A Man’s Heart Tells Us How He Lived, Sometimes How He died. But Rarely How He Loved (Dr. Mallard, NCIS)

 

There is a common saying among pathologists that “a heart on the steel bed tells you how you lived and sometimes how you died”. The quote from Dr. Mallard (aka Ducky) in the TV series NCIS took it a step further merging medicine with poetry.

There is no other human organ more intimately associated with feelings and love than the heart. My all time favorite remains the myth of vena amoris about which I have written here https://vahezen.blogspot.com/2022/04/vena-amoris-does-it-matter-if-it-does.html . We all adhere to that myth, often unknowingly, when we adorn our ring finger with a band, because our heart had skipped a beat.

A healthy heart in medicine is one that beats in perfect cadence. A loving heart is the one that misses a beat.  The heart of a lover is the one that races, stops to recover, and races again.

When reading poetry in the English language, I often return to the simple lines William Wordsworth wrote about the heart and the way of life celebrating the heart in “My Heart Leaps Up”.

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky:

 

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

 

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

 

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

 

Medicine, poetry and the heart. What we see and what we hear tell us little of who we are.

 

September 17, 2023

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2023

 

PS/ on my painting and sculpture blog (https://vaheark.blogspot.com/2017/10/vahes-ark-vessel-of-eclectic-modes-of.html), I have often explored human expressions where the heart was dictating what we observe. Inspired by the myths and artistic expressions from the Southwest, often unconsciously, my paintings end up touching feelings poets attribute to that organ when missing a beat, while pathologists only examine when that missed beat never recovers.

Here is an example, as I put shapes and colours in harmony to learn about our hearts https://vaheark.blogspot.com/2022/01/clodomira-spirit-of-prickly-pear-cactus.html