Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 25, 1994 TAG: 9401250029
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Michael T. Kaufman The New York Times
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
About to turn 59, she lies in Goldwater Hospital, where she has lain for the last 26 years, silent, with her hands pressed involuntarily to her chest. From there she logs her journey, using eye movements to spell out hundreds of poems composed in deepest solitude.
Here, in heartless outline, are the details of her life: Born in upper Manhattan. Graduated from high school. Married. Played tennis, swam. Gave birth to a daughter in 1967. Three months later she suffered a stroke.
She was brought to the hospital on Roosevelt Island, where she was judged to be incapable of either comprehending language or expressing herself. In fact she understood. She heard the staff refer to her as a vegetable and she heard visiting relatives talk about her as if she were dead.
She was aware that her daughter was not being brought to visit for fear the child would be traumatized. She realized people stopped coming.
It lasted six years. For six years, when everybody thought she did not know anything and could not know anything, she really knew everything.
Using a card with the alphabet arrayed in rows of five or six letters, she explained how she finally escaped from that level of isolation. This is how she converses. The visitor points down the card and when he comes to the alphabet segments with the letter she has in mind, Tavalaro raises her eyes upward. Then as the pointer moves to the specific letter, the eyes go up again.
In this way she spelled out: "Was in bed. Therapist came over. Started asking me questions. Was my name Julia? Was this place a hospital? Answered it by head movement."
Tavalaro was asked if she remembered what the first thought was that she had communicated after being taught to use the card. "Yes," she signaled by raising her eyes, waiting for the pointer to reach the letter W so she could start spelling what she had said 20 years ago.
"Was I going to die shortly? If not how much time. I would like as soon as possible"
Did she feel the same way now, she was asked.
"Yes," she gestured and smiled.
The visitor asked if she remembered what her life had been like in those six years when only she knew that she was aware.
"Everything. Welcome to hell," she spelled out.
Asked if there was any joyful recollection from that period, she looked down to signal "No."
Was it a time of constant sadness?
This time she looked up.
What had she yearned for in that time?
"Death," she spelled out.
Anything else? she was asked.
"Being human again," she answered.
She is wonderfully, fundamentally human.
When after just a few letters, a visitor correctly guesses a long word, she smiles, happy that, however briefly, someone is on her wavelength. When things go wrong, as with the current malfunctioning of the computer on which she writes her poems, she cries.
She is angry that people who once came to see her no longer do and that people she loved have died. She is upset by the television that plays noisily for the other three silent women in the room. She cannot walk or run or speak, but as her poems attest, she yearns and laughs, despairs and dreams. She artfully differentiates what might to many seem as undifferentiated time.
"Memory and imagination," she spelled out in answer to a question about how she has built the poems she has been creating since 1988 when a writing workshop was started at the hospital by a group of visiting poets. She has kept at it, expressing her singular sensibility and capturing slices of experience few if any have ever had.
Here are a few of her shorter poems:
Indifference
He wakes with a harmonious
snort. I wake
up, hear the kitchen noise
oh God, my breakfast is being
ugh cooked ugh I'm
partially dressed, have
a feeling of being depressed
burnt toast black
coffee, just as I hate it
having to rush out
Thank you, God,
for the indifferent breakfast
Untitled
Past present future
is yesterday today tomorrow
are came come coming
for fire wind waves
question why in threes
in the name of the Father
the Son and the Holy Ghost
Amen
Death
Death is a grossly morbid, frightening phase,
although it shouldn't be
It's joyous, happy, looking forward to the soul.
The soul leaves the deceased body and wanders
to a planet, world or star.
And there is this portion of a longer poem
Here I lay in my bed
Just as if I were dead
Hoping wishing Hallelujah Praying
That my last breath will be my next
It was getting time to go. The visitor fatigued by the letter-by-letter conversation said he would be back. Tavalaro signaled for her alphabet card. "Haven't told you anything yet," she declared.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB