Joanna Harran CWA 2014

About Joanna Harran

Joanna Harran ‘16 graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Bates College earning a bachelor’s degree. At Bates, Joanna focused on poetry writing, culminating in an honors thesis titled Ho’omana: Health and Wholeness. Last fall, Joanna entered YSN’s GEPN program and will graduate as an acute care nurse practitioner. Outside of the classroom and clinical practice, Joanna’s interests include competing on Yale’s Volleyball and Curling Club teams.

As healthcare professionals, we have a tendency to develop tunnel vision to our patients’ pathologies or injuries. While this is at times advantageous and even necessary, I believe in the importance of obtaining a more holistic view of the patient through appreciating their identity as an individual and when appropriate, involving loved ones in care.

This poem explores the experience of the mother of a patient in a hospital setting. It also emphasizes the patient’s past, giving her an identity beyond her diagnoses. Furthermore, it aims to demonstrate the impact the healthcare team has on the family and loved one’s wellbeing, while more broadly exploring death and the grieving process.

Six Days of Goodbye

The first day I watched the heart monitor
with faithful intensity. No blip went unnoticed.
My own heart rising and falling with each beat,
waiting for the monitor to show
that blinking green line we were not ready to cross.

It’s September and your new BMW
shines in the driveway.
The front bumper already has
a small dent you have tried to hide
by reverse parking.
I lie awake often on weekend nights, 
waiting to hear the distinct purr of the approaching engine
grow and turn to silence in the driveway
before allowing myself to drift to sleep.
Nina the night nurse has come to check in.
I think she is more concerned about me,
but I remain undecided who is a more hopeless case.
The focus in her eyes contradicts the dark circles beneath,
her scrubs already wrinkled at the start of her shift.

The next morning I leave the monitor watching to a different nurse,
whose dull brown roots give away
a honey blonde dye job. I settle in to holding your hand,
you don’t feel me here.

Your baby blanket with small horses and pink bows
is still crumpled on the top shelf of the hall closet.
I don’t have the heart to throw it away.
Sleeping behind your closed door,
your breathing has not changed in sixteen years.
Tonight, you are only my baby. 

The neurologist asks me to leave the room
for an examination, but I refuse.
When you were first born,
your crib was under the window of our bedroom
and from bed, I could watch you in the glow of a streetlamp.

On day three I leave your hospital room
for the first time and visit the cafeteria.
I eavesdrop on the residents and interns
discussing their fantasy football league. 

At my father-in-law’s funeral,
I watched you fidget with your phone
to send texts that were not about your dead grandfather.
And that night, holding you on the couch as you wept and wept,
Grandpa is gone. Your first view of death.

It’s been four days and you won’t wake up.
I decide to give up on you. It is easier
and kinder. I decide I am brave.
It’s your first time on skis and I watch with delight
as you shriek,
skidding and sliding down the slope
Until your knees splay and I watch you tumble down
in your own personal avalanche.
Your father leisurely glides to your side.
That was the last winter before he left us. 

You outgrew pair after pair of skis
as winters passed and you returned to those slopes.
Daring on skis in ways I may never be.
When the lodge called me that day,
I assumed it was another broken leg,
that we would return to that mountain
where your father once taught you to ski the next winter.

Day 5 and the blunt neurologist tells us
what I have already seen in the nurses’ eyes.
I think the worst is over as I sign your organs away
like charity checks.
I’m dreaming now, running through the snow.
In that state I know is not real
but I’m helpless to stop the images spiraling out
waiting and waiting
for the body to catch up with the mind
and wake up.

It’s been six days and the nurse finally untangles you
from the loops of machine wires.
Your corneas will go to some lady
to see her first grandchild.
And some girl will walk around now carrying your kidney.
It’s a beautiful metaphor they tell me
your organs spreading out like branches on the greater tree of life.
But all I see are the roots of our own cracked family tree,
roots dug deep. So deep they end here.