Wit

Together with the CPE students from my and two other upstate hospitals, I watched the movie Wit today. Wit is based on a play, which I've never seen (the play, I mean), but I've now seen the movie twice. This film, starring Emma Thompson, is about a Professor of English lit. who is most notable for her scholarship on the metaphysical poet John Donne. Professor Bearing narrates her own experience with ovarian cancer, from diagnosis to death. The interesting thing (and thus the relevance for reflection here) is that the story parallels a lengthy evaluation of Donne's "Divine Sonnet X", the famous death be not proud sonnet. In a stunning flashback, Professor Bearing sees herself as a student learning how to best understand Donne's meaning in proper translation. Her mentor chastises her for the use of an inauthentic translation that punctuates Donne's final line by saying "And Death, Capital D, shall be no more, semi-colon. Death, Capital D comma, thou shalt die, exclamation mark!" The mentor and, subsequently, Bearing understand that Donne's poem is most authentic when it reads, ""And death shall be no more" comma "death thou shalt die." Nothing but a breath, a comma separates life from life everlasting....Very simple, really. With the original punctuation restored Death is no longer something to act out on a stage with exclamation marks. It is a comma. A pause."

The comma, the thin space, the doorframe.

A promise to myself and to any who may stumble upon these reflections: Not meaning to be morbid. This is not a running commentary on experiences with death....just a commentary on today's experience.