At anytime of transition, there are those special “lasts”
that come along. There is the last
time you go to your favorite restaurant; the last time you go to your beloved
church; the last time you see a dear friend.
Some of those are met with an appropriate recognition. At graduation there is honor and a
family dinner; at church, there are hugs and prayers.
But what about those lasts that you don’t recognize as being
a last? Often, it’s because you
don’t realize they are lasts. They
just…are, as a way of your normal life.
And they slip away into oblivion peacefully, much, I suppose, in the way
they entered in the first place.
I’ll always remember my last time at the hospital, or the
last time at church. But I don’t
think I remember the last time I saw the Philadelphia skyline, or the last time
I saw the art museum, or the last time I saw any one of a number of special
friends. I never made it to a
“last” Phillies game, or a last stroll through Rittenhouse Square.
Maybe these are the best kinds of lasts, because it somehow
leaves the door open for return.
It’s nice to celebrate things for sure, but it’s also nice to quietly
slip away. Even now if I close my
eyes I can see the vast skyline of the city I called home for so long, as if it
were just up the road from me now.
Part of the wonder of being a trauma surgeon is this
slipping in and out of peoples’ lives with barely their knowledge. In a way I feel like that with
Philadelphia – I’ve come and gone.
