July 25, 2011 Issue
Letters from our readers.
One Child's Life
I have never read anything as harrowing as Aleksandar Hemon's account of his baby's death ("The Aquarium," June 13th & 20th). It is often said that losing a child is the most painful thing a person can endure, and the despair Hemon expresses is usually unspeakable. With greatest respect for the writer, I must disagree with his conclusion that "Isabel's suffering and death did nothing for her, or us, or the world." What it did for me was to affirm the power of one small human life.
Ken Klonsky
Vancouver, B.C.
I agree that a parent's experience of his or her own child's death has "no lessons worth learning." The lesson to be learned is actually for others who look in on the death. I hope these outsiders can grasp how exquisitely precise Hemon was in his description of the aftermath of Isabel's death as "now an organ in our bodies, whose sole function is a continuous secretion of sorrow." No amount of time diminishes that organ's existence or limits its function, though outsiders might like to believe otherwise. The life and loss of a child is something a parent will eventually mention less and less, but he or she never "gets over" it.
Susan S. E. Kadel
Elkton, Md.
Hemon characterizes the possibility that his daughter's suffering is ennobling as a "despicable religious" fallacy, yet it may be instrumental in sparking conversation about death in today's world. The doctors asked Isabel's family if they should do "everything they could to save her." But we cannot save anyone forever. Americans cling to a fantasy of fighting to the bitter end as a noble ideal. It's not. If the conversation had been about how the Hemon family would like to share Isabel's last moments, they might have had memories of her peaceful death. Instead, they held a body that had been battered by compressions. Until we adopt language that accepts the reality of death, our medical system will continue to practice an expensive and violent ritual that leaves everyone involved battered.
Marilyn Mitchell
Encinitas, Calif.
Hemon's piece was excruciating to read, but, until now, I've assumed that nobody understood what my husband and I have been through. We spent months on what we called "the island" after our three-year-old son's brain-tumor diagnosis. We were separated from the real world in so many ways that it hurt just to think about it. I could relate to Hemon's strategy of blocking out the idea of a good outcome to prevent jinxing himself, and his opinion that his daughter is not in a better place, no matter what the well-wishers tell him. While reading this piece was difficult for us, I think both my husband and I were comforted by the fact that someone else understands.
Dina Dodd
Cherry Hill, N.J.
During the final medical crisis of Isabel's life, Hemon writes, the doctors "made it clear that we would have to be the ones to tell them when to stop trying." While I assume all present clinicians knew the likely outcome, there is a common belief among doctors that you bolster patient (or surrogate) autonomy through the "reasonable parent" standard. But this can go too far. As physicians, we need to remember that asking for reason as a child slips away is not only an impossible request but also one lacking in empathy. We owe more to parents of children in medical crisis than a complicated menu of choices in the midst of a tragic situation.
Leah Rosenberg, M.D.
This article appears in the print edition of the July 25, 2011, issue.
"One of the most common platitudes we heard was that 'words failed.' But words were not failing Teri and me at all."
By Aleksandar Hemon