“We have sad news for everyone.”
The administration gathered us together that morning in the auditorium, but we usually met in the small classrooms. Something was wrong; I could hear the hushed murmuring of my fellow classmates. What’s happening? Why are we here? Did you hear?
We were all students spending the summer together before our first semester of medical school. This program was organized to help us prepare for the intensity required in the study of medicine. We gathered to become a community, to create a support system for each other, and to get a head start on the skills that we would need to survive. In the four grueling years ahead, we would be fed information through a firehose, our stomachs full and bloated, trying to digest it all, or at least regurgitate on command.
We had all taken different roads to get here. I had just graduated from college. The girl next to me had taken a year off to qualify for in-state tuition. A group in the back row had gone backpacking across Europe. A few had worked in research labs, published papers, and earned other degrees.
“One of your classmates has taken his own life,” said the administrator.
I don’t remember the exact words that came next. His conditional admission had been revoked; some issue over grades from his college. He could not bear to tell his family. This had been his lifelong dream. No more details given. Counselors available.
A heavy cloud descended into the room. I struggled with my thoughts. I saw him yesterday in class. He was smiling. He looked happy. He must not have gotten the news yet. Or was he hiding it?
At the memorial on campus later that week, I stare at the collage of pictures that the family put together on a poster. I remember that smile.
The administrators at the medical school offer resources to cope. I talk about it briefly with some friends, but mainly we are in disbelief. I talk to no one else. I bury the event away into the recesses of my brain.
Do I want this thing bad enough that I would die for it? to be a doctor? to go to medical school? I’m not even sure what this path is. There are so many unknowns ahead. I have no family members that are doctors. This road is all new to me. I just know they call it medical school.
I flash back to 9th grade with the chicken pox. There was the unquenchable full-body itching before the rash started. I took a warm shower, ahh the skin felt better. Then, the pox started, one “dew drop on a rose,” then the next. Time made it worse, more lesions. There was no comfortable position. Each lesion more painful than the next. Itching, then open sores. More itching, pain. An endless succession, one resolving, then another appearing. And for an instant, I could not bear it, and for a split moment, I wanted to end it all. I just wanted to die. I just wanted it to be over. In the next moment, I could see the thought in the rearview mirror, and it shocked me. Could my mind really go there? Could I lose all hope? Even if just for an instant, I was just shocked that my mind could just drive by all the beautiful moments in this life without seeing them. But the moment had passed, I now remembered that this suffering would end. I knew that this endless succession of itching and pox would end. I had friends that had survived this. I knew that this would end.
Did he know that this would end?
I need to keep going because I can’t look back. I look ahead. I focus on the future. I move past this death, this loss, this smiling face looking back at me, the ghost of someone who has gone, because there will be more ghosts on the path ahead. There is nothing that I can do for this ghost, but I can help those on the path ahead. I can remember to look for hope.
I decide in that moment: I am not willing to die for this, but I am willing to live.
If you are in a place without hope, call a friend, a counselor, a hotline, an emergency room. Tell them your story, ask for help, and find the people who can help you to eventually tell a story with hope.