Grace

The first book that I've read in 2011 has gotten the year off to a beautiful start. Some background: I'm going to be reading an absurd number of short stories this year, because I am trying to work on my own craft in that (manageable while in medical school) genre. In order to make that possible, I've been amassing volumes to keep me busy, and I've picked up several collections over the last couple of weeks and months. One of these is Sherman Alexie's War Dances. I found this collection of poetry, short fiction, and difficult to classify but nonetheless stunning prose as a bargain book at the FABULOUS Tattered Cover in Denver, where I got to spend several very happy hours reading and browsing on New Years Eve while my husband took care of some of his groomsman duties. (We were in Denver for a wedding.)

Alexie won the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for this book, but I had literally never seen it on a shelf before. That's a tragedy, it's a fantastic collection, and people should be reading it. You should be reading it. I'm sure that your local library has a copy handy. It's moving and powerful writing, and more than once while I was reading it, I found myself having to look up and take a moment to collect myself. I almost cried on the bus this morning. It's been a long time since I've been moved to tears in a public place by a piece of fiction. If you're a reader, pick this up and give it a go, and let me know what you think.

Of course, pretty much everything that I have said so far sounds like it belongs in my reading blog. So why am I talking about it here, in my writing and medicine blog?

I'll tell you, in the final story in the collection, "Salt" a senile and lonely widow tells our narrator the story of burying her cat, and praying by his graveside. As she scatters salt over his body to speed his trip to heaven, he seems to come back to life. When she calls her doctor (not her veterinarian, but her physician) to report the miracle, he calls her vet, and they both make a house call. She is thrilled by this, "Imagine! Two doctors on a house call. That doesn't happen anymore, does it?" In response, the narrator thinks:

"It happens when two graceful men want to help a fragile and finite woman."

And that, my friends, might be the most beautiful sentence on humanism in medicine that I have ever read. It's what I hope to be. Graceful. What a beautiful word to describe the art of knowing what a fellow human needs, to tell us about the gift of going to great lengths to bring comfort beyond physical healing. The elegance of that sentence stopped me in my tracks. It simultaneously brought me near to tears and gave me hope. I imagine that I will remember reading this story for the rest of my career. I hope that I will, and that I will be able to use it as a touchstone, as a reminder. We are all fragile and finite, and grace is a beautiful thing to strive for.

Even if you don't want to read the rest of War Dances, read "Salt." It's only 17 pages, but it lays bare in that tiny span the fragility of humans, young and old. It's a powerful piece of writing, it will make you think. But maybe don't read it on the bus, because I think that it will likely also make you cry.