What Has Been Brought to Light?
This is a photo of a painting on the back of the Rutter Center building at UCSF-- a place where many folks are receiving their COVID vaccines. It does feel like we may be entering a slightly new phase of “light and life” in our world. However, as the COVID pandemic wanes, and businesses and people who have suffered in “unprecedented” (the word of 2020) ways begin the process of healing, one key thing that continues to cause serious suffering is the plague of racism in our world.
On March 24, Dr. Tammy Quest, Palliative Care Director at Emory University, offered a zoom lecture entitled Racism in Palliative Care Practice: We Are Not Immune. After giving some examples in recent history (from 1980’s to present) of systemic racism and horrors, she asked the question—why are we only talking about this now?
She defined racism:
Racism is the belief in the natural superiority of one race over another
Prejudice refers to the beliefs, thoughts, feelings and attitudes someone holds about a group
UCSF now has an anti-racism task force as well as a women’s council. The week of March 22, UCSF leadership sent out an email which included the following:
“While Anti-Asian racism has existed in this country for centuries, the past year has seen exceptional cruelty - a pain that in many ways has been overlooked en- masse until now. We have come together to write this...
Among all the intense news of the world and the anxiety of our upcoming elections, October brought with it the light and soft air of Autumn, two Full Moons, (including the Blue Moon which happened on the morning of Halloween) and the book launch of the writings of Merijane Block, in a new book entitled “Everything Takes Longer Than You Think It Should or Thought it Would, Except for Life.”
Merijane Block is the namesake of the MERI Center—Making Education Relevant and Integrated. On Thursday, Oct 29, the MERI Center hosted a Zoom book launch featuring readings of Merijane’s eloquent and often difficult writings, by many of her close friends. Christopher DeLorenzo and Elizabeth Levitt, along with others, compassionately read through all of Merijane’s notebooks after her death in 2017 and put together an exquisite edition of her writings. The book includes stories of her youth and freedom as a creative, artistic and curious woman of the 1960’s and 70’s, growing up on the East Coast through her early life in San Francisco, walking everywhere on her strong “Legs” ( title of a piece in her book), exploring love and life in what came to be “her city,” and continues through her introduction to her unexpected journey with metastatic breast cancer for 26 years.
Meri tells us clearly in her poems, “Admonitions for the Uninitiated II” that she did NOT want to be seen as a “warrior,” a “fighter,” a woman embattled in her own bodily survival. She did not want to be called a “survivor.” She always insisted that she be seen as her...
Blackie's Pasture
by Redwing Keyssar, RN, Poet Author
May 9, 2020
placid water
mt Tam rising
blustery wind
catching geese
on its tail
as it wags
across the powder blue background
of the pale grey clouds
While yarrow shine
their golden yellow
under the chins
of lavendar blossoms
while shocking pink-purple
iceplant lay low
bearing witness
The glare
of preciousness
of the moment
is blinding.
Where I walk is holy
I am walking
in a pandemic
making history
that someone else’s children
and their children
will hear about
and wonder...
what was it like
in the U.S.
B.C?
Before Covid
Where I sing is holy
In the shower
walking by water
waking from dreamland
sitting
or dancing
alone
with eyes half-closed
feeling the warmth
of the sun without wind
streaming through my
dirty city window
filling me with
light
filtered
by glass
Where I pray is holy
Alone
in water
on mountains
under Moonlight
and Sunlight
in Ceremony
in circles
of Healing
Where I work is holy
In the realm
of the invisible
using words
and color,...
THURSDAY, April 16, 2020 is “National Healthcare Decisions Day.” The MERI Center has been planning a number of activities for UCSF that now of course, must be postponed. However, the importance of completing Advance Directives for Healthcare has never been more critical. Here and now, in the “time of COVID-19” as we will all remember it well, the necessity of conversations about what we all would want or not want, in terms of medical interventions, is indeed at its peak. As is the importance of having our wishes in writing for the healthcare system.
Below you will find some basic information and history about Healthcare Decisions day from two of the prominent organizations who have fostered the publicity of this day since its inception.
IF you have not completed your own Advance Directive for Healthcare and would like assistance, please consider the online (or in-person, once that can happen again) “What Matters Most” workshops offered by the MERI Center.
From the Conversation Project:
https://theconversationproject.org/nhdd/
“National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD) exists to inspire, educate and empower the public and providers about the importance of advance care planning. NHDD is an initiative to encourage patients to express their wishes regarding healthcare and for providers and facilities to respect those wishes,...
Late Fragment
by Raymond Carver
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
“Let us change the face of dying in our culture from one of fear and anxiety to one of acceptance and compassion. Inevitable as death is for all beings, let us work to create experiences that are positive, potent and transformational.”
(from “Last Acts of Kindness; Lessons for the Living from the Bedsides of the Dying.”)
We ALL will be in positions to be “end of life doulas” at some time--assisting friends and loved ones in the dying process in whatever ways we can. Our society has known for many years that there would not be enough healthcare professionals or trained homecare attendants to care for the 75 million baby boomers who will be dying over the next 20-30 years. With the “medicalization” of death and dying in the last century (meaning the 20th century), more and more people have died in hospitals or long- term care facilities, despite the fact that most people continue to state that they would prefer to die at home. In numerous studies in the past 10 years, approximately 80% of people surveyed stated their preference to die at home, yet only about 20% actually did.
In 2019, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, “for the...