The Best Lasts

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. 

And now…a new start.