As I reminisce, it’s as though a solitary conversation ignited my life’s journey, with its twists and turns leading me to this precise moment. This journey is enriched with poetry for healing and stories of resilience, growth, and recovery.
In the late eighties I worked as a nurse at Bellevue Hospital Center. One day, when I was the triage nurse, a rather handsome-looking fellow came in. I still remember that he was in great physical shape and did not appear to be someone who needed attention in the emergency room. Being a nurse, facing death was not a new experience. However, the tragedy of it never gets old. As this handsome fellow conversed with me, I learned that he had just been released from prison. While he was in prison, he was diagnosed with the AIDS virus.
I think I saw the fear of death in his desperate eyes. Perhaps it was that fear that brought him straight to the emergency room upon his release from prison. I put down my pen. I tried my utmost best to gather myself and to convey some encouraging words to diffuse the heaviness surrounding us. I felt it necessary to lift him up out of his despair and to give him a message of hope. With that, I told him that he could make something of his life as long as he was alive and not to let this malady define his entire life. His response immediately halted the conversation, and he withdrew from it; his final remark shook me. He said that it was easy for me to sit on my chair and say all those things.
The journey that led me to that chair was fraught with many pains and silent struggles, yet I genuinely believed everything I expressed to him. I hadn’t fully processed everything that had happened in my life, which might explain why I stayed optimistic. However, now that I have thoroughly reflected on my life’s journey and mourned certain parts of it, I find myself back to the same conclusion: I would repeat the same words to him today that I did thirty years ago.
My poetry book, filled with inspirational poetry, captures my life experiences, contemplations, sorrows, and realizations. Within the pages of “The Cry of Our Children,” the stories of resilience unfold, leading to the ultimate conclusion that love is the answer, urging us to demonstrate greater concern and compassion towards one another.
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