Ways of seeing (#1422)

Topics/tags: Michelle, short

Content warning: Maudlin

This morning, I was listening to NPR as I drove to Iowa City for a monthly lunch with another widowed friend. One piece that I didn’t quite understand wrapped up, and then the show moved on to the last piece, Alfred Jung Lee’s On Description. No, that’s not quite correct. First, there was a short excerpt from Dammit, Janet. I’m not sure why. But I enjoyed singing along.

In any case, Lee’s piece was about how we describe other people and the ways we focus on differences rather than their central attributes. For example, in describing someone, we wouldn’t necessarily say that they have a nose and two arms. However, we might describe them as having white bushy eyebrows, because most people don’t. It’s a distinguishing feature.

Unexpectedly, Lee started to ground his discussion in terms of his experiences in an online support group for people who’ve lost their spouses. That was, perhaps, not the best thing for me to listen to. As you might expect, I cried.

At some point in the piece, Lee discussed the way we look at pictures of people and what those pictures tell us and fail to tell us about people. And that got me thinking about photos I shared with friends on July 4, 2024.

I suppose the story needs a bit of context. In May 2024, Michelle’s oxygen saturation dropped precipitously, and she ended up in the ICU at Methodist Hospital in Des Moines. Eventually, they figured out that she had fungal pneumonia, or something like it. After two or so weeks in the ICU, they moved her to the cancer ward. Although she’d been doing well before heading to the ICU, she had no energy and no muscle mass after those two weeks in the ICU. So she spent a few weeks recovering in the cancer ward and developing some strength. By late June, she’d been able to move to rehab. By July 3, she could transfer herself to a wheelchair, and the boys and I could take her out to a sunny courtyard. She was happy, alert, and making faster progress than they’d expected.

Some friends in Grinnell regularly throw a 4th of July potluck picnic. Michelle insisted I go, even if that meant she had a lot of time by herself that day [1]. At the picnic, someone asked me how Michelle was doing, and I pulled up photos from the prior day that we’d taken in the courtyard. The photos made me happy: She was smiling, with her sons, and looking energetic. I had intended for them to suggest that She’s doing well.

The response was not what I expected. I think they said something like, Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry; I didn’t realize. Why would they say such a thing? Presumably because she’d lost her hair and was in a wheelchair.

I didn’t think about those things; they were part of our everyday life by that time. I focused on her smile, her obvious energy (at least obvious to me), and her ability to be outside in the sun. To me, that showed great progress. And it was!

I tried to explain; I’m pretty sure that I failed. To them, the photo was of a very ill person. To me, it was a photo of a recovering person who was doing remarkably well. I could see their perspective; they couldn’t see mine.

I wish I had a pithy ending to this musing, but that’s about it. The show reminded me of sharing the photo, and the experience of sharing the photo taught me a lot about how we see things differently. In any case, I’m intrigued by the diverse ways we can see the same picture.

Postscript: It’s good to be able to write a mournful musing outside the anniversaries, particularly because I can focus on a broader idea. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t sobbing while I was writing the second half of the musing. Nonetheless, I appreciate the opportunity to think about an example of how people see the same picture very differently.

[1] Okay, she had a lot of therapists visiting with her. We may have even arranged with a friend to visit; I don’t remember. I suppose it doesn’t really matter at this point. However, I do remember talking to her about the fireworks the next day.

Version 1.0 of 2026-08-15.