I had high hopes for my first day and my ability to prove to myself that I was ready. Even with having done every rotation in hospice and palliative medicine I could up to this point, and having just completed a fellowship in geriatrics, I still have so very far to go. I realized today how little I know. The mountain only got higher. I know I will get closer to the top by the end of this year, but it still feels like I slipped a little today. It's all in the name of learning, but I am prone to tearing myself down when I feel like I've let those around me down. I hope that, even after today, they feel like it was worth matching me into the program.
Today, though, it was even more difficult learning that my chemistry teacher from high school passed away suddenly yesterday. It got me to thinking about what I really remembered. I took chemistry my 10th grade year which was also the first year I was at Spartanburg Day School. He would have us write summaries of each chemistry chapter, including writing the definitions of each important word or topic and outlining each section as well as completing the questions at the end of each chapter. To save paper, I would write in this tiny handwriting (as in, I would fit two lines of text in each space on college rule paper) so that each chapter's outline wasn't more than a couple pages. Having no friends in Shelby, and going to school 45 minutes from my house left me with lots of free time. At any rate, I remember that he made my outline the example for how the rest of the class should do theirs. I remember the time he asked me to go through the answers to a chapter's questions while he had to help with something outside the classroom. I think I remember that day more for the fact that my friends stood up for me when others felt it was easier to bully me. I remember his constant sarcasm, but underneath he cared deeply for each of us. After the chemistry exam, he had everyone make a tie dye shirt. He was seemingly a part of everything at SDS. I can't even imagine going there and he not be there.
I feel like I had been sheltered from death when I was younger, and now, it feels like death is an everyday occurrence. I realize that it is a part of life, and a large part of my career will be peppered with it. However, it seems like I've lost more people in the last year and a half than I lost in the 28 or so years before that. My friend, Kim, committed suicide last June; We lost Drew's nephew, Jaxon, last January; We lost grandfather this January; Now Dr. Mosley joins them. I don't want to become embittered, but of those losses, grandfather's at the age of 93 was the only one where I felt like a full life could truly be celebrated. All the rest were too young and too soon. I can only imagine the possibilities of what their legacies could be. In the darkest recesses, when I let me guard down, I fear the loss of my own, yet to be born, children before their time, the uncertainty of the length of their lives on this Earth.
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