Latest news with #ElissaEly
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- General
- Boston Globe
From numbers to names in a forgotten graveyard
This cemetery covers about two-thirds of an acre, with a shrine at the rear holding rosary beads, painted rocks, pieces of paper with unsigned and sorrowful messages, shells, and dollar bills. The grass is diligently mowed between rows of stone markers without names. It was created in 1947, with numbers signifying the order of burials until they ended in 1979, and letters dividing right and left sides: P for Protestant, C for Catholic. Jewish and Muslim patients are also buried here. Back in 2018, over the course of several years, a group of students from Gann Academy, a nearby Jewish high school, Advertisement Ten years after burials ended, I trained in one of the psychiatry units at Metropolitan State Hospital. We sat on the floor next to catatonic patients, tried to speak their language we could not understand, and prescribed medications with many clear bad effects and fewer clear good effects. I had no idea a cemetery existed just down the hill, out of sight. No one buried here would have chosen these biographies for themselves. The 8-year-old boy who fell from his wheelchair and fractured his skull. The 66-year-old who died of terminal burns from a faulty shower. The man who lived in Fernald for 47 unimaginable years before tuberculosis killed him. The resident who worked as a laundress in the hospital for 31 years. Each life story is conveyed with imperative respect. 'As you read,' cautions the website, 'please do so with the same spirit of kindness and communal reckoning that brought us to this work.' The project they created has a holy feel, especially in these times. After the dog and I would finish our pentagon, she liked to bound back across the bridge again. The bridge always made her feel young and, of course, there were biscuits waiting in the car. She knew she was adored. Every aging, fragile need of hers was tenderly met. Advertisement She did not know there was any other way. Elissa Ely is a psychiatrist.
Boston Globe
15-03-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
A flash of light in a gray world
Patients feel known. They have been returning to this well for decades. When the brothers stroll down the hall to chat before exams, no one is surprised. The personal is part of the treatment. Advertisement The heart of the place might be the three-ring binder on a corner table. It doesn't draw the eye like Arizona landscapes, but if the eye isn't dilated, 35 years of photos and grainy articles offer a course in personal contact. Many of the front pieces are about the brothers' local volunteerism. Rotary Club presidency. Boys & Girls Club scholarship donations. Golf tournaments and baseball games, too numerous to count, enjoyably played for charity. Then there is volunteerism farther away: the annual trip to Egypt, where corneas are like sandpaper from unfiltered sun and desert storms, and the country averages two ophthalmologist per 100,000 patients. The clinic where they volunteer is rudimentary, so they bring some of their own equipment and supplies. One brother arrived expecting to assist the local optometrist working that day. Then he discovered he was the optometrist that day. Advertisement More toward the middle of the binder, handwritten cards and typed notes are pressed between plastic sleeves. A postcard is mailed from some warm island after the office faxed a lens prescription remedying one of those invariable vacation mishaps. Thank you for the after-hour appointment on your way out the door for Thanksgiving. Thank you for seeing my mother the day I called, even though she isn't your patient. Thank you for your care. Here's a poem that reminds me of you. Then there are photos from holiday staff parties — decades of restaurants, children in dress clothes. None of the children are children anymore, but updates are available during vision exams. As expected, they are doing well. To be clear, the office is fully efficient: Glasses come in on time, imaging machines are modern, the well water is of highest quality. And to be equally clear, a family business cannot change the problems waiting outside the door (though, for what it's worth, you can see the problems better when you leave). But there's something central about humanness here. The brothers are just a flash of light in a gray world. Light is heartening, though, if only you know where to look. Elissa Ely is a psychiatrist.
