Wit & What's left

I just finished a day long seminar on suicide and bereavement counseling through my church. I found the day in the class emotionally taxing. The discussion of adolescent depression and suicide risks and what it is like to be a family member coping with such a situation was very moving. The grief books were presented much more distantly. I know many of the people in class well enough to know that they are dealing more directly with the issues of death and grief than one might hope for in a class of this nature. As we talked very distantly and impersonally about the stages and processes of grief I couldn't help but wonder whether hearing the material was difficult. Whether they were checking in on themselves and where they were with their own grief. You could watch some of the emotions play on people's faces and know that this was a moment of great difficulty and also great comfort. I wonder how the class would have gone differently if we had talked about how the books made us feel instead of talking about the book.

And I came home and what did I find in my mailbox from netflix, but a movie called Wit. Wit is about a single, childless professor diagnosed with ovarian cancer and treated in a teaching hospital. It follows her from initial diagnosis to death and is very moving. On another day I might have cryed my way through it. But the parts that were most difficult to watch were the ones where someone is doing a simple kindness in the cold medical setting. When the nurse puts lotion on the professor's hands. When a former professor comes to visit. If you work in any clinical setting and haven't seen this, you should. A reminder of the humanity of us all. A reminder that we each face our own mortality at some point. I hope I can have the grace that this character has when my time comes. I wonder how her treatment would have gone if people had talked to her and about her as a person rather than about her cancer and to each other.