Death and Dying

Not every medical professional is equipped to deal with someone else's death and dying, let alone his own.

My father was a graduate of a prominent medical school in Kyoto Japan. You would think that he became a physician. Instead, he avoided the profession and concentrated in the world of pharmaceutical and biomedical research world.

He was unusually gifted in literature, especially abstract poetry, well the kind that normal people like us often don't understand due to its abstract nature. I used to think that he was rather eccentric or even emotional and mentally out there! He probably was a bit mentally unstable in some respect. Death of a human always shook him up and altered his stability in such a way that we all knew something was wrong. He became more consumed and he was a distant existence from all of us. I think he just simply had a strong longing for those who departed from him. I re-read numerous poems that he wrote during his life. The time he spent immersing himself in the words of poetry seemed to be the key to his existence, especially when he did not know how to grieve. The lines he described the state of mental chaos and solitude after his father, sister, and sister in law are simply raw. One would think that the author is mentally ill, and he probably was. I think the loss was never resolved in his heart and that was the the reason why he had to escape to the world of drinking. I am glad that he went before my mother did. I do not think that he could have endured years as a widower.

He once shook his head and said how he hated to think about blood, surgery etc. He just was a unique person. I was just thinking about him today.