Commencement Address, 2001
nb. This address, given by Dad in June 2001, elegantly expresses his love of life, poetry and reading. His words about love, duty and family are inspiring in their simplicity, and bear a portent of his own passing (and I've a sneaking suspicion some of his words may reappear at the memorial celebration). J.
Commencement Address to the University of Washington
Medical School, June 2, 2001
Dr. David R. Saunders
I am truly delighted to be with you today, to share this auspicious moment in your careers. Thank you for inviting me to be your commencement speaker.
In truth, I am very lucky to be here! In early March, Dr Ramsey called me at home where our telephone, equipped with a US West recorded message, admonished him that he had reached a number that did not accept solicitations. Would he please hang up if he was soliciting. Dr Ramsey mulled this request over, and concluded that he was inviting rather than soliciting me to give this address. Such decision-making explains why Dr Ramsey is our Dean, and why I am standing anxiously before you today.
I am anxious because I am comparing this address with those given in the past three years when I marveled at the wisdom and wit of speakers John Sheffield, Erika Goldstein, and David Byrd on this very occasion. They have been your mentors, and they are my cherished colleagues. I cannot emulate them, so I propose merely to discuss Love, Honor, Death, and the Meaning of Life in the two hours that Dean Ramsey has allotted me. These themes can only be covered through the medium of Art. I cannot sing, as this class well knows. So I have chosen the medium of Poetry to give insights into these themes. Please don’t be dismayed. I am not about to burden you with my unworthy words. Our text will be Americans’ Favorite Poems, an anthology compiled by Robert Pinsky, his special undertaking when he was our poet laureate. The two hundred poems in this anthology were chosen from the letters of thousands of Americans who wrote to Robert Pinsky about their reasons for nominating a favorite poem.
Let’s digress for a moment to enter a plea for poetry. In a life of haste and striving, it is often difficult to find time for novels, museums, or concert halls. But, in a leisure moment, a poet’s words can startle you into sudden wondering. A single shivering flash of insight or of beauty can be arresting, and turn anxiousness to daydreams of gold. Also the enduring wisdom in many poems can comfort you and others in times of uncertainty or of crisis.
How can we describe Love? Many of its attributes are ineffable, but important characteristics include devotion, and selflessness. I have seen such love most miraculously in the mother with her newborn child: my wife, Donna, with our four sons, and my daughters-in-law with our grandchildren. The Canadian poet, Margaret Atwood, captures the awe, and the selflessness of maternal love:
“---I would like to enter
Your sleep as its smooth dark wave
Slides over my head
And go with you through that lucent
Wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
With its watery sun and three moons---
I would like to give you the silver
Branch, the small white flower, the one
Word that will protect you--
I would like to be the air
That inhabits you for a moment.
I would like to be that unnoticed
And that necessary.”
May you be loved, and be able to love like that.
We physicians are fortunate in having lives which are always challenging, and educational. The acuity and enthusiasm of our learning is often heightened by manageable stress. But there will be days when you will feel that you have striven cheerlessly in a mood of desperation. If you find that you are –
“—lost in a sea of trouble,
Rise, save yourself from the whirlpool—
Courage exposes ambushes.
Steadfastness thwarts enemies.
Keep your victories hidden.
Do not sulk over defeat.
Accept good. Reject evil.
Learn the rhythm which binds humankind.”
These words come to us from Archilochos who wrote them in seventh century Greece before our common era.
In a preface to one of his poems, William Wordsworth wrote:
“The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each in natural piety.”
Society, and especially we physicians, will be challenged to maintain a natural piety among generations as an increasing number of elderly people seek care, and guidance, and as issues such as assisted suicide are debated.
My family learned much about love and forbearance from my father who died nearly six years ago in my brother’s home in Victoria, British Columbia.
I remember him as possessing great physical strength for most of his life, and remarkable intellectual prowess for all of his life. He claimed that the mind needed exercising to avoid mental deterioration so he memorized a stanza of verse nearly every day of his last ten years of life.
He would have approved the inclusion of “Ulysses” among Americans’ Favorite Poems, not only because Tennyson was one of his favorite poets, but because one of his mantras was:
“—all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move----
---for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die---
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
In his last months, we ministered to his physical needs, and comforted him with music, conversation, and reading. He was visited by his family doctor at least every fortnight, often for long conversations about cabbages and kings. How important hope was in these months! At first, he had hope for recovery from his afflictions, for revelling in the renewal of another Spring, and then, at the time of dying, he had hope for a peace which transcends earthly understanding. Emily Dickinson realized that
“ Hope is the thing with feathers-
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops-at all-“
Your patients, your friends, and family will need you to give them such hope especially when they have decided that it is time to die. That hope may be for a heavenly paradise, or for a union with Nature, as in the Mansion described by poet Ammons:
“ So it came time for me to cede myself
and I chose the wind
to be delivered to.
The wind was glad and said that it needed all the body
It could get to show its motions with
And wanted to know
Willingly as I hoped it would
If it could do something in return
To show its gratitude.
When the tree of my bones rises from the skin I said
Come and whirlwinding
Stroll my dust around the plain
So that I can see how the ocotillo does
And how saguaro-wren is
And when you fall with evening
Fall with me here where we can watch
The closing up of day and think how morning breaks.”
Dad lived to see his grandchildren and two great grandchildren. Great granddaughter Meghan was at first perplexed by having two grandfather Saunders. I was called “Papa”, so she announced that she would call senior Saunders “Great Papa”. At the memorial service for Great Papa, she dissipated the gloom of a dirge-like Welsh hymn, as she told the mourners that “ I don’t know that song”.
Although Great Papa is dead, he is remembered by an extended family—that’s true long life. I urge you to devote your love, and energy to your families so that you too can have a true long life. So quickly it’s over.
An appreciation of life can be discovered in a poem by Ted Hughes who was a poet laureate of England.He chose the life of the salmon as a metaphor for our human condition. Let us hope that our northwest salmon survive so that future generations can appreciate this metaphor:
“He’s lying in poor water, a yard or so depth of poor safety,
Maybe only two feet under the no-protection of an outleaning small oak,
Half under a tangle of brambles.
After his two thousand miles, he rests,
Breathing in that lap of easy current
In his graveyard pool.
About six pounds weight,
Four years old at most, and a bare winter at sea-
But already a veteran,
Already a death-patched hero. So quickly its over.
So briefly he roamed the gallery of marvels!
Such sweet months, so richly embroidered into earth’s beauty dress,
Her life robe-
Now worn out with her tirelessness, her insatiable quest,
Hangs in the flow, a frayed scarf-
-- the sea-going Aurora Borealis of his April power-
The primrose and violet of that first upfling in the estuary-
Ripened to muddy dregs,
The river reclaiming his sea-metals.
In the October light
He hangs there, patched with leper-cloths.
All this, too, is stitched into the torn richness,
The epic poise
That holds him so steady in his wounds, ---- so patient
In the machinery of heaven.
On this joyous occasion, I urge you to revel in the gallery of life’s marvels, and to learn to be patient in the machinery of heaven. I wish you well in the coming clinical years. There is no better life that that of a physician with a life-robe of science, knowledge, humanity, and teaching. Be zestful and curious. Love yourself, and your family and colleagues. God bless
Commencement Address to the University of Washington
Medical School, June 2, 2001
Dr. David R. Saunders
I am truly delighted to be with you today, to share this auspicious moment in your careers. Thank you for inviting me to be your commencement speaker.
In truth, I am very lucky to be here! In early March, Dr Ramsey called me at home where our telephone, equipped with a US West recorded message, admonished him that he had reached a number that did not accept solicitations. Would he please hang up if he was soliciting. Dr Ramsey mulled this request over, and concluded that he was inviting rather than soliciting me to give this address. Such decision-making explains why Dr Ramsey is our Dean, and why I am standing anxiously before you today.
I am anxious because I am comparing this address with those given in the past three years when I marveled at the wisdom and wit of speakers John Sheffield, Erika Goldstein, and David Byrd on this very occasion. They have been your mentors, and they are my cherished colleagues. I cannot emulate them, so I propose merely to discuss Love, Honor, Death, and the Meaning of Life in the two hours that Dean Ramsey has allotted me. These themes can only be covered through the medium of Art. I cannot sing, as this class well knows. So I have chosen the medium of Poetry to give insights into these themes. Please don’t be dismayed. I am not about to burden you with my unworthy words. Our text will be Americans’ Favorite Poems, an anthology compiled by Robert Pinsky, his special undertaking when he was our poet laureate. The two hundred poems in this anthology were chosen from the letters of thousands of Americans who wrote to Robert Pinsky about their reasons for nominating a favorite poem.
Let’s digress for a moment to enter a plea for poetry. In a life of haste and striving, it is often difficult to find time for novels, museums, or concert halls. But, in a leisure moment, a poet’s words can startle you into sudden wondering. A single shivering flash of insight or of beauty can be arresting, and turn anxiousness to daydreams of gold. Also the enduring wisdom in many poems can comfort you and others in times of uncertainty or of crisis.
How can we describe Love? Many of its attributes are ineffable, but important characteristics include devotion, and selflessness. I have seen such love most miraculously in the mother with her newborn child: my wife, Donna, with our four sons, and my daughters-in-law with our grandchildren. The Canadian poet, Margaret Atwood, captures the awe, and the selflessness of maternal love:
“---I would like to enter
Your sleep as its smooth dark wave
Slides over my head
And go with you through that lucent
Wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
With its watery sun and three moons---
I would like to give you the silver
Branch, the small white flower, the one
Word that will protect you--
I would like to be the air
That inhabits you for a moment.
I would like to be that unnoticed
And that necessary.”
May you be loved, and be able to love like that.
We physicians are fortunate in having lives which are always challenging, and educational. The acuity and enthusiasm of our learning is often heightened by manageable stress. But there will be days when you will feel that you have striven cheerlessly in a mood of desperation. If you find that you are –
“—lost in a sea of trouble,
Rise, save yourself from the whirlpool—
Courage exposes ambushes.
Steadfastness thwarts enemies.
Keep your victories hidden.
Do not sulk over defeat.
Accept good. Reject evil.
Learn the rhythm which binds humankind.”
These words come to us from Archilochos who wrote them in seventh century Greece before our common era.
In a preface to one of his poems, William Wordsworth wrote:
“The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each in natural piety.”
Society, and especially we physicians, will be challenged to maintain a natural piety among generations as an increasing number of elderly people seek care, and guidance, and as issues such as assisted suicide are debated.
My family learned much about love and forbearance from my father who died nearly six years ago in my brother’s home in Victoria, British Columbia.
I remember him as possessing great physical strength for most of his life, and remarkable intellectual prowess for all of his life. He claimed that the mind needed exercising to avoid mental deterioration so he memorized a stanza of verse nearly every day of his last ten years of life.
He would have approved the inclusion of “Ulysses” among Americans’ Favorite Poems, not only because Tennyson was one of his favorite poets, but because one of his mantras was:
“—all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move----
---for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die---
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
In his last months, we ministered to his physical needs, and comforted him with music, conversation, and reading. He was visited by his family doctor at least every fortnight, often for long conversations about cabbages and kings. How important hope was in these months! At first, he had hope for recovery from his afflictions, for revelling in the renewal of another Spring, and then, at the time of dying, he had hope for a peace which transcends earthly understanding. Emily Dickinson realized that
“ Hope is the thing with feathers-
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops-at all-“
Your patients, your friends, and family will need you to give them such hope especially when they have decided that it is time to die. That hope may be for a heavenly paradise, or for a union with Nature, as in the Mansion described by poet Ammons:
“ So it came time for me to cede myself
and I chose the wind
to be delivered to.
The wind was glad and said that it needed all the body
It could get to show its motions with
And wanted to know
Willingly as I hoped it would
If it could do something in return
To show its gratitude.
When the tree of my bones rises from the skin I said
Come and whirlwinding
Stroll my dust around the plain
So that I can see how the ocotillo does
And how saguaro-wren is
And when you fall with evening
Fall with me here where we can watch
The closing up of day and think how morning breaks.”
Dad lived to see his grandchildren and two great grandchildren. Great granddaughter Meghan was at first perplexed by having two grandfather Saunders. I was called “Papa”, so she announced that she would call senior Saunders “Great Papa”. At the memorial service for Great Papa, she dissipated the gloom of a dirge-like Welsh hymn, as she told the mourners that “ I don’t know that song”.
Although Great Papa is dead, he is remembered by an extended family—that’s true long life. I urge you to devote your love, and energy to your families so that you too can have a true long life. So quickly it’s over.
An appreciation of life can be discovered in a poem by Ted Hughes who was a poet laureate of England.He chose the life of the salmon as a metaphor for our human condition. Let us hope that our northwest salmon survive so that future generations can appreciate this metaphor:
“He’s lying in poor water, a yard or so depth of poor safety,
Maybe only two feet under the no-protection of an outleaning small oak,
Half under a tangle of brambles.
After his two thousand miles, he rests,
Breathing in that lap of easy current
In his graveyard pool.
About six pounds weight,
Four years old at most, and a bare winter at sea-
But already a veteran,
Already a death-patched hero. So quickly its over.
So briefly he roamed the gallery of marvels!
Such sweet months, so richly embroidered into earth’s beauty dress,
Her life robe-
Now worn out with her tirelessness, her insatiable quest,
Hangs in the flow, a frayed scarf-
-- the sea-going Aurora Borealis of his April power-
The primrose and violet of that first upfling in the estuary-
Ripened to muddy dregs,
The river reclaiming his sea-metals.
In the October light
He hangs there, patched with leper-cloths.
All this, too, is stitched into the torn richness,
The epic poise
That holds him so steady in his wounds, ---- so patient
In the machinery of heaven.
On this joyous occasion, I urge you to revel in the gallery of life’s marvels, and to learn to be patient in the machinery of heaven. I wish you well in the coming clinical years. There is no better life that that of a physician with a life-robe of science, knowledge, humanity, and teaching. Be zestful and curious. Love yourself, and your family and colleagues. God bless
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