In Memoriam: John Stone (1936-2008)

Late last night I learned that poet and physician John Stone had lost his battle with cancer. He died last Thursday at the age of 72. I had the pleasure of performing with John in 2004 at the Voices Carry reading at The Carter Center here in Atlanta. He read from his collection, Music From Apartment 8, and moved many of us to tears with the poems about his mother and his growing up in the south. Along with his indelible words, John made significant contributions to the medical field in Atlanta. He was a cardiologist, professor and associate dean of admissions at Emory University's medical school. His On Doctoring: Stories, Poems and Essays is required reading for first year medical students at Emory. He also founded and directed Grady Hospital's residency program in emergency medicine. You can read more about John at the Georgia Encyclopedia and about his accomplishments in a wonderful article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He will be missed. This poem from Music from Apartment 8 (which was his mother's apartment number) never fails to make me tear up, even as I was typing it here.

Visitation (December 2001)

At Serenity Gardens, winter

has surrounded us. My mother's room

is way too warm for me,

just right for her–with an extra sweater.

Outside, this uneasy year, her 93rd,

lurches through December.

She is surely serene in this place,

thanks to whatever goodness;

queen of the electronic piano.

Among my chief duties now

I have become her human calendar,

a stay against time, her reach for the past.

Each visit, we review the years.

We sit and we talk, fragile mother,

absent-minded son.

This afternoon, I assemble for her

some semblance of my long-dead

father, the only husband she had.

I tell her his story.

We study his photograph.

Do you remember him, I ask?

She looks again.

No, she answers, softly. No.

But isn't he good looking!

She smiles. I chuckle.

In the gathering dark,

we cry a bit together:

I for what she has forgotten,

she for what I remember.