Walker, Alice : Medicine

Literature Annotations

Genre	Poem
Keywords	Aging, Death and Dying, Empathy, Love, Pain, Suffering
Summary	An adult tells a very simple story about her elderly grandparents. In the morning the speaker wakes the sleeping couple observing that Grandpa, who is ill and in pain, gains comfort from the old woman in bed beside him. In fact the grandmother IS medicine that "stops the pain" during the night, a medicine contained "in her unbraided hair." Grandma's act of crawling into bed with loosened hair sustains him; it is an act of compassion, of love and an oblique reference to conjugal union.
Source	Once
Publisher	Harcourt, Brace
Edition	1968
Place Published	New York
Annotated by	Nixon, Lois LaCivita
Date of Entry	11/11/94