Loss

There will be no more email messages with requests for data about the median age of legislators in Western European countries. No emails with provocative observations about the association between the rise in the overall suicide rate and the growing legalization of physician assisted suicide. They all began with “Dear Muriel,” never with “Hi Muriel,” never without a salutation. He is gone, I learned in July. Died just before his 88^thbirthday. It was the emphysema that got him in the end.

I realized last night that I haven’t written a single blog post since then. For some time, I’ve been finding it difficult to identify new findings in medicine worth writing about, that is, sufficiently interesting to me to write about them. Vitamin D is the panacea for aging; Vitamin D is out—useless, or worse. Calcium prevents osteoporosis; calcium doesn’t prevent osteoporosis. At long last, Congress passes legislation supporting caregivers; the new legislation won’t achieve much of anything. There’s a new, promising test to identify pre-clinical Alzheimer’s disease; there’s no point taking the test unless you want to enter a research study—or if you want to make yourself miserable sooner than necessary. None of this seemed to matter enough for me to write something about it. And now it matters even less because there is a hole in the fabric of the universe.

For years, I’ve been writing about meaning in old age: the importance of figuring out ways to remain engaged with the world despite age-associated limitations, despite encroaching frailty. I’ve consistently seen the role of geriatrics as facilitating a good old age, where 'good' implies a time to cultivate relationships and contributing to the net goodness in the world. Geriatrics is the means to an end, not the end itself. Sure, preventing or reversing frailty would be nice, but what is even more critical is adapting to whatever life has in store for us, and that's the domain where geriatrics, like palliative care, can make contributions. I’ve also written about accepting mortality, which applies both to people who themselves are facing the end of life and to those who care about them. But I don’t think I’ve said anything about how to cope with loss after death.

I suppose that as a physician, I’ve seen my role as ending when life ends. Dealing with what comes next, whether for the person who has died or for everyone else, that’s someone else’s domain. That’s for religion or psychology or social work. But now I’m facing a hole. Yes, I recognize that life is finite. Yes, birth and death, growth and loss are all natural, normal. But we humans, we are meaning-makers. We need to make meaning out of life even where there isn’t any. We do this with rituals, with ceremonies, with reminiscences. We immortalize the mortal through our memories. So, I will do what I usually do when confronted with something that I see as important: I will write. My writing will not patch the hole, but perhaps it will serve as a sort of ornamental curtain.

Rest in peace, my friend.

Daniel Callahan, pre-eminent bioethicist and a true mensch, died on July 16, 2019.