Too soon

One of my patients died last week. On the face of it, there's nothing novel about that sentence. I could probably begin a posting every week with those words.

Some losses, though, are harder than others. When you share someone's life for six months, learning her history, listening to her stories, reluctantly leaving her to visit another patient; when the music she loved plays unexpectedly on your ipod and you remember her tears as she sang along, it's hard to let go.

It's also hard remembering the most recent visits. She asked, "Am I going to die?" I answered and we both had tears in our eyes. "I never thought I'd die," she said.

I've thought about that visit a lot lately. Obviously, a patient on hospice knows her prognosis, as do her nurses, her aides, her social workers and chaplains.

Any one of us can, on any day, acknowledge that one day we too will die. But her words ring so true. I know that one day I will die, but I imagine it far off in the future. And when that day comes, it will probably seem too soon to me, no matter how old I am. And I expect that, if you ask me, I too would say, as she did, "I never thought I'd die."

May her memory be a blessing.