Reconciliation And Acknowledgement

Submitted by tonyplant on March 25, 2006 - 20:28.

In Godspeed, Keith Carlson has offered another inspirational and poignant account of caring that enriches our understanding of compassion, essential dignity and the vocation of caring.

Godspeed is a poignant reminder that there are sicknesses that extend beyond the body and affect all of those around the person who is afflicted by these complex ills. Even when somebody has a complex medical history, the true sadness and disruption of that life may lie in the spiritual realm, or in the psychosocial miasma that surrounds those health problems.

The patient is a "human time-bomb" of clinical and other ills that Carlson has tried to defuse or render less harmful many times in the past. Carlson's efforts could not succeed without the patient's co-operation and so those attempts could not achieve their aim. Despite his remarkable resilience, the patient's serious illnesses seem to be about to overwhelm him.

Yet, despite "the body bristling with tubes and the technology of desperate measures", Carlson offers us a glimpse of what the man is to his family, and what he might have been. He is a "lost soul" whose family care about him and grieve for what he might have been:

a role model, a family anchor, the eldest of a large group of parentless siblings.

We have to be curious about the missing parts of this story, about reconciling how he is with what this man's life might have been like without the choices and illnesses that plagued him. The family members may need to reconcile their grief for the brother that they might have had with the immiment loss of the brother that they do have.

 

We see Carlson reconcile his own emotions between what he wants for his patients and the reality of what is possible.

It is simply a fact that there are sometimes individuals who cannot be saved from themselves, and no matter what I do, there are circumstances beyond my control as a clinician and human being.

Standing beside that ICU bed, I made my peace with this unfortunate and critically ill man, blessed him on his journey, and prayed that he is not in pain

Carlson had described his patient as "a sad case of self-neglect" and disenfranchisement. Yet, in this unlikely setting, the patient receives a care that acknowledges him and accords him a dignity and value that he may never have been able to give himself. The Dalai Lama argues that there is a link between compassion and authentic happiness.

[E]thics are necessary as a means to ensure that we do not harm others...genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness and so on. For it is these which provide both for our happiness and others' happiness.

Ancient Wisdom, Modern World:Ethics for a New Millennium

We can not know if Carlson's patient has found any happiness or reconciliation. We do know that people care for him and that there is a shared dignity and affirmation of the human spirit in that.

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project

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