My Heart and “the Pity of War”

 

Wednesday afternoon, in anticipation of getting a new pacemaker ten days from now, I had an echocardiogram. It was both exciting and scary to watch my beating heart on the monitor— seeing it keep on beating, albeit irregularly, without any awareness or conscious effort on my part, as it’s been beating for over 80 years.

I was home less than an hour when MyChart posted the report of the cardiologist who read the results (with a bit of AI help, do you suppose?). An essay consisting of words that I do not understand and coolly impersonal numbers and values purportedly describing my beating heart is now available for my own cardiologist to read and understand and interpret.

Which is my heart—a muscular organ that second-by-second keeps me alive, or an organized series of letters and digits on a computer screen? Which is my heart to those doctors? Which is it to me?

Last night Maxine and I heard Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, Chorus, etc., conducted by Klaus Makela. I’ve known and loved this powerful work of poetry and music since college days, and last night it cast its magnificent, heart-rending, and soul-searing spell on me once again.

I wonder how my heart would have looked to an echocardiogram after the chorus’s final, hushed, a cappella plea, “May they rest in peace.” Broken, I think.