Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Mortal Lessons

Dr. Richard Selzer, a physician, gives an account of the way love accepts and bears with other people. He saw love in action between a husband and wife in a dimly lit hospital room.

I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face post-operative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of a facial nerve -- the one that controls the muscles of her mouth -- has been severed. She will be thus from now on.

The surgeon has followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh. I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.

Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. "What are they?" I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at each other and touch each other so generously, so greedily?

The young woman speaks, "Will my mouth always be like this?"I answer her, "Yes, it will. It's because the nerve was cut."

She nods and is silent, but the young husband smiles. He says, "I like it. It's kind of cute."

All at once I know who he is. I understand and lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth. I'm so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate hers, to show her that their kiss still works. I remember that the gods appeared in ancient Greece as mortals, and I hold my breath and let the wonder in.

From "Mortal Lessons", by Richard Selzer, M.D.

1 comment:

Linda said...

So touching, so uplifting.


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I'm a young woman of 50 years on this earth... I'm a single Mom... I'm an RN... I'm a writer.