Narrative Visual perspective English Content
The Listener Lyric Unit is a unit focused on taking a more personal approach to essays. In this Unit, we were challenged to try to portray a unique experience someone has had and illustrate the emotions, thoughts, and perspectives of said individual. Our project was to create a lyrical essay and an accompanying image. This is my Lyrical essay.
You sit at graduation
People laugh
You cry shadow tears
Hidden tears
Your tears
Inside your glass frame
is a roaring typhoon;
On the outside, a steel plastered face of strength
As your feet
move you to take your place,
you remember
Your mother
who you loved dearest,
Her affection,
Her support,
Her Eyes,
Her Hair,
Her Breath,
Her Smell
Your heart begins to bleed hard crimson.
It all happened so fast and yet so unbearably slow:
A diagnosis.
You did not understand.
You wouldn’t understand.
How could you?
You were so young, too young.
What does ALS mean to a child?
It meant your mommy needed help from time to time,
It means your mommy struggled to move a muscle,
It meant your mommy couldn’t speak,
It meant your mommy could barely breathe,
It meant your mother was in constant pain.
It meant your mommy wanted to die.
Mommy was suffering.
Those three small and terrible letters mean everything to a child.
As you march and grow strong she withers and grows weak
You remember the pain the long nights of massaging her back to try to take away the pain
You remember the quiet whispers of her wanting to die but refusing for you.
You remember the fear in her eyes.
She did not want to get a tracheostomy
It terrified her.
An open hole in her throat.
A permanent gaping wound.
She did it, she tried to cheat death and but some more time.
She did it for you.
You stop remembering
Twisting pain wrenching in your gut as you desperately fight to keep composure and stand with your peers. The long-awaited ceremonies begin. Chairs all full. Parents look on with glee. Their children finishing a chapter of their life. But they do not finish alone
You see an empty chair.
You are alone.
You want to cry, scream, fight you want to do anything to bring her back.
But you can’t.
So you remember.
You close your eyes.
You remember yesterday.
People think it’s easy to die
They think it fast like pressing a button or taking out the trash
They are wrong.
They are so very wrong.
You sit holding her hand for hours as she tries to die.
As she struggles to die.
Time is frozen. The clock stands still. The world becomes grey.
You don’t know how to feel.
You don’t know what to do.
You don’t know what comes next.
So you cry,
You cry a million shadow tears
But not any real tears.
You must be strong.
Impossibly strong for her.
Time moves slow, creeping into the night. Night crawling slowly today.
Her pulse grows weak.
All she wanted was to be able to see you graduate.
She tries to say she’s sorry.
She is sorry she will not see you graduate
She is sorry that she will not be with you
She is sorry that this happened to you
The Typhon inside you erupts into a volcano.
Shadow Tears transform into Silver Tears
The tears rain down from you face
You beg her to not be sorry
You struggle to speak
You don’t have the words to tell her what you want to say.
So you tell her everything.
You said so much
All you can remember saying is how much you love her.
She manages to make a smile.
She tries to say how much she loves you, But she doesn’t.
You are shattered into a million pieces
But you are not broken
You remember her teachings
Pattern and structure
You let yourself cry and scream
The world moves on with or without you
You stop and start picking up the pieces
Living in the past condemns your future
You march to your room
It’s hard to put on the clothes
You can barely breath
Everything feels so heavy
You crumble beneath the leviathan
The clock is moving fast, too fast
You want to stay home but you must graduate.
Finish the job, follow the path, use the structure
For Mommy.
Eyes open
The stage is yours and you are proud,
You are not alone.
She is with you.
Inside of you.
She loves you and you made it.
Graduation ends.
People swarm to ask if your ok.
You say yes,
That is not a lie.
You are ok because there’s nothing else to be.
You are almost glad.
You can never tell anyone but you are glad she is at peace.
She was in so much pain. The pain you would never wish on anyone.
Now she is at peace all of the pain is gone.
You do not stop your life.
She would not want you too
You don’t talk about her death
Not because you are afraid.
You move forward
And you carry her with you.
Process
The process of creating this lyrical essay started by finding someone who has a different experience from yourself. Then we had to conduct an interview around the subject and try to get our interviewee to open up. The interview would be the structure for the essay and was by far the most important part of the project. The interview was touching and emotional the full transcript of which can be read below.
Interview Transcript
Interview Conducted October 8th, 2019
Can you talk about what family means to you?
Supporting each other
What has your relationship with your family?
Amazing
How so?
Very Supportive
What are they supportive about?
Everything they treat me as an adult and they give me the freedom
What interests and views do they support?
Art, anything I feel like I should have a say in
What has been there role in your life?
Guiding and support mostly, sorry I’m not good at this
No, you are doing fine
Tell me about your family?
My dad and mom are both polish and they moved here to get jobs and I was born an American
What about them?
My dad is very introverted and techy my mom was very friendly and open to people and embraced people’s views and respected that
Can you talk more about your mom?
To be honest, I don’t remember specific things because that was three years ago when she died
How did she die?
Als
Can you explain Als to me?
You lose all muscles function pretty much
What grade are you in?
I don’t remember but I remember at first not taking it very seriously
What do you mean?
When my mom first noticed she was getting weaker she discovered it through gardening and noticed her arm started twitching. I thought huh that weird.
Could you tell me the timeline of the events of your mother?
How my mother died?
No I mean you saw the first symptom what came next?
Ok so what happened after that is that we went to see a lot of doctors, ALS is a negative disease, its a negative diagnosis when everything else isn’t there you have you can’t cure it. My mother motor function began to decline and our house had to adjust to that
How did your house adjust to that?
At first, it was little things like trying physical therapy and green goop and slime we used to help her, as her legs grew weaker we got a bed for her downstairs. As her speech grew worse we tried different options and she ended up with a program called Dasher. It like you have a tracker on your head and it says the words you point to outlawed. She was in a wheelchair for a while until, well she was never bedridden entirely but she began to stay more in more in bed. Everything downstairs was to make everything easier, the shower has low to make it easier, the toilet was automatic etc. But as staff continued she could not speak she couldn’t move she needed a nurse constantly and she was in a lot of pain. She was keeping it together for us but she was in so much pain. She had to have a lot of drugs but they never really helped.
How did she die?
Well, in the end, she had to have a machine that breathes for her. Originally she wanted to die before she had a tachometer because she did not want to go through that and that’s a lot for anyone to ask. But she decided to keep ongoing. Sorry (cries) and it isn’t like in the movies you don’t just take it out. The person doesn’t just…die. I think it was around late morning or early afternoon and it took all the way into late in the night.
Where you next to her?
Yeah,
Why did she choose not to die?
Because she wanted to see me graduate middle school
How would you describe that time period if you can, Knowing your mother wanted to die?
I was relieved because she was in so much pain. And nobody should go through that pain no matter- it would be selfish for me to want anything else, it was hard to watch her get worse and worse since my family talked about it openly I did not have a stage of denial when she died. It was a lot of emotional stress- it was constant but it was buzzing in the distance it was actually interesting but I had really bad nightmares and I did not correlate them with anything but after she died I stopped having nightmares
What did you do after she died?
I graduated the next day was my graduation.
She died the day before?
Yes.
Did you go to school the next day?
Yes. Its routine if you get stuck in a moment you will be stuck in a moment you will be stuck but routined help you see things. My moms gone but life is life can’t change what happened just gotta move forward and not forget.
Transcript end