What Loss Teaches Us About Living

The morning my brother Harry was airlifted from I-81 to the trauma center, I drove toward the hospital barely able to breathe. At a stoplight I noticed the people in their cars around me—a man checking his hair in the rearview mirror, a child kicking his legs in his car seat. Ordinary people doing ordinary things. Which is when it hit me that this was not a dream. I’d seen Harry the day before. Whole, alive, himself. It was the last time I’d see him that way.When I got to the ICU, the doctor offered reassurances: “It’s still very early,” and “We’re doing everything we can”—the kinds of things doctors say to families in shock. I know this because I’ve said these things to patients myself. But I took one look at my baby brother—intubated, sedated, badly banged up—and I knew this was it.I’m a primary care physician. Mortality, even if distant or hypothetical, is implicit in every patient encounter. What else is a doctor’s job if not to forestall death and improve life while it’s being lived? For 25 years I’ve helped people live, and I’ve also helped them die. Before I entered that ICU, I thought I understood that nothing is permanent. But there’s a difference between knowing a thing i...