I have a couple, and if you are over 50 years old, you likely have as many if not more. Scarring is how living systems repair non-fatal injuries. Scars do not restore function as much as they simply repair injuries. Scar tissue is often stronger, if less resilient, than the original tissue. This is true for me and you, my neighbors’ dogs, and my cats. All living systems are designed for self-repair. Living systems seek to continue living.
Mr. Lightfoot was a Korean era vet who was my patient at the Austin VA Outpatient clinic in the early 2000’s. He was a soft-spoken, White fellow in his late 40’s, I think. He had been seen at the VA hospital 50 miles away for a decade or more, and he came to our clinic simply because, for him, we were closer to home.
Mr. Lightfoot wore bilateral hearing aids; we had an excellent audiology department. He had upper and lower dentures; we had an excellent dental clinic. He came to see me because I had been assigned as his PCP – the traffic cop coordinating his care. We chatted that first visit as I tried to understand why a healthy fellow with neither diabetes nor hypertension nor endocrine disease was sitting in my exam room. He explained it to me.
As a young marine, he and his platoon had been deployed in a rural area in a heavily forested area in the Korean theater. He was not on point, but rather in the middle of the group, he said. He told me that he had stepped on a mine, and moments after it had detonated, he had looked around him to see that all his fellow marines had fallen. Only he had been left alive. It was a quiet moment, he explained; the mine’s blast had rendered him deaf. It had blown his teeth out of their sockets. Shrapnel had shredded his legs, thighs, arms and face. He recounted his story quietly, and I listened in utter disbelief if not denial.
Mr. Lightfoot had a rugged but remarkably kind and serene face. He told me that he had been rescued from the field and sent to a military hospital where his surgeons had cleaned and sutured his wounds, put his face back together, and later attended to his hearing and dental injuries.
I peered more carefully at his rugged face. The surgeons who had repaired his facial injuries had used a variety of cosmetic surgical techniques that resulted in scars that mimicked the natural lines of our facial tissues. His scars, although extensive, had faded into the wrinkles that all of us acquire with age. The effect was a certain masculine ruggedness. Damn, I had not initially noticed it! I saw Mr. Lightfoot a couple of times each year for the next few years before I left my VA post. I always enjoyed his visits.
This evening, I was reflecting on my former patient because I had listened to an MSNBC report during which the program host referenced the near catastrophic events of 1/6/2021 that had so damaged our democracy. Like a non-fatal injury inflicted upon a living thing, such damage has to be repaired. That repair will require scarring of a sort, I think.
Will the repaired fabric of democracy be strong? Will we be able to look upon the face of democracy and recognize its injuries and subsequent repairs? I do not know, but I hope that when we gaze upon it, it will lift its rugged countenance upon us with serenity and kindness.