the art of holding back tears

This week I found myself holding back tears. Maybe you did, too. Just to make it through the day. This is nothing unusual for me, because I learned not to cry when I was in medical school. We didn't actually have classes in the art of holding back tears. We had to figure it out for ourselves. How to breathe so it didn't sound like sobbing. How to dab away tears so it looked as though something had just flown into our eye. How to keep our voices calm and steady despite the log jam in our throats.

 

"What cannot be said

will be wept."

~Sappho~

Among my medical colleagues, emotional displays were considered a sign of weakness. We were led to believe that patients would lose confidence in us, or worse, they would lose hope if we surrendered to feelings that had the power to erode our objectivity, confidence, or cool.

We were told it was inevitable that patients under our care would die, whether in the emergency room, or on the operating table, or in the intensive care unit. We were not, however, prepared for them to die in the grocery store, or in church, or in their elementary school classrooms. In agony. In horror. Of gunshot wounds. 

We were warned that, despite our best efforts, patients would slip away from us. We were told to expect it, and we were taught how to handle it. In med school, when a patient died, we learned to persuade ourselves there was nothing more we could have done; we were not to blame. Put it out of your mind, they told us. Better yet, pretend it never happened. Be strong.

"If you don't deal with your emotions,

one day your emotions

will deal with you."

~J. Ivy~

For four years, the men of medicine took hammer and chisel to us until compassion fell away like dross--a smoldering pile of words never spoken, of hands never held, of tears that never fell. Out of it we emerged transfigured--tireless, dispassionate, infallible. At least, that was the goal.

Which explains why I didn't cry in the morgue the time I stood over the body of a pale, blond three-year-old who had just lost her battle against leukemia. I didn't cry when I disconnected the tubes and wires from the patient in ICU who had successfully pulled off his suicide at the tender age of sixteen, and didn't leave a note of explanation. Nor did I shed a tear when my own mother drew her last breath, and her suffering came to an end.

"You'd be surprised

what lengths people will go to

not to face what's real and painful inside them."

~unknown~



I stayed strong for my patients and their loved ones. Calm in the face of fear. Cool in the heat of anguish. Silent when so much needed to be said.

Denial of this magnitude would be a great way of dismissing traumatic memory if it worked. The problem is, it doesn't. Sooner or later the log jam will break. The bucket will overflow. Words and tears will pour on out, and another narrative will begin. 

"Tears are words that

need to be written."

~Paulo Coelho~

 

jan