Life at the End of Life

Marcia Brennan

Description

Artist and scholar Marcia Brennan serves as Artist in Residence at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and the experience of seeing, close-up, the transitional states and transformational visions involved in the approaching end of life raised countless questions about the intersection of life, death and art.

 

Those questions are at the heart of this unique book. Bridging disparate fields, including art history, medical humanities, and religious studies, Life at the End of Life explores the ways in which art can provide a means for rendering otherwise abstract, deeply personal and spiritual experiences vividly concrete and communicable, even as they remain open-ended and transcendent. In the face of death, suffering and uncertainty, Brennan shows how artistic expression can offer valuable aesthetic and metaphysical avenues for understanding and for making meaning.

 

An Opening Word: Just Read the Stories 

Acknowledgments 

Illustrations 

Part I: Painting the Stories: Applied Aesthetics and the Living Epiphany 

Chapter One Between Water and Sky: The Artist In Residence in the Clinical Context 

Chapter Two: Seeing Only Beauty When There’s Nothing Left to See: Creative Expressions and Epiphanic Consciousness 

Chapter Three: The Circle Gets Bigger and the Light Gets Brighter: Collaborative Intersections Between Medicine and the Humanities

II: Interwovenness with the World 

Chapter Four: If You Want Love: Continuity and Creation in Domestic Genre Scenes 

Chapter Five: The Canopy of Birds: Interwovenness with the Natural World 

Chapter Six: Like Pearls: Muslim Spirituality and Worlds Between Worlds 

Part III: Interwovenness with One Another 

Chapter Seven: The Wisdom in an Eagle’s Eye: Seeing Beyond the Dualism of the Conventional Medical Model 

Chapter Eight: We Were Dancing Alone: Weddings and Marriages at the End of Life 

Chapter Nine: The Gossamer Thread: Parents and Children

Part IV: Transformative Visions: The Death That Saved Our Lives 

Chapter Ten: With Our Candelabra Burning: Materialism, Trash, and Transvaluation

Chapter Eleven: The Stars Came Down to Meet Me: Viable Subjects and Visionary Consciousness

Chapter Twelve: Here Comes the Next Breath: End of Life Visions and Near-Death Experiences

Sujets

• Themes
• Subjects
• Expressive therapy
• General officer
• Anthropology
• Art
• General
• Cultural Studies

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 22 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783206995
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2017 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2017 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2017 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Production manager: Matthew Floyd
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-697-1
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-698-8
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-699-5
Printed and bound by Short Run Press Ltd, UK
This is a peer-reviewed publication.
For my husband, Scott Brennan
and
For everyone whose stories appear in these pages, In gratitude for the privilege of being present at the end of life.
Contents
An Opening Word: Just Read the Stories
Acknowledgements
Illustrations
Part I: Painting the Stories: Applied Aesthetics and the Living Epiphany
Chapter One Between Water and Sky: The Artist In Residence in the Clinical Context
Chapter Two: Seeing Only Beauty When There’s Nothing Left to See: Creative Expressions and Epiphanic Consciousness
Chapter Three: The Circle Gets Bigger and the Light Gets Brighter: Collaborative Intersections Between Medicine and the Humanities
Part II: Interwovenness with the World
Chapter Four: If You Want Love: Continuity and Creation in Domestic Genre Scenes
Chapter Five: The Canopy of Birds: Interwovenness with the Natural World
Chapter Six: Like Pearls: Muslim Spirituality and Worlds Between Worlds
Part III: Interwovenness with One Another
Chapter Seven: The Wisdom in an Eagle’s Eye: Seeing Beyond the Dualism of the Conventional Medical Model
Chapter Eight: We Were Dancing Alone: Weddings and Marriages at the End of Life
Chapter Nine: The Gossamer Thread: Parents and Children
Part IV: Transformative Visions: The Death That Saved Our Lives
Chapter Ten: With Our Candelabra Burning: Materialism, Trash, and Transvaluation
Chapter Eleven: The Stars Came Down to Meet Me: Viable Subjects and Visionary Consciousness
Chapter Twelve: Here Comes the Next Breath: End of Life Visions and Near-Death Experiences
Note Regarding Issues of Confidentiality
Bibliography
Notes
Index
An Opening Word: Just Read the Stories
One day I met an elderly woman who suffered from multiple myeloma. As we visited together, I learned that she had lived with this disease for more than a decade. When I asked her where she found her strength, she told me, “It all comes from God and the water”. The woman expressed a profound reverence for the depths that she perceived in the water and the sky. As she shared her story, the natural landscape became imbued with spiritual associations, as her imagery delimited a potentially limitless world. In her narrative, the complementary surfaces of the water and the sky appeared at once as an edge, and as an edge beyond an edge:
Deep Waters, Deep Skies
We used to live by the coast.
And, for many years, we had a beach house.
I’m a water person.
I swam and walked for miles,
And I did a lot with my family.
The water just takes you away.
It is never-ending.
You can just look up at the sky
And know that there’s something bigger than you.
If anyone doubts that there is a heaven
They should go outside and look up at the clouds.
And then, they should look out on the beach.
Those are deep skies,
And deep waters.
This book is for everyone.
The themes of the stories – life, death, existence, love, and transience – are deeply human and intrinsically meaningful. Just as these subjects take multiple forms, this book can be seen as many books in one. While the text contains technical materials and theoretical discussions that will be of interest to specialist audiences, including healthcare professionals and academic readers in the humanities, the artworks contained in this volume express striking visions of beauty, insight, wisdom, strength, grace, and love – themes that will be of interest to all. Thus this book is written for patients, family members and caregivers, and for our society at large. As the Palliative Medicine physician Harvey Max Chochinov has observed, “When death draws near, no one practices dying, so we don’t necessarily know what to anticipate”. 1 In turn, it is my hope that this book contributes a meaningful perspective on how people at the end of life express and envision their experiences. In this way, the book can help to serve as a life review for the living.
Throughout the text, I adopt a hybrid writing style that intersperses first-person accounts of my clinical experiences as an Artist In Residence in Palliative Medicine with accompanying theoretical discussions and interpretive analyses. Just as the poetic narratives appear in italics, the design of the book reflects the multiple voices and presences that are housed together in this single volume. Since no one section is more than a few pages in length, if a particular portion is not of interest, readers can simply skip ahead to the next section, which will contain another artwork. The text features more than eighty original poetic narratives and twenty-four original accompanying illustrations. The narratives are presented in a very immediate and personal way so that people facing similar issues will be able to recognize their own experiences in the stories that I tell. Perhaps a certain image will resonate unexpectedly, or an expressive turn of phrase will become particularly meaningful. Thus this book is written for everyone, including people who read with their hearts as well as with their eyes, and who just want to read the stories.
Acknowledgements
When I began working on the Acute Palliative Care Unit at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in early 2009, I had no idea that my work as an Artist In Residence would result in a book – let alone in three books. Indeed, this creative clinical work began because I had recently completed the manuscript for an art historical study, and some time had unexpectedly opened for me to work at the hospital, which I had long wanted to do. Everything unfolded through a friendship with Dr. Jennifer Wheler and my deep admiration for COLLAGE: The Art for Cancer Network, the nonprofit organization that she conceived and founded. COLLAGE is dedicated to providing innovative art programs for people living with cancer. This book would not have been possible were it not for Jennifer Wheler’s extraordinary vision and initiative. My gratitude also goes to Marcel Bartolazzi Lake, COLLAGE’s Executive Director, and to all of the very talented visual artists who work with COLLAGE.
It has been an extraordinary privilege to work on one of the finest palliative care teams in the world. With deepest gratitude, I would like to thank Dr. Eduardo Bruera, the F. T. McGraw Chair in the Treatment of Cancer and Chair of the Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. He has assembled a remarkable team of healthcare professionals, all of whom have my admiration. Before all else, I would like to thank the nursing staff who administer the actual bedside care for the patients, including Veronica Alexander, Danielle Bean, Jeanie Blaire, Chanelle Clerc, Maria Theresa DeLeon, Perrie Dunigan, Sheryl Erandley, Jill Folzman, Annie Gaskin, Marysela Guerrero, Stacy Hall, Lauren Harris, Vivian Johnson, Manju Joy, Leela Kuriakose, Alyssa LaLanne, Consuelo Maquio, Jessica Miles, Monique Mohomed, Thuc Nguyen, Hilda Rofheart, Jeane Rummel, Leslie Salinas, Tam Ta, Kimmie Tallie, Vienna Vivares, Artis Walpool, Annie Wilson, Autumn Wooten, Kristin Wright, and Jian Zhu. I would also like to thank my colleagues on the interdisciplinary palliative care team, especially Martha Aschenbrenner, Karen Baumgartner, Alejandro Chaoul, Luke Coulson, Deanna Cuello, Andrea Ferguson, Carolyn Holmes, Macklyn Ivy, Jacqueline Hubert, Natalie Schuren, Katja Sullivan, Catherine Tilley, and Carmella Wygant. My admiration goes to the extremely skillful and gentle physicians who provide medical care on the unit, including Joseph Arthur, Ahsan Azhar, Shalini Dalal, Maxine De La Cruz, Marvin Delgado-Guay, Rony Dev, Daniel Epner, Ali Haider, David Hui, Kevin Madden, Akhila Reddy, Suresh Reddy, Kim Tanco, Marieberta Vidal, Paul Walker, Angelique Wong, Sriram Yennu, and Donna Zhukovsky.
A substantial portion of the writing of this book was undertaken while I held a Faculty Fellowship at Rice University’s Humanities Research Center. I am especially grateful to Nicolas Shumway, Dean of the School of Humanities, and Farès el-Dahdah, Director of the Humanities Research Center, for their continuing support. My colleagues Jeffrey Abt, Tom Cole, and Michael Leja have been sources of unfailing generosity and insight, and they have my deepest thanks. Just as the subjects of this book conjoin medicine and the arts, I am extremely grateful to my academic and creative colleagues for their generous readings and their many thoughtful comments on the text. I would like to thank Olivia Banner, Nate Carlin, David Cook, Leo Costello, April DeConick, James Duffy, James Faubion, Jennifer Fisher, Deborah Harter, David Hewitt, Anne Klein, Sunil Kothari, Jeffrey Kripal, Fabiola Lopez Duran, Kirsten Ostherr, Bill Parsons, Anthony Pinn, Elitza Ranova, Craig Richards, and Efterpi Soropos. I am particularly grateful to Michael Olivas, the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair of Law at the University of Houston Law Center, for providing collegial advice and counsel. At Rice, expert technical and administrative assistance has kindly been given by Carolyn Adams, Lucinda Cannady, Katrina Hubbard, Sylvia Louie, M