught between dating two women - but only one does he really care for.  The mother told the son that it was not fair to the other girl and he should break it off if there was no future.  The father told the son, "Everyone dates around with multiple partners - no reason you should be different." 

To whom does the son listen?  That's not for me to say.  I can tell that there might be an answer in Khodorkovsky's essay:

"To cut a deal with one’s conscience — to lie, keep quiet, “not notice,” hiding behind the claim that it’s “for my family.” To convince oneself that “such are the times,” or that “everyone does it.” Who are we really dealing with? How do we find out that the other party — the conscience — refuses to deal? When we find ourselves face to face with disaster? Or later, when we are tallying up our life and become painfully aware that there’s no more dodging the raindrops, that there remain only memories? But by then you can’t change anything."

Along a similar theme - one's conscience - is a movie I watched the other night, Pierrepoint, The Last Hang Man. 

The movie is disturbing in subject matter but made all the more so by the plodding, methodical unfolding of the story.  It mimicks the methodical technique of the executioner.  After watching a few executions the viewer could become almost inured to death by hanging.  I still blinked when the rope snapped.  What saves the story is the hangman's role: he believes what he does is sacred work.  To him, the criminals have "paid the price" with death - the slate is wiped clean.  And he has a hand in that.  This is the power of the story whether or not you agree with his posture, or believe he is hiding behind an artfully crafted excuse to murder.

Who was Albert Pierrpoint?  He was a grocery delivery man whose father was an executioner for England.  Pierrepoint feels a calling to not only follow in his father's footsteps but to become the most efficient executioner England has witnessed.  He realizes that aim only to be reversed in his convictions about the benefits of capital punishment by one of his last hangings.  After 608 executions in 20 years, Pierrepoint writes, "Capital punishment is little more than revenge."

"'If death were a deterrent,' he wrote, 'I might be expected to know. It is I who have faced them at the last, young lads and girls, working men, grandmothers. I have been amazed to see the courage with which they take that walk into the unknown.

'It did not deter them then, and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women whom I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder.'"