The Power of Poetry
My dad was born in 1922, the son of a Georgia farmer and a would-be concert pianist. He had five older brothers and one younger sister. To hear him tell the story, his parents had boys until they had a perfect one and then switched to having girls. The older brothers told it differently.
When Daddy was in junior high, he had the homework assignment many of us dread: to write a poem. Daddy could not fathom being able to write a poem, of all things, and no doubt spent hours worrying about it and complaining about the injustice of it all to his mom.
His mom knew he could do whatever he put his mind to, so she helped him get a poem written—some silly little ditty about Liza Jane. Silly, but it fit the bill. (Thanks, Mom!)
Fast forward to the early 1960s. Daddy was now an economics professor at the University of Chattanooga (now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga). His mom was quite ill and in a coma in an Atlanta hospital. Daddy was unable to make it to see her, so instead he sent her a personal greeting through a poem. He wrote a poem especially for her and sent it to the hospital.
His mother was blessed to have nurses caring for her who believed in the power of love of son and mother, and they took it upon themselves to read the poem to the unconscious woman every day. My grandmother did come out of the coma and recovered—did the poem have anything to do with it? Maybe. Or maybe it was just the caring attitude of those nurses.
In any case, Daddy wanted to find a way to thank the nurses, and so decided he would dedicate time and energy towards building the nursing education program at the University. For a while, he wrote and delivered weekly one minute nursing recruitment radio spots. It was a tangible way to give back to those special nurses who had taken such loving care of his mother.
The story doesn’t end here, however. Fast forward again to 2010. By this time, my Mom and Dad had moved to an assisted living/memory care center. Mom had some dementia problems and was recovering from a broken hip; Daddy had had a stroke that affected vision in one eye and had some mobility issues.
Mom got pneumonia and nearly died from it. She spent days in the Intensive Care Unit, intubated and sedated. We brought Daddy over to see her at least once a day, and he began his own campaign to pull her through.
Standing by Mom’s bedside, holding her hand, Daddy would either sing old hymns or… make up poetry especially for mom. Most of the poems were variations on:
I love you, I love you, I love you a lot
I love you when I’m with you
I love you when I’m not
I love you, I love you, I love you a lot
I love you, I love you,
No matter what you got!
Mom’s nurses would often gather outside the door and watch this tall, white-haired gentleman with a four-prong cane at the bedside of his beloved wife, singing and reciting poetry. Nobody interrupted—perhaps realizing this was as good a medicine as anything they could do.
Mom rallied and came off the ventilator. Daddy continued his vigil—and his poetry. One day he added a new verse to his poem for Mom:
I love you, I love you,
I love you real big.
I love you, I love you
Just like a little pig!
Mom looked over at us and commented, “I think he needs some new poetry!”
Mom and Daddy are both gone now. Mom died a year or so later at 88, and Daddy died a year and a half later at 90. We were blessed to have them both as long as we did—and even more blessed to have their legacy of love and poetry!
© Melissa Clark Vickers 2013
For more stories about my folks, see:
- “A Simple Love Like That”
- As the Train Pulled Out of the Station
- I Remember This Time Last Night
- Of Pens, Perseverance, and PhDs
- If I Had a Fitting Celebration