Safe Passage And Road Blocks

It was the early 1980s, and we were eleven years old. She and her identical twin sister had been classmates for several years, teasing presences with ponytails and impish grins. In the novel marinade of hormones that flavored my outlook on absolutely everything, I began to notice her. She was my first crush.

Years later I would discover a forgotten cache of notes declaring my love for her and wondering if my feelings were reciprocated, scraps of paper sealed in an envelope tantalizingly labeled, "CD's secret notes."

I last saw her at a friend's birthday when we were thirteen. I'd moved away by then, and we had barely spoken at the party.

Why recall her after all these years? Like most human trains of thought, it was non-linear. Larry King had just died, and reading his obituary I recalled that as an eleven year old she was a bizarrely vocal Larry King Live fan.

I googled her during a bout of insomnia to discover an amateur series of decade old blog posts written by her twin sister. Like a nonfunctional satellite continuing its ghostly orbit long after its mission is completed and its components have failed, the blog was a remnant, a fragment of code frozen in digital time.

There was the initial description of a constellation of symptoms that had led her to seek medical attention at UCLA, a series of tests and imaging studies, the ultimate diagnosis of autoimmune disease.

This was followed by a steady decline in function, unsuccessful chemotherapy, and eventually a Hail Mary attempt to undergo a stem cell transplant at the Hutch in Seattle.

The blog concluded with a final, devastating post: a report of the symptoms that brought her to the ER, the impending cardiac arrest, her unsuccessful resuscitation. She was 35 years old.

It's an unjust world that steals life arbitrarily, and it got me thinking of how my trajectory had changed since I was 35. What gifts had my additional stolen decade conferred on me that my 5th grade crush never got to enjoy?

Since age 35:

• The 1 year old who could nap snugly on a pillow blossomed into a 13 year old who insists she is taller than her mother.
• I had a son, who in the COVID pandemic has grown into my closest male friend.
• I have continued to grow together with my wife, course-correcting into a life that has made space for us to explore individual interests while walking a shared path of companionship. She remains my fiercest advocate, most trusted advisor, and the best thing that ever happened to me. Feeling understood by another human being is a gift I do not take for granted.
• I've developed a close network of misfit men and remarkable women who continue to help me grow as a person.
• I've found (admittedly small) meaningful ways to contribute, both within and beyond medicine, that will help to sustain me going forward.
• I've diversified my identity and my sources of joy beyond medicine.

Why was I granted safe passage into middle age while my crush received an arbitrary road block sentencing her to a premature death?

I am reminded, in this year of profound and widespread loss, of the resolve to endure.

From the concluding stanza of Robert Frost's A Leaf Treader:

But it was no reason I had to go because they had to go

Now up, my knee, to keep on top of another year of snow