People fear death even more than pain. It’s strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend. ~ Jim Morrison
Life is filled with options and decisions and we hope that we make the right choices at the right times. If wrong choices are made, we hope to learn from them and move on.
This is my story about cause, effect, regret and forgiving myself.
Mom, always said, “It’s you and me against the world.”
It was a dark and wintery night when the first call came in, probably around midnight.
The nurse called and stated stated …”she was having some problems and was calling the doctor to confirm placing her on an IV bag.”
I should have jumped up that very minute. Not once in two months had they called me to tell me her status. I was half awake and half asleep…but that was no excuse. I didn’t rush down there to hold her hand. I didn’t get into the truck and speed over to the hospital to tell her I loved her.
I just rolled over and went back to sleep. Two hours and seventeen minutes later the phone rang. My heart sank.
The nurse on the other end said, “…there was nothing they could do…she was gone.”
I dropped the phone…speechless. I was hysterical…barely able to speak.
To say the words…my mother passed over. My friend, confidant, sometimes worst enemy yet, the one who taught me about life, strength, courage and love in her own way has left her earthly body.
The early morning brought bitterly cold wind with snow and ice on the ground. My lover and I dressed hurriedly or should say my partner did because I couldn’t stop the flow of tears and my knees buckled beneath me and I kept hitting the floor. I was picked up and held for a moment and then kissed gently several times. She was my rock at that moment and I had no idea. After I was dressed we went outside and she walked next to me holding my hand. As we staggered across that blanket of winter to the truck, I could hear the crunching of snow under our feet which seemed to have echoed in my head. One could actually taste the cold air.
The ride to the hospital was filled with hysterical cries in the night. Trying to speak, but everything came out jumbled. My mind was racing a mile a minute. When we arrived at the facility, I could my lover’s mom waiting for us as we pulled up into the parking lot. I didn’t realize she even made that call. When it was time to get out of the truck…I couldn’t…it was as if my body shut down…I was frozen. The two of them had to hold me up as I walked because I kept collapsing barely making it to the entrance. We all walked in somewhat unison to the elevator with sounds of my outbursts echoing in the empty halls. We got in and they let go of me.
I collapsed to the floor and they looked on for a moment. The bell rang and they lifted me up as the doors opened.
Please, no I don’t want to go down that hall, if I don’t go she will still be here to yell and scream at the nurses…I heard myself cry out in my mind.
I have never taken such a long walk down a hospital corridor. It seemed endless…the closer I got the further away it seemed to her room where my mother lay.
I could feel death in the air lingering. It seemed so still, so surreal…I couldn’t hear anything as we passed the nurses at their station. Silence was deadly.
Looking back I now see how fortunate I was to have two loving individuals stand by me during the hardest and most trying time of my life. I could feel their love and their support with every step I took.
I entered the room and held my mother’s hand. I spoke to her about being close to her lover in heaven and not being in pain…no more suffering…just peace. My final good bye included how much I loved her.
I have learned so much from that night for instance carpè diem; not only to seize the day, but also the hours and minutes too and always remember that I can never tell someone I love them too many times. Will you let a day go by without saying I love you to a loved one?
Is there any correlation connecting trauma that an individual has experienced and their capacity to learn while functioning effectively in today’s society?
In today’s society it is difficult for traumatized individuals to find a place where they feel secure, sheltered and protected. Dictionary.com (2012) definition of trauma is “A body wound or shock produced by sudden physical injury, as from violence or accident. The condition produced by this; traumatism. An experience that produces psychological injury or pain. The psychological injury so caused.”
Traumatic events occur when there is bodily harm, emotional anguish, or impairment. It is an experience that is a threat to one’s safety or to the stability of one’s world. These types of disturbing events may involve: physical injury or illness, anxiety, fear, loss of trust, humiliation in childhood, violence, war, terrorism or a mass catastrophe. After a traumatic event, memories of the suffering can bring out feelings of vulnerability, fear, or a sense of reliving an incident over again called flashbacks.
Our world is filled with child cruelty, crime, interpersonal violent behaviors, sexual mistreatments, mental/physical abuse and war. A victim’s life is filled with the emotional aftermath and worries on a daily basis due to the potential of being harmed by another, whether it is a family member, a stranger or even reliving post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms of war. Not only does this affect the physical side of living but a person’s emotional and mental stability as well.
Psychological trauma is a stressful disorder. It is a breakdown of the nervous system that contributes to mental, emotional and physical ailments including apprehension and depression. Emotional traumatizing events can take a severe toll on individuals who are involved even if the event did not cause physical injury. Numerous stress responses signal trauma in adults including hypersensitiveness, hyper-reactive conduct, hypervigilant actions and shutting down called “tuning out” behavior. Neural systems appear to trigger changes as an individual portrays a hypervigilant state of arousal and constant anxiety mode. Traumatized victims will have a hard time retaining information in a classroom setting due to the different aspects of the brain controlling its performance.
Fragmented attention (memory deficits) occurs when an individual’s memory of a traumatic incident becomes inaccessible in the unconscious which enables the anguish of that moment in time to be locked away in their mind. It is at this time that seclusion begins to exist in their body and mind. The next phase for a person is to experience missing the executive psychological process of thinking and reasoning. The extreme side of this condition is when there are identifiable time frames of dissociation, separating and zoning out. What appears to be learned in this condition is separated as grouping of the mental processes from the rest of the mind, causing them to lose their normal relationship. When disconnected, anything that is described behavior or knowledge acquired through training or experience rather than being instinctual remains constricted from the main cognizant mind that is capable of thinking, choosing, or perceiving.
Several reactions may take place due to a feeling of being threatened. One type of effect on an individual is the fight-or-flight reaction due to the feeling of being in jeopardy by someone or something. Also, in the beginning phase’s one response could be the alarm reaction which destroys a person’s academic inquisitiveness and puts a constraint on their learning capabilities. It is at this stage that the mind and body begin to journey towards the arousal continuum where individual functioning begins to change. Perry (2003) discusses this outcome by stating, “During the traumatic event, all aspects of individual functioning change – feeling, thinking, and behaving” (p.3). During this phase a person has reduced competency in the learning process and using the cognitive side of the brain.
Trauma can drastically hinder one’s learning potential as this anxiety can lead to a lifetime of constant mental learning impairments as well as emotional disorders including feelings of despair. Significant findings have proven that individuals suffering from any of these disturbances could actually have changes within the composition of their brain. The frontal cortex (where higher thinking capabilities occur) and the limbic system (where cognition and survival develop) unite causing functional irregularities. There are numerous cognitive symptoms of psychological trauma that develops in individuals reflecting their ability to learn. This leads to feelings of being distracted, trouble in making decisions, recollection lapses, a lack of ability to concentrate/focus, reduced retention as well as short/long term memory deficits.
In summation, to answer the question: Is there any correlation connecting trauma that an individual has experienced and their capacity to learn while functioning effectively in today’s society? After researching this issue, it is my opinion that the relationship between trauma and learning is significant since physical or psychological damage is a main contributor to learning deficits. Trauma and the adult learning process must be examined through the learner’s internal state of mind. To accomplish positive learning capabilities the educator needs to create and provide a safe, secure and trusting atmosphere in order for an individual to properly retain classroom information and to succeed academically to build a better life for themselves. Sandra Kerka (2002) states, “To overcome these constraints and to help learners regain control, connection, and meaning, educators might adopt a comprehensive, multifaceted approach that includes the following: a holistic perspective, creation of a safe learning environment…” To give the essential sense of feeling protected to traumatized victims means building their confidence to learn through fostering encouragement while being sensitive to their state of mind.
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. ~ Mark Twain ~
Twain’s quote speaks of being prepared to die, just as the character Blake Melvin Staples must have felt. “The Corner’s Photographs” by African American authorBrent Staples is a short story that is skillfully written and illustrates the death of a man and his surviving brother’s struggle when he confronts the image of the body.
It is the first sentence that captures the reader’s attention pulling them into the author’s profound thoughts. He uses the first person singular as he claims the feelings and words as his own, “I need this detail to see my brother full” (405). It is through the main characters eyes that we see the world, family and death. His distinctive narrative voice is powerful and filled with sadness, but no remorse. The style includes formal/informal words and strong sentence patterns that emerge because the action verbs that ends in “ing” only appear twice in the piece. The author also varies in sentence lengths which grabs the reader’s attention.
Repetition is applied in key words such as, dead, mourning (ed), and coroner’s report. These words emphasize their meanings to reinforce the theme of life and death. The tone, one is solemn and subdued as the story begins to reveal Staples personal disclosure of the events. This evokes emotions of sadness that lingers in the air above the reader as they absorb the traumatic event. The dialogue is minimal, yet connects to the theme, “Please don’t shoot me no more. I don’t want to die” and “Brent Blake is dead,” he said. Some guy pulled up in a car and emptied out on him with a magnum. Blake is dead” (420). The language spoken by Staples’s brothers is broken English. It depicts a street person, maybe they are uneducated individuals?
As the plot unfolds the reader is taken into a cold and sterile environment as the author places the reader in the coroner’s office with the dead body. The writer flashbacks to when his brother is alive, followed by his demise and then the corner’s examination. In the end it is revealed how a man’s life is summed up by one pouch, “The pouch contained a summary of the trial, the medical examiner’s report, and a separate inner pouch wrapped in twine and shaped like photographs” (421), coroner photographs.
Staples exposes new information in the ninth paragraph with a subtle riff by intertwining the element of irony with the backstory of the essay. It begins by naming a city, state and time, Roanoke, Chicago, six weeks ago. The irony is seen when the protagonist forecasts his brother’s death, “The signs of death were everywhere; his name was hot in the street” and “I told him that he was in danger of being killed if he didn’t leave town” (420).
The characterization incorporated within the essay begins with the protagonist. He is a strong man who has a heavy heart and is family oriented, “I bathed and diapered him when he was a baby and studied his features as he grew” (418). The sensitive doctor who tries to save Blake, the dying man, “I tied off everything I could, he said, and then he wept at the savagery and the waste” (418). The coroner is also a character in this piece through his/her actions. “The coroner dissects the body, organ by organ” (419). This brought the essay to a more complex level as medical terminology is given. In paragraph eleven the reader learns a new fact as part of the backstory, there is another sibling, “Six weeks later my brother Bruce called me with the news…” (420). And last but not least, Blake Melvin Staples, the deceased. His lifestyle and actions as a drug dealer in life and now death affects Staples deeply, “I had already mourned Blake and buried him and was determined not to suffer his death a second time…I skipped the funeral and avoided Roanoke for the next three years” (420).
There are two crises within the essay. The first appears when the author knows his brother is a target, “I sought Blake out to tell him it was time to get out of the business and leave Roanoke” (420). The second is an inner crisis that is uncovered, these are the mixed emotions about the untimely death of Staples brother, “I told myself to feel nothing” (420). The essay has no element of suspense and no real resolution, but hopefully holds closure for the author.
The writer uses sensory imagery and detail throughout the piece for instance, tap handles that mimicking wings…an inverted pyramid, boxy forehead…heart shaped face…a mouth whose lips are pouting and bloody…shattered vessels…a bullet track…pelvic bones jut up…smallest of the brothers…second toe is a signature…shot six times, three in the back…” plus the coroner’s report is very vivid in detail. Figurative language such as metaphors is used, “…taps handles mimicking wings, easily suggests a swan in mourning…his widow’s peak…an inverted pyramid” (417). The swan in mourning can be seen as the foreshadowing of the events that will soon follow.
The narrative arc shows how the protagonist has changed from the beginning to end of the essay. In the introduction, Staples speaks of his brother as a toddler and shows the strength within the family unit, “His feelings are mine as well” (418). It is in the body of the essay information is shared regarding Staple’s brother, the drug dealer. He struggles to have him leave the city for his own good, to stay alive. The conclusion brings the events to reality and stops the author’s world as the coroner’s photographs are viewed, “I opened the pouch; there was Blake dead and on the slab, photographed from several angles. The floor gave way, and I fell down and down for miles” (421).What the character has learned is that it is better to walk away from a loved one who is self-destructive, someone who will never change his ways then to stand by and watch their downfall.
The introduction is captivating and I couldn’t stop reading. The body of the essay developed as the events revolved around a coroner’s actions and flashbacks. Each paragraph leads into the next smoothly connecting each thought. The conclusion reflected the first paragraph as it defined the medical examination of Staples’s brother in the coroner’s office.
I found this essay to be filled with love and a broken heart as it evoked strong emotions. It portrays the reality of life. It defines a man’s life as a pouch and the questions begin, what is life and death. Life is reaching your hand out to someone who is falling, “down and down for miles” and it is up to the individual to extend their hand or accept their fate. Blake Melvin Staples met his fate in death. I wonder, did Blake die in vain?
Works cited
Staples, Brent. “The Coroner’s Photographs.” Tell it slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 417- 21.
