Mark Greenwood
The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.
— Leonard Wittgenstein (Austrian Philosopher: 1899 – 1951)
I am afraid that my child is dying. Unexpectedly. Can it ever be that a child can die expectedly? How can I describe the indescribable? I am thinking: idioms. And of similes and metaphors and of all the ways we have of capturing in language what it is that words, when used to speak merely of the fact of the matter, cannot ever capture. Yes, words in idioms can move people if chosen carefully. Moved at times like these. Like here in this hospital. In this emergency department. At a time like this, when I am moved. Moved to feel like I have had the rug pulled out from under me. Like I’ve been sandbagged while caught with my pants down. Like I have a tiger by the tail. Like I’m about to fall off a cliff. Like I’m on thin ice. Am on a rocky road. Am beside myself, flying by the seat of my pants, with my shoes on the wrong feet, with my head spinning. Like I’ve been punched in the gut—no, worse, like someone is ripping my guts out. Like I have the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. Hanging by a string and just about ready to fall …… and then the doctor comes in.
And now I’m thinking something about what it means to have command presence and I understand now what it means to me, to the essence of being, to the very marrow of my bones, in my need to be reassured in the face of what is going on, in the face of all the idioms and similes and metaphors, and in the face of all of that I feel for what it would mean for me to lose my son.
And now he holds the life of my child in his very hands, who, with sword and shield, stands between my son, against—dare I say it?— the angel of death and so, who by that mere fact, stands to preserve my life as well. Because how is it that I could live without my son? He who throws (metaphorically, of course, as I am thinking how all of these metaphors and idioms, as overwrought and trite as they are, are still failing, failing still, to capture just how it is that I am feeling, but what else is there? Any port in a storm, right? And the doctor, the captain of my ship, please take me there.) … Me now overboard, he throws to me, a drowning woman, a life preserver, and takes me in, when he says (and I quote) I think that your boy will be OK. And just like that in an instant I feel the great sea, once dark, now change to calm and us now in tranquil waters, soon to be safe on shore.
But all of that was only an hour-or-so ago. And there was no port, no shore. And now is now. And now I know. He was wrong.
And the doctor was me.
About the Author
Mark Greenwood, DO, is on the faculty of the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. He trained in Emergency Medicine and spent many years as a flight physician in Michigan.