Death and the Doctor: A Love Letter and Eulogy

By Sarah Johnson

As days and decades go by in my life and relationships, I’ve been pleased at the end of a year or another milestone that I continue to discover lovely surprises about my husband. He turned 33 a few weeks ago and indicated that this was a tough birthday for him, cranky about his budding crow’s feet and I think just feeling a little too worn out, weathered and cynical at such a young age to not yet have a real job. My son and I picked out birthday cards for him after school and the overwhelming message in mine was despite the crow’s feet and cynicism, I still believe I’ve taken home the jackpot. These surprises seem to reveal themselves in unexpected places…after a tough year dealing with the eruption and aftermath of a family member’s addiction in the midst of welcoming our second child into the world, all while starting cardiology fellowship, I discovered in him an unfiltered honesty, fierce loyalty and capacity for forgiveness, not to mention his superhuman ability to cope. People counseled us that marriage was work and medical training was a marathon, but phew, these were mile markers I couldn’t have dreamed. I think we’ve come out on the other side a more unified front, and with a greater appreciation for a simple, happy, healthy existence.

This past holiday, we were lucky enough to have him home for nine (yes, NINE!) days with no pager, calls, or clinic notes. As I’ve come to learn, this can be both blessing and curse, as the doctor knows no other gear than “on.” I think during that time we hosted two out-of-town family visits, painted the living room and bedroom, cleaned out the attic, raked leaves and winterized the backyard, cooked, baked, watched the usual slew of holiday movies, all while keeping our two small children at bay. I’ll give him most of the credit. The last few days we were hit with an unexpected twist.

What we didn’t plan for is dealing with a trial of life that we haven’t yet as a family experienced within the usual joyful, boisterous walls of our home: death of a family member, in this case, our loyal Labrador. Death is something I now know is part of my husband’s regular work routine in cardiology and though a natural outcome for each of us, an experience that can be beautiful or terribly ugly and misunderstood.

Too often, when Paul comes home after a long day, I choose to focus on myself and lose sight of all that he’s seen through his eyes. During residency, I remember him bursting in the door with emotion after a particularly intense 12-hour shift, in which there were two memorable and distinctly different deaths. The first, a family who, with my husband’s gentle guidance, surrounded their father/grandfather/patriarch and said goodbye while he died peacefully and gracefully. The second, a family who chose to blame and hurl accusations at the medical team involved, even after everything had been done that could have, long after their loved one was gone. The highs and lows he felt that day gave me a window into his work and his heart.

Over the holiday, I experienced a new side of Paul and watched his specialized set of skills spill over into our home and personal life. Before there were babies in our house there were dogs, two of them and we brought them home as pups about six months apart, not long after our move to North Carolina and the start of Paul’s intern year. They were my running buddies, my warm bed companions during the many overnights at the hospital and the first to kiss our babies when we brought them home from the hospital. Winston was 55 chocolate pounds of explosive energy from sunup to sundown and his tail stopped only for sleep. He was our special dog and a troublemaker from the start, with volumes of medical history; never able to satiate his habit of eating things he shouldn’t, to his ultimate demise. A frequent flyer in the OR, the vet has removed several objects from his intestines: a diaper, a hooded baby outfit, and a myriad of socks. He recently had surgery just weeks before Christmas when he dined on the contents of my husband’s hospital overnight bag: two pairs of stinky crew socks.

After his second obstruction surgery, we took out a pet accident policy and added a line item to our scanty budget under life insurance. This kept my anxiety at bay for a year or two. After his fourth surgery, my ever-sensible husband said we needed to talk. If I had been left to my own devices, I might have continued to put that poor dog through surgery after surgery and driven myself mad in the process out of fear and hopeless desperation. Winston was suffering and because of his habits, so was my mental health and my relationship with my family, going to excessive lengths to keep him from getting sick. The last time he was ill was two days after Christmas and my daughter’s second birthday. Thanks to the forethought and experience of my husband, we discussed his future calmly and rationally and decided that if his illness were another obstruction, it would be his last. I am so grateful that Paul had the courage to take Winston to the vet that day for I couldn’t have done it myself. I’m grateful that he was able to bear the harsh weight of judgment from onlookers who knew Winston but didn’t realize the extent of his troubled life at home. I’m most grateful that when he came home, he said nothing, but crawled into bed and held me in his arms. He was at peace and so I was at peace and we knew in our hearts that it was right. It shattered us both, but what Paul did that day took a great deal of humanity, bravery and empathy. Winston died on a sun-soaked day in December in the loving arms of his master and at the hands of his loyal vet. He was a week shy of his 6th birthday and wiser than us all in the ways of living fearlessly, uninhibited. His life and death, in my mind, were beautiful.

Winston left a huge hole in our home this holiday, but he also brought us together and made me a believer that death is indeed an art and something, if given the choice, to be faced with the ones you love. It takes a special person to handle death with dignity and delicacy and I count myself lucky to share my life with one.

Sarah Johnson is the editor of the Physician Family weekly blog and has a background in magazine journalism and healthcare marketing and communication. Her husband is a third-year cardiology fellow and they live in Durham, North Carolina with their two young children and golden retriever.