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- I don't know how many of you know
anyone who has cut up a human brain.
I graduated from college,
and after a year I finally got my dream job
as a child psychologist
in a private treatment center for adolescents.
And it was not only that,
my girlfriend from five and a half years and I
decided to get married,
and then we put a down payment
on a beautiful little farm in Bridgewater, Massachusetts,
and my life was absolutely perfect.
That lasted for a month.
(audience laughs)
The great Commonwealth of Massachusetts lost its wealth
and all of the schools were closed
and I lost my job.
I didn't know what I was going to do,
I went back to the state hospital
where I had worked for a year
in the occupational therapy department
in the hopes that job would open in the psych department,
it never did.
But the superintendent, Dr. Morrow
was glad to have me back, he was wonderful,
and he said, "I'm sorry, we gave your job up, but you know,
"there's a job I think you'd like,
"and it's open because nobody wants it."
(audience laughs)
That sounded incredibly appealing.
(audience laughs)
But I needed a job.
He told me that while I was gone
they took all of the older people
who lived in various back wards in the hospital,
and moved them all to one building,
it was the new geriatric unit.
And I said yes, and he got me some keys,
and as I walked through that mile-long tunnel
onto Chestnut Street on the way to Dexter Building,
I felt like, in the words of John Updike,
that I'd given birth to a black hole.
I opened the door of the ward
and I don't think anybody who's ever been there
will ever forget the smell
of a back ward in a state mental hospital in the '60s.
The first person I came upon was this beautiful woman
with tight, curly, silver hair, and fire in her eyes.
And I leaned over and I said
"Good morning, my name is Warren."
And she looked up and she said, "My name's Mary!"
And she burst out laughing.
And I laughed too and we talked for a little bit.
And what I didn't realize, I couldn't feel it,
but the tectonic plates in my soul and my body
were moving and reshaping in the most amazing way.
The next person I came across in the bed
looked like she was in a coma.
Her hands were totally contracted
to the point where her fingernails
were growing into her palms,
and her hands were infected,
and her eyes were clamped shut,
crusted shut with blepharitis.
But I learned early on
that you always, always talk to a person
as though they're 100% there and special.
And so I leaned over and I said,
"My name is Warren, good morning."
And, now, she told me later that she loved to eavesdrop,
so she already knew my name was Warren.
(audience laughs) but, she turned her head
and she said, in this little high squeaky voice
that was very quavery which I grew to love so much,
she said, "Good morning Warren."
And I said, "Oh wow, I'm so glad to meet you."
She said, "I'm glad to meet you too.
"Will you open my eyes?"
Oh, I was terrified, I didn't know how, and I told her that.
And she said, "No, of course you do,"
she was so encouraging.
She said "Just go in the bathroom, get a little cloth,
"put some warm water on it, put it on my eyes,
"it'll pop them right open."
(audience laughs)
And I did what she said,
and I opened one eye and, oh my God,
she had these gorgeous blue eyes.
And she looked at me with one eye and she said
"There you are!"
(chuckles) (audience laughs)
She had the most incredible sense of humor.
And I was changing, and I didn't know it,
I was going from one world to another and I had no idea.
I got up to the nursing station,
warm welcome for the nurses,
they were so glad someone had taken the job.
(laughs) And I pulled the first chart.
And it was Mary's.
And, my God, I'm still shocked.
She was 107 years old.
She was born into slavery in South Carolina,
and I will never be able to thank her enough
for what she has done for me
in terms of how much she's changed me.
The second person.
Annie Eliason.
The social worker wrote wonderful notes on each person,
Sarah was such a good social worker,
And she said that Annie was a,
neither woman had had any family,
but Annie was a concert pianist.
Well, I learned about her,
every morning I just loved going,
I loved these people.
It sounds unprofessional,
you're not supposed to love your patients, but you know,
between you and me, I think it's unprofessional
if you don't love the people you work with.
(audience applauds) Thank you.
I come in 20 minutes early every morning,
and I'd soak Annie's hands in warm water.
And I very slowly tried
to pry her fingers open without hurting her,
which was very difficult,
took two weeks to get her fingers open wide enough
so that we could finally clip her nails
and the nurses could medicate her hands.
And then they worked with her eyes, too,
and resolved that problem, and she was doing well.
I loved coming in,
every morning she would tell me about Europe
And I couldn't believe that those gnarly, twisted hands
had danced across keyboards
all over the major capitals of Europe.
I loved the stories about Europe in the '20s and the '30s,
and one day I went in and she said,
"You know, I've been thinking a lot,
"and last night I made a decision."
I said "What's that, Annie?"
she said, "Well, before you came,
"I didn't really have a future.
"But I think now I do,
"and I've decided not to talk about the past anymore."
Oh, I was so disappointed,
I loved the stories. (audience laughs)
And I said, "What are you going to do, Annie?"
She said, "Well, I'm going to be your spy."
(audience laughs)
And I said, "My spy, what (stammers)?"
She said, "Well, you know,
"there are things that happen around here,
"you know I love to eavesdrop.
"And I hear things and see things now,
"on the weekend or at night, and if you knew about them,
"you're the kind of person who could do something about it.
"And imagine if we worked together,
"we could really change this place and make it better."
Well it sounded great to me.
Let me give you an example,
I went to work with her one morning, one Monday morning,
and I rushed down to rounds
and the nurses were reading a report,
and they were lamenting the fact
that there was this woman who, every so often,
she did the these episodes of terrible, terribly disturbed,
she'd be all upset, and she was nonverbal,
so she couldn't tell anyone what was wrong,
it was so sad.
And I knew what was wrong.
Annie had told me that the night before,
she was eavesdropping.
And the family had come in to visit this woman.
And when the nurses left,
the family very severely verbally abused this woman
'til she just broke down.
And I said to the nurses, "Gee, maybe there's a correlation
"between the visits from the family,
"And the fact that this woman gets upset."
Because they couldn't know that Annie had told me.
And they said, "Oh, gee, maybe, we'll look."
Well that was the last time that woman was ever abused,
and Annie and I helped ever so many people, so many people,
but really, she helped me more than anything.
She was so encouraging,
and she said, "You have to go back to school."
And I knew she was right.
And I finally enrolled
in Metropolitan College at Boston University.
In occupational therapy, Alice Shafer,
she's a renowned occupational therapist
who taught this course in consultation in nursing homes.
Now I have to tell you, this is a stretch
for someone who was an adolescent psychologist
but I loved it.
I loved it.
And I would, I would come back in the morning
and I'd tell Annie, it was an evening course,
I'd tell Annie about the class,
and she had a million questions.
"What did you learn, tell me what you learned."
And she was so encouraging,
I finally applied to Boston University
and was accepted at Sargent College in the OT program.
And when I told Annie, she said
"Oh by jingles, that is great!"
(audience laughs)
No one uses the term by jingles anymore,
I wish they did. (audience laughs)
But three months after I began the program,
I got a call from Sarah, the social worker.
And she said, "Warren, I thought you'd want to know
"that Annie passed away comfortably
"in her sleep last night."
I went to the funeral, we interred her in a pauper's grave
on Cross Street in Foxborough.
And we stood there with Sarah and myself
and the gravedigger and the chaplain.
And that was it.
Although I didn't leave her there,
she's here with me right now,
under the stage of the Cutler Majestic Theater.
I had a hard time with neuroanatomy at school,
and I called the state pathologist, Dr. Flashman,
I knew him and I'd worked a little with him,
and I said, "If I came in the summer,
"I'd help you out and volunteer.
"But in the meantime, could you teach me neuroanatomy?"
And he said, "Oh, that would be great,
"I'd love to do that, come on in tomorrow."
So I did, and he did the most precious thing,
he held a human brain in his hand.
And he said, "Before we start, I have to tell you
"that there once were memories in this tissue.
"This was the remnants of a person's personality.
"It is a sacred object,
"and you have to treat it with deep reverence.
"Don't ever forget that."
And I never would.
Or nor would I forget him.
And he made a little machine with a wire
that we cut the brain up
into 0.25 inch slices like a tomato.
Now I think they call it an MRI,
and you don't have to kill the patient to do the research.
(audience laughs)
But he would hold each slab in his hand,
and then he'd describe the different structures
and their functions, and that was wonderful.
And then he'd write down for himself
any anomalies that he'd see in the tissue.
Never knew who the patient was.
And he put the whole thing together.
Or I would, rather, put the whole thing together,
it was part of my job.
And I'd tie it up into cheese cloth.
And then I'd very slowly and deliberately
lower the brain into the formaldehyde,
we had these large mayonnaise jars from the kitchen,
they were perfect for this.
And I screwed the top onto the mayonnaise jar
one late August, very hot August afternoon.
And I turned the jar 'round on the shelf.
And there on the two-inch masking tape
was the name Annie Eliason.
And I realized I had just cut up my friend's brain.
I'm still shocked at my reaction.
I wasn't sad,
In fact, I was overwhelmed and overjoyed,
All I could think of was her being there and saying,
"Oh by jingles, I am ever so glad you did that."
(audience laughs)
"What did you learn, tell me everything you learned."
She was wonderful and she changed me forever, as did Mary.
I had a board member, years later
when I ran an agency on aging,
and from 90 years of wisdom, she had lost her best friend,
and she actually came back to work as a volunteer
after the funeral.
I can't imagine losing a friend after 90 years.
And I said, I said, "Margaret, what was your friend like?"
And she kind of looked up into space and she smiled.
And she said,
"She was like someone you'd put on a gold chain
"and wear around your neck."
And for the rest of my life,
I've had this invisible gold chain in honor to people
like Mary and Alice, and Dr. Flashman,
and some of my students, Sean and Micah.
Oh my God, my family, people, sometimes, that I just meet,
like Jennifer Hixson is on my gold chain.
What you do, if you don't know what to do,
you just braille that invisible gold chain,
and they'll tell you what to do.
And together you can make the world a better place.
Thank you.
(audience cheers and applauds)