a live unexamined is a life not worth living.

i attended, for reasons still vague even to me, a grief counselling course. of course i had not lost a loved one that i have not dealt with, and there must be more than curiousity that brought me there.

of course to inanimately list out the things i’ve learned would be meaningless, both to me and to the reader. but there were powerful things i’ve learnt, not intellectually, but emotionally.

i’ve complained often, that after seeing so much of death and dying, that i’m losing touch of my humanity, and i’ve grown numb to things that are so meaningful to others. you know me, the aspiring surgeon. i want to know about the patient, but from a medical perspective. when someone brought up breast cancer, all i thought was the facts: 32 year old chinese female, stage 2 left breast lump. and i wanted to ask so many questions. but after awhile, i began to see HIS story. His first daughter, who had a six year old and a three year old daughter. how she was so loved by the close-knit family, and adored by her husband. how they struggled with faith and letting go. how their feelings and hopelessness depended on lab results and doctor’s consultations. how they watched their child die, before her time, before them.

Terminal Lung Cancer in a middle aged lady, non-smoker. discovered at stage 4, and the husband told of their struggles visit after visit, chemo after chemo, radiation after radiation. he told of the shivers down his spine on hearing the awful word "palliative". he told of the most bitter, yet the sweetest last two years of his life. he told of unspoken love made evident but his wife’s hand gesture, when secondaries in the brain prevented speech. he told of the pain of watching his wife die in agony. my first thought was stage 4: palliative. got fits and bone pain: won’t be long. distant mets usually we just want them to go peacefully. so up the morphine, and let them be with family. but there is so much more to that isn’t there? and today i found out. more than the technical, there is the human.

i guess it was important to know that as a professional who meet patients with such needs on a regular basis. but as a fellow human being, we all need this. as a christian, as death is more spiritual than anything, we need to be trained, to better help and even educate those around us, in such anguish.

death is not a morbid thing. it is a part of life. there should be a stigma to dying, nor to death or grief. the most beautiful flowers, after all, emerge from the deepest depths of our lives.

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