BOOK BRIEF: We Become Our Losses

Loss and Grief: Personal Stories of Doctors and Other Healthcare Professionals, edited by Matthew Loscalzo and Marshall Forstein, coedited by Linda A. Klein. Oxford University Press, 2022. 243 pp.

While each of us experiences loss and grief uniquely and permanently, its universality should bind us. This premise is the guiding light of Loss and Grief: Personal Stories of Doctors and Other Healthcare Professionals. The 20 authors, ranging from doctors, nurses, and psychiatrists to social workers, pharmaceutical representatives, and attorneys, argue their own professional expertise did not adequately prepare, support, or console them during their own tragedies, and their colleagues’ help during their ordeal was marginal at best and nonexistent at worst. Therein lies the power of this book: Even the most apparently objective, calculating medical professional is human with all the frailties and limitations that go with it. Emotional and mental pain is impossible to eradicate from the memory, indeed from our everyday conduct, but we are not alone in our suffering.

The riveting accounts in this volume reveal the storytellers’ reactions to their personal tragedies at every stage of the grief spectrum. Some lost a parent, others a brother, and others a spouse. Some struggled with their own battle against cancer. One lost two sons in their childhood to a rare neurologic disorder. Another’s loss was his childhood at the hands of an abusive stepfather and complicit by beloved mother. Some shared these moments with significant others and adult children, and some were too young or geographically removed to fully understand what was occurring during their life-changing event. Some stories start in childhood, some at the beginning of an illustrious career, some at their professional peak, and others in their dotage. But no time seems opportune to brace oneself against the ravages of losing an important part of one’s life.

What we read over and again throughout these well-written tales is that any life, regardless how damaged or successful, is forever altered by loss, and the grieving process shapes the survivor’s identity. Indeed, moving through the chapters of Loss and Grief will compel readers to reflect about their own losses. Painful though they are and impossible to ultimately transcend, they offer a powerful reminder to cherish life, family, and friendship. This book helps us to better understand ourselves.

Knowing Your Reader, Part 2: Informing vs. Persuading

Notice the language the writer uses in the instructions below.

To use the system, follow these steps:

1. Click on this link.

2. Click new user.

3. Use your company email address to create a user name.

4. Enter a password as instructed.

5. Complete the two-step verification process as instructed.

6. Log in using your new user name and password.

Not a shred of kindness appears in the message. There is no please in the lead-in to the list or in any of the steps, but this style is precisely what the reader wants. Don't beat around the bush; just get me into the system. Users are not looking for sweet talk; they want to act. 

Let's look at an entirely different example.

Our recent decision to establish a nine-month hiring freeze will significantly reduce operating expenses, 5% this fiscal year and 9% next fiscal year. These savings are in line with the budgetary results leadership is seeking. The freeze should not affect administrative operations; in fact, it will spur enduring operational efficiencies, leading to further rewards.

Production, the heart of our business, will not fare as well. Production staff turnover is 50% greater than administration on the east coast and as high as 90% higher west of the Mississippi. Even a one-month freeze can have an adverse impact on our responsiveness to customer orders.

The writer seems to be taking a position against the companywide hiring freeze, particularly as it affects the production department. Then why bother writing the first paragraph, which seems to support the decision? Because he wants to give leadership credit where it is due and give herself greater credibility. By saying the company decided wisely, she is trying to persuade the executives to be openminded about what comes in the second paragraph. Persuasive writing is all about anticipating objections and making concessions.

Knowing Your Reader, Part 1: Leading into a List

Both of the lists below are acceptably phrased, but the Version 1 lead-in to the list has 3 words, and the Version 2 lead-in has 13 words.

Version 1

We expect to:

•  increase sales by 10 percent
• decrease operating expenses by 5 percent

Version 2

Consistent with the President's vision statement, we expect to achieve the following objectives:

• increase sales by 10 percent
• decrease operating expenses by 5 percent

Which do you prefer? Of course, the correct answer is it depends on the situation and the audience. Knowing that every word we write should matter, why would we want to push out 10 more words. Version 1 seems to be intended for a colleague who gets the context. Perhaps she missed the meeting where the numbers were determined, so she simply asked her teammate for the data. She understands why these numbers are binding, as well as what they mean to her department's operational plan. Version 2 seems more political. The writer might be citing the President because the email will land before the executive team, or maybe he is trying to give the sentence more authority.

Getting to the point does not solely mean writing in the fewest words, but making the purpose appropriate to the audience.  

The Duke Is a King

For many years I have believed that Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington is the greatest composer. He wrote more than 3,000 pieces of music while managing a big band, touring the world with its members, and leading them as their pianist. Just his piano skills would have assured his status as one of the best jazz figures in history. Adding to this achievement his catalogue of diverse compositions reveals an unmatched genius whose career spanned more than a half-century. 

It's great to know that "Five Minutes That Will Make You Love Duke Ellington," an August 3, 2022 The New York Times article by Giovanni Russonello and Marcus J. Moore backs up my conviction about the Duke. Enjoy reading this article featuring 13 music experts citing their favorite Ellington piece and listening to the accompanying recordings. Then start collecting Ellington music. Any of his suites will do, but you can also check out his collaborations with John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, and Charles Mingus, among many other jazz greats. I have listened to Ellington as background music for work, to get my body into a swinging, dancing rhythm, and for serious listening. He always come through. 

My Friends Are Artists

I am not one to brag about myself. But about my friends is another story. I will remember 2022 as a year of great creative development for six of my friends. 

Matthew Loscalzo, whom I have known since high school, is an internationally known authority on the psychosocial aspects of cancer. Matthew has worked for the most prestigious cancer care centers in the US. His latest book on palliative care is Loss and Grief: Personal Stories of Doctors and Other Healthcare Professionals. As the subtitle suggests, the book spotlights grief from a unique perspective.

Robert Mucci, a longtime friend, has lived many lives, but for the 50 years I have known him, music and art have been common threads running through all of them. His first art exhibit, Out of Silence, at the Warner Art Gallery of the Mamaroneck Public Library, features 33 of his acrylic on canvas pieces. The two-month show runs until September 30.

Paul Cassone, a colleague during my 19 years at Lifespire, became the CEO of the Guild for Exceptional Children, and his dedication to the field of developmental disabilities won praise from numerous community and professional organizations. Since his retirement, Paul has focused on his musical career, now in its sixth decade. His YouTube channel presents heaps of originals and covers.  

Deborah Greenhut and I have enjoyed a 30-year friendship. She is one of the most intelligent and tolerant people I know. Her first novel, The Hoarder's Wife, about an aspiring musician's survival of a failed marriage to a brilliant but flawed university professor, is a remarkably fast read. This book has no villains or heroes. It is an unsparing look at the reach of human dependencies and mental illness.

Keith Carne, a live and studio drummer for We Are Scientists the past nine years, as well as a  writer for Modern Drummer, has been a friend for 20 years. He continues to tour throughout the world with We Are Scientists, create his own music with Communipaw, and teach music when his busy schedule allows. And there's not a thing you can't talk to Keith about.

Hayley Youngs, one of my newest friends, is an extraordinary artist and art teacher who has produced work at an amazing pace. Haley's work, which has been widely exhibited, evokes Fernand Leger, Arthur Dove, and Georgia O'Keeffe, but her creative vision is singular and inimitable. Her current exhibit, Serenity Now, is at the Mark Borghi Gallery in Sag Harbor.

My friends inspire me to keep my creative juices flowing. I am fortunate to know them.

Summer Reading

It has been a great summer for reading, and summer is not over. I finally got around to reading many targeted books that I bought in Pegasus Books in Oakland or on Amazon; borrowed from my local library, my university library, or the New York Public Library's Cloud Library; or just pulled my own bookshelves. 

For biography, Walter Isaacson's Einstein: His Life and Universe made for a great read about a complex man who, in his mid-twenties changed how we think of our world with his special theory of relativity, became a refugee from Hitler's Germany, lived in Princeton, New Jersey the last two decades of his life, wrote and spoke powerfully for global peace and a world order that enforced social collectivism but prized individual freedom, and rejected quantum mechanics until his end. I followed up with Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci, whose genius sprung, in part, from an insatiable curiosity of all things, an uncanny power of observation, and an unrelentingly diligent yet often distracted approach to work. 

I also read the collected poetry of five poets: Alan Dugan, Rita Dove, Mary Oliver, Frederick Seidel, and May Swenson. Dugan's vulgarity is easy to accept when he juxtaposes it with high art and exposes us at our core. Dove can write masterfully from so many viewpoints: as a curator of her cultural history, a concerned environmentalist, an arts aficionado, a spiritualist. Mary Oliver has a way of making a bird, fox, bush, or even an insect an extension of ourselves with the plainest language imaginable. Seidel is hilarious, if you can fathom wildly privileged, self-obsessed, paranoid contemporary men as hilarious. Swenson is Oliver's literary older sister, a great witness of our natural world, but she knows the city too and lives more in the mind than in the observable spectacle that Oliver beholds.

Albert Murray's Collected Essays & Memoirs, which along with James Baldwin's Collected Essays, shows that Black Lives Matter is far from new. Of course, Baldwin and Murray owe much to Frederick Douglass, whose autobiographical narrative graphically depicts a life that is at times painful to read but ultimately stands as a triumphant testament to the human spirit. Douglass rose from slavery to become a great influencer of Abraham Lincoln, more proof that critical race theory makes a lot of sense, as one cannot think about any political movement, social cause, educational approach, legislative action, court ruling, military or police action, or turning point of United States history without reflecting on how race intersects with it.  

The Essential Tagore, a catalogue of fiction, drama, poetry, songs, autobiography, letters, humor, and travelogue by the first Asian Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, is the bargain read at any price. The man was a remarkable writer, thinker, and spiritual leader of his fellow Bengalis, indeed, of humanity. 

I have plenty more reading to do this summer: Adorno, Bakhtin, Benjamin, Derrida, Foucault, Gramsci, and Lukacs. After those guys, I'll likely look for some lighter reading. Joyce's Ulysses?

The Power of Observation

During a warm summer twilight yesterday, I was watching a nine-year-old boy observe an inchworm looping along a black-eyed Susan in a friend's garden. He watched it for a long minute from a distance of six inches before slipping his finger under a petal where the creature was moving until it crawled completely away from the flower and onto him. The boy counted the inchworm's three pairs of posterior legs and explained to me that its lack of middle legs causes it to move as it does. He let it inch across his fingers another several minutes before finally returning it to the black-eyed Susan. 

I describe this brief but pleasurable crepuscule moment to reiterate the importance of observation in cultivating writing skills. Ernest Hemingway mentioned its value. And who observes with guileless acuity and imagination more than a child? For this reason, I tell writing students to observe with all their senses what they perceive. They will have much to write about.