Children's stories that help us understand…
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Learning from the Wisdom of Children: Reflections on Life and Death Through “Oscar and the Lady in Pink”
How much can we learn from children who are aware of being in the final phase of their lives, since they give value to existence even if it is limited in time?
In recent years we have deemed it necessary to make the book “Oscar and the Lady in Pink” known to students of the degree courses in health professions, including those of master's degrees. Why?
Why read and reread Oscar and the Lady in Pink?
Because, through the dialogues between Oscar and Nonna Rosa we have the opportunity to reflect on such a difficult topic as the illness, pain and death of a child.
In this book, in fact, topics are addressed that are the subject of reflection in this 9th issue of Laborcare Journal: incurable disease and the Care of the sick starting from that "time that, having become short" must be nourished with meaning, which only through "being together" becomes the "time of desires".
The first lines underline how, in the last stages of Life, nothing is taken for granted, everything is re-evaluated starting from a “need for spirituality” that was discussed in Laborcare Journal n.8: “They call me egghead, I look seven years old, I live in hospital because of cancer and I have never spoken to you because I don’t even believe you exist. But if I write you something like that, it would have a bad effect and you would be less interested in me. And I need you to be interested.”
In essence, what is the book “Oscar and the Lady in Pink”? It is explaining the naturalness of life in hospitalization, in the disease that brings you to the end of life, in an extremely medicalized way that is increasingly aimed at healing and that loses sight of the cure and that, only through dialogue with Nonna Rosa, a volunteer, Oscar manages to carry forward.
Through Oscar's words, Eric Emmanuel Schmitt underlines the naturalness with which children carry the signs of the disease on themselves: he defines himself as "egghead" (because he was made bald by chemotherapy), he knows Peggy "Blue" so called because she has a heart condition or his chess partner "Einstein" whose nickname comes from the shape of his skull, and so on. Not a stigmatization but rather a carrying on themselves the signs of the disease and the consequent therapies with extreme naturalness... even joking about it. This way of experiencing the body, in the narrative of adults, is often omitted to give more space to the "crisis of the body", "to shame"... intimidated by the fact that the change in physical appearance could become an object of curiosity or stigmatization.
In children, naturalness is almost part of the game, that is, “I am sick, I am like this with an egghead, I don't seem like a child.” Only a child could explain this way of experiencing one's body to adults.
Another “difficult” element that emerges from reading the book concerns the difficulty, on the part of both healthcare personnel and family members, in accepting the intensity of affection and love that even small children can have for other people they have met during their journey.
Falling in love, which we relegate to more or less adolescent/adult ages, is, instead, a feeling that we want to experience even "if we are children" and even more so if we are aware that our life is increasingly shorter.
This theme makes us reflect on the ability to suffer from worries related to the care of another loved one as well as for a friend.
Sometimes unable to understand these states of mind, "adults" feel the need to create "defenses" made of rules, procedures, which risk reducing the possibility of fostering that emotional intimacy and complicity that is established between those who live the same experiences of illness, an emotional intensity that must be preserved.
And how much the desire for privacy and intimacy even among adolescents is denied in hospitals to those patients who end their short lives in those rooms.
A book, “Braccialetti rossi”, makes feelings the central element of the story of a group of children and adolescents hospitalized in a hospital who, despite the prohibitions, become a complicit and supportive group so much so that they “contaminate”, in a positive sense, not only the strict doctors but also the nurses and the parents themselves.
Moms and dads, spectators but also actors in a tragedy that is overwhelming them, often feel unable not only to accept that their child is dying but, in some cases, unable to relate to their child.
Oscar, in fact, addresses his parents, reminding them that he is "the same son you loved when he was well and now that I am sick and will have little time ahead of me, you must take care of me and have a relationship with me because I am like a slightly battered teddy bear ... the need to feel them close to you cannot be "solved" with yet another "new toy".
And Oscar also wants to help his doctor - and all the caregivers - who approach their dying patients with an increasingly sad expression, almost feeling guilty for not having been able to heal them, telling them: "you have to relax. It's not your fault if you have to announce bad news to people, diseases with Latin names and impossible healings. You are not God, you are not the one who commands nature. You are just a repairman ... you have to reduce the pressure and not give yourself too much importance, otherwise you will not be able to continue with this job for long".
Oscar himself will help not only doctors and nurses but above all his parents and Nonna Rosa to accept the idea that he will die to the point of protecting them at the moment of his death: "Dear God (...) The boy is dead. He passed away this morning, during the half hour that his parents and I spent together getting a coffee. He did it without us. I think he waited for that moment to spare us. As if he wanted to spare us the violence of seeing him disappear. It was him, in reality, who was watching over us..."
Gianluca Favero
Mariella Bears
Source of the article
- Editorial by Laborcare Journal n.9
Learning from the Wisdom of Children: Reflections on Life and Death Through “Oscar and the Lady in Pink”
How much can we learn from children who are aware of being in the final phase of their lives, since they give value to existence even if it is limited in time?
In recent years we have deemed it necessary to make the book “Oscar and the Lady in Pink” known to students of the degree courses in health professions, including those of master's degrees. Why?
Why read and reread Oscar and the Lady in Pink?
Because, through the dialogues between Oscar and Nonna Rosa we have the opportunity to reflect on such a difficult topic as the illness, pain and death of a child.
In this book, in fact, topics are addressed that are the subject of reflection in this 9th issue of Laborcare Journal: incurable disease and the Care of the sick starting from that "time that, having become short" must be nourished with meaning, which only through "being together" becomes the "time of desires".
The first lines underline how, in the last stages of Life, nothing is taken for granted, everything is re-evaluated starting from a “need for spirituality” that was discussed in Laborcare Journal n.8: “They call me egghead, I look seven years old, I live in hospital because of cancer and I have never spoken to you because I don’t even believe you exist. But if I write you something like that, it would have a bad effect and you would be less interested in me. And I need you to be interested.”
In essence, what is the book “Oscar and the Lady in Pink”? It is explaining the naturalness of life in hospitalization, in the disease that brings you to the end of life, in an extremely medicalized way that is increasingly aimed at healing and that loses sight of the cure and that, only through dialogue with Nonna Rosa, a volunteer, Oscar manages to carry forward.
Through Oscar's words, Eric Emmanuel Schmitt underlines the naturalness with which children carry the signs of the disease on themselves: he defines himself as "egghead" (because he was made bald by chemotherapy), he knows Peggy "Blue" so called because she has a heart condition or his chess partner "Einstein" whose nickname comes from the shape of his skull, and so on. Not a stigmatization but rather a carrying on themselves the signs of the disease and the consequent therapies with extreme naturalness... even joking about it. This way of experiencing the body, in the narrative of adults, is often omitted to give more space to the "crisis of the body", "to shame"... intimidated by the fact that the change in physical appearance could become an object of curiosity or stigmatization.
In children, naturalness is almost part of the game, that is, “I am sick, I am like this with an egghead, I don't seem like a child.” Only a child could explain this way of experiencing one's body to adults.
Another “difficult” element that emerges from reading the book concerns the difficulty, on the part of both healthcare personnel and family members, in accepting the intensity of affection and love that even small children can have for other people they have met during their journey.
Falling in love, which we relegate to more or less adolescent/adult ages, is, instead, a feeling that we want to experience even "if we are children" and even more so if we are aware that our life is increasingly shorter.
This theme makes us reflect on the ability to suffer from worries related to the care of another loved one as well as for a friend.
Sometimes unable to understand these states of mind, "adults" feel the need to create "defenses" made of rules, procedures, which risk reducing the possibility of fostering that emotional intimacy and complicity that is established between those who live the same experiences of illness, an emotional intensity that must be preserved.
And how much the desire for privacy and intimacy even among adolescents is denied in hospitals to those patients who end their short lives in those rooms.
A book, “Braccialetti rossi”, makes feelings the central element of the story of a group of children and adolescents hospitalized in a hospital who, despite the prohibitions, become a complicit and supportive group so much so that they “contaminate”, in a positive sense, not only the strict doctors but also the nurses and the parents themselves.
Moms and dads, spectators but also actors in a tragedy that is overwhelming them, often feel unable not only to accept that their child is dying but, in some cases, unable to relate to their child.
Oscar, in fact, addresses his parents, reminding them that he is "the same son you loved when he was well and now that I am sick and will have little time ahead of me, you must take care of me and have a relationship with me because I am like a slightly battered teddy bear ... the need to feel them close to you cannot be "solved" with yet another "new toy".
And Oscar also wants to help his doctor - and all the caregivers - who approach their dying patients with an increasingly sad expression, almost feeling guilty for not having been able to heal them, telling them: "you have to relax. It's not your fault if you have to announce bad news to people, diseases with Latin names and impossible healings. You are not God, you are not the one who commands nature. You are just a repairman ... you have to reduce the pressure and not give yourself too much importance, otherwise you will not be able to continue with this job for long".
Oscar himself will help not only doctors and nurses but above all his parents and Nonna Rosa to accept the idea that he will die to the point of protecting them at the moment of his death: "Dear God (...) The boy is dead. He passed away this morning, during the half hour that his parents and I spent together getting a coffee. He did it without us. I think he waited for that moment to spare us. As if he wanted to spare us the violence of seeing him disappear. It was him, in reality, who was watching over us..."
Gianluca Favero
Mariella Bears
Source of the article
- Editorial by Laborcare Journal n.9
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