Medicine
by, Alice Walker
Grandma sleeps with
my sick grand-
pa so she
can get him
during the night
medicine
to stop
the pain
In
the morning
clumsily
I
wake
them
Her eyes
look at me
from under-
neath
his withered
arm
The
medicine
is all
in
her long
un-
braided
hair
Coming off of a pain-filled night, in which both my husband and I got little sleep, I read this poem and thought, yes, he wakes up with my medicine in his short hair. My pain keeps him awake almost as much as it does me.
Since reading Alice Walker’s poem, I’ve been thinking about how we share in the pain of those we love. As a mother, when my children are in pain, I literally feel it. It hurts more than my own; I want to take it from them. When a loved one is in pain we want to free him from it and when we can’t we feel the frustration of helplessness.
What must it be like to live with someone who is in chronic pain? I imagine there is a constant wanting for it to stop, a constant helplessness, a constant empathy and sometimes, I imagine, a fierce anger that the pain is present in the first place and that it seemingly has no end.
Perhaps pain isn’t contained just in the body producing it, but can be sensed by those who are connected emotionally. I believe we feel the pain of those we love.
Some people run from the pain of others. For example, often after a crisis, such as the loss of a loved one or a diagnosis of serious illness, friends, family members, even spouses, leave.
The adversity that befalls one can befall anyone. No soul is exempt from pain and adversity, no matter how unevenly they are dispersed. How much easier it is to turn away and pretend that you are immune.
It takes courage to stay connected, to be reminded in the face of another’s pain that it could easily be yours, to stay and “feel” the discomfort of another’s pain, to feel your own helplessness in not being able to relieve it.
What a blessing are the courageous people who love us, and are willing to stay close enough to get our medicine in their hair.
If we truly love someone, we feel their pain and live it along with them. Just as a mother wants to take away their child’s pain it is the same for anyone we love. That does indeed take courage.