After a Death

Abstract

I have witnessed many deaths and, loyal to my training, have generally remained objective and appropriately supportive during these events. Death, once a matter between family and physician, is now a public event involving guidelines, consultants, and tests, house officers, social workers, nurses, and students. This change in the nature of dying allows one to be more scientific and less involved when talking with a family, making it easier to review with them the litany of personnel and procedures that have been invoked and that basically mean there is no hope for their child. I believe that, in general, I am too old to have new insights into myself; however, a death this summer became an epiphany for me. She was a 14-year-old girl, an only child, who three days earlier had been practicing to be a cheerleader, and who on a bright summer day, despite all our best skills