Word: social
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Another explanation for her dedication is that she has trained as a nurse, a social worker and a doctor (she was nearly 39 when she qualified) and has learned the ways in which love and death are often inevitably linked. She has always had an extraordinary gift for establishing intimate contact with patients, drawing strength from them even as she gives it. She talks lovingly, almost as a mother, of long-gone patients -- Mrs. G., Louie, Ted -- who would listen to her problems and anxieties...
Above all, there were her intense relationships with two Polish men, both dying of cancer. One was with a 40-year-old waiter, whom she met while working as a medical social worker at St. Thomas's Hospital in London. She recalls how he left her (pounds)500 (then worth more than $2,000) in his will, saying "I will be a window in your home." The words are now engraved below a window in St. Christopher's lobby. The other relationship, which her biographer, Shirley du Boulay, calls "unconsummated, unfulfilled, unresolved," was with a refugee in a home...
Still, death is a relentless presence and that can take a toll on the staff. Dame Cicely has helped create a system of team support, with doctors, nurses and social workers watching one another for signs of stress. "Sharing of grief is absolutely essential," says Psychiatrist Parkes. That goes for Dame Cicely as well. In her 21 years at St. Christopher's, more than 13,000 people have died, including her mother. "If death doesn't get to you, I doubt you should be in it," she admits, and in the past, she has consulted a psychiatrist for problems...
...meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee, when he called for a "brave new turn" and the "courage to break stereotypes" in dealing with worker grievances. Jaruzelski's remarks followed a television address by General Czeslaw Kiszczak, the Interior Minister, who offered to open talks with representatives of "different social groups" to end the unrest. While there was speculation that the Kiszczak statement hinted at possible talks with Solidarity for the first time since 1981, the offer was greeted with skepticism by Poles, who have heard similar words before...
Since her first book, If Morning Ever Comes (1964), Tyler, 46, has held and cultivated her ground (mainly Baltimore, where she lives with her husband and two daughters), aware of but not unduly influenced by social trends and media dazzle. Her work has evolved organically, from relatively simple tales of aspirations and young love to more complex narratives about marriages and the eccentric flowerings of unrealized dreams. To the extent that she writes situation seriocomedy about American families, Tyler has ties to John Updike, although she does not possess his magic flute or his steamy sense of original sin. Also...