In physician Anna Dovre’s essay “Body of Work,” she reflects on lessons learned about mortality through the exercise of practicing life-saving measures on a cadaver. Moving from uneasiness to acceptance, the essay touches on the author’s own shifting relationship to death itself. A section where she recalls an experience as a hospice volunteer is particularly touching—the scene of her sitting with an actively dying patient, doing what she can to offer touches of care to an otherwise unresponsive person moving closer to death by the breath.
“What a strange experience that must be—to submit oneself to learning the art of medicine, to saving lives and improving health, while also knowing that all of one’s patients will ultimately die. ”
This act, coupled with a vignette from a death in a trauma bay that occurred during another part of her training, show the author continuously assessing her relationship to both life and death in her formation as a doctor. What a strange experience that must be—to submit oneself to learning the art of medicine, to saving lives and improving health, while also knowing that all of one’s patients will ultimately die. An exercise in futility? A lesson in existentialism?
In my own work as a chaplain, I relate to the strangeness of coming so close to death on a daily basis through encounters with my patients, while also personally being at a place in life so full of growth and possibility. My own essay, entitled “String of Pearls,” connects with the pain of discerning one’s life choices in the face of profound existential threat. It is about the conflicting desires of wanting to have a baby while not wanting to subject a life to the suffering of this world.
The final section of Dovre’s essay describes her hearing a lecture about the destruction of the Milky Way through its eventual collision with Andromeda. Some people are terrified by the concept of their own death, let alone the total devastation of their entire world. But others are not. For some, including (I imagine) many healthcare workers, we know we will die, and yet we keep on living. As she quotes in her essay, “There’s a difference between living longer and dying slowly.” Working with the dying teaches us so many things, not the least of us that we will die one day, too. May we not simply live longer, nor die slowly, but embrace our existence with courage and hope.
Elizabeth Ryder
Elizabeth Ryder serves as a chaplain in the outpatient oncology setting in Boise, Idaho. She enjoys all things outdoors, along with writing, gardening and exploring through travel and adventure. Her Field Notes essay “String of Pearls” appears in the Fall 2024 Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine. Connect on IG: @lizryder217