i’m sorry i didn’t know when you were sick. i’m sorry i didn’t know the signs and symptoms of illness and death that i have now memorized in bite sized flash cards and keep committing to memory as i see the diseased day in and day out, chain smoking as they gasp for air crawling inch by inch to the front door of louis stokes veterans affairs medical center. i’m sorry i didn’t know that when your skin felt funny that was the signal that it was ready to be shed, that even your epithelium had realized it was no longer worthwhile to expend precious energy replenishing itself when your heart and kidneys and liver became endangered species.
i’m sorry i followed you on this medical journey too late to hear whatever advice you may have given me. would you have been the type of person to tell me not to pursue medicine? as my friend wonders about her own physician mother, i wonder: was it worth it for you? was it worth it to know the pathophysiology of your own tedious march to death? did you feel your alveoli freezing in real time, one by one, like popping bubble wrap in reverse?
could you feel my embarrassment and frustration that you wouldn’t get better, that you kept coughing in front of my friends when all i wanted to do was have a normal family with a normal dad who wasn’t sick in the middle of a divorce? i’m sorry i didn’t have the perspective to understand that each letter you wrote me in my late teenage years were messages in bottles, words of wisdom sent out into the world that you couldn’t bear to say over the phone, words whose heaviness, whose timelessness, would reach me only years later. you told me it is a beautiful day Olivia, enjoy it.
i wish i could tell you how much i hate surgery and specialized medicine and how much my heart aches for my future generalist practice that probably would make your eyes roll a little because i want to provide acupuncture in a house and you probably think that is woo-woo. all i know is that i am glad that when you were sick you insisted not to go to the hospital and this is a sticking point i never realized was important before. i wish i could ask you why.
11/14/2022
