This past Monday I met a marginal zone lymphoma patient and his wife. He had long grey hair that looked like it had seen better days and suspenders that one might find on the old college professor. The first question he asked after my attending introduced me was “So where are you from?”
Here in Central Illinois, my ethnicity is a conversation starter for the predominantly white population. Thanks to desensitization, my hairs no long bristle at the broaching of this topic.
Quickly understanding the question’s intent, I skipped the “Chicago suburb” formality and answered, “My parents are from Taiwan.”
“Oh.” he says, “The reason why I ask is because 12-14 of my students are Chinese. I teach piano.” And as he said this, his long, sinewy fingers played the invisible Steinway as fluidly as one could imagine possible.
The bulk of the appointment dealt with a persistent abscess that had developed in his right lung unrelated to the cancer. Though his cancer had remitted, this pulmonary lesion periodically forced him out of commission. We talked about the limited nature of antibiotics and the possibility of surgery. Our patient obviously hated how his illness forced him to cancel teaching. He pointed to his suspenders as evidence of the amount of weight he had lost over the last year.
On their way out, I felt compelled to speak with our patient again. I asked him what type of piano he taught. “Classical,” he answered. “I used to teach at universities.” When I asked him where, his wife quickly chimed it “He graduated from Julliard.” Her voice dripped with the kind of pride that remembers a spouse’s greatest moments.
I briefly told them about my musical background, and how I had a piano teacher who passed away from cancer. Before I could explain to him just how much she had meant to me, I had already begun to recall the bittersweet memories of our final lessons together. Even as the couple walked away, I could feel my dry hands chapped from freshman year gymnastics—because it always started with the hands—and those frustrated admonishments for not putting in the necessary practice. I could hear her pleading yet stern hoarse voice telling me that I needed to stop wasting both her and my time. I remember being at my sister’s condo on Michigan Ave. when I found out that she had passed, and I remember attending her funeral at her suburban Lutheran church, my back pressed up against the brick wall in the rear listening to her son uncontrollably weep in the middle of his testimony.
But of course you can’t tell all of this to a patient because life must go on (and lest we forget, the insurance companies will certainly remind us). As we age, we learn to be content with vignettes—if we’re lucky short stories—from each individual that steps through the door. Our fellow man, therefore, gives us snapshots by which we extrapolate the past, and we, in turn, are endowed with a memory through which we begin to move forward in the present.
And for a moment I found myself speechless, wishing that time would stop and let me ponder all of this further. Unfortunately, time halts for no one, and as we began to move on to the next patient of the afternoon, I gave thanks for the people that imbue our lives with meaning
