The beauty of studying medicine in such close proximity to another country is the overflow of culture I can learn from everyday through the people around me.
Today, our medical class hosted a ceremony to honor the dead as part of Dia de los Muertos. We shared the name of someone who is no longer with us in this realm, someone who had impacted in our lives in one way or another, as well as one quality they lived out that we admired. We closed our eyes and imagined them there beside us in the wide-windowed room overlooking the grassy lawn outside altogether.
I shared my mother’s name “Mijung Moon” and spoke the words “soft-hearted”
We pictured this person here smiling with us, proud of where we are, all that we are enduring in this present day and all that have endured. We remembered how much they meant to us, how much they’ve formed us, how still they push us to embody a certain trait that we may always strive after. How this life that ended continues on with us, those who remember them.
I loved this shift in perspective that this seemingly materialistic ceremony conveyed. As the alter holds the pictures and memorabilia of those we love and miss, we provide a space for them to visit us and share this physical space with us–to connect them back to us. Instead of carrying them only in our hearts, to see them beside us in the place that we are. The Christ-centered aspect of seeing this life as not the end was imbued into the discussion, to see the physical death of our patients as not the end of their spirit that lives on with us.
The physician who came to speak to us about how to process dying amongst our patients as well as our loved ones said something I will never forget. When you’re with your patient, you do not have to always hold back the tears. Let them be recognized as what makes you human. In Spanish, tears are poetically named “los jollas del amor” –as if our tears are the jewels of love. I thought about how beautiful this is–to see our tears not only as the hallmark of deep sorrow but also the overflow of our empathy, of our love for one another. Only in deep emotion can our body react in such a strong response.
To think about a patient who feels they are surrounded by loved ones who refuse to acknowledge what is to come. To see death as something unspeakable, even though it doesn’t have to be. It can be welcomed, it can be celebrated in addition to being handled with extreme love and care.
I hope I can be a physician one day–strong enough to be the one person a patient may be able to turn to and say, “I can’t say this to my family, they are not strong enough. But this is how I want my end to be like.”
Even though the days have been filled with this and that, I hope I can continue to remember to embrace sorrow when it comes, but let it go in the right time and place.
Pour your heart out once every day.
Then dedicate the rest of the day wholly dedicated to being in joy.
Sora in Seoul 