A Sea of Graves

To those for whom I was never too much

“I love you, Dr. Taylor” she would say, hugging me goodbye.

I used to be embarrassed—that maybe I was less of a physician

because my patients loved me

and isn’t love too soft, too easy,

not smart and scientific?

(I was once told I was too motherly).

But I am good at this,

at loving, and letting people know that I do.

But what to do with all these people I love

who leave?

Deaths without closure,

patients on my schedule one day, off the next.

Do I call their mothers, their husbands?

I imagine dialing from the clinic phone

“I loved her,” I would say.

“She was special to me,” I would say.

I can feel the patients’ arms around me, squeezing goodbye.

Out of fear of borrowing their pain,

instead I think of them at night,

return in the morning to a clinic that is a sea of graves.

I used to see Carla in that room, always with cotton-candy  pink hair

and Tracy over there, with beautiful, long false eyelashes.

David and his sunglasses and his wife’s desserts

Andrea and her coordinating purse and shoes

so many young mothers—Courtney, Dasia, Sabrina

their children coloring quietly in the corner.

Their tear-filled eyes when they would look up at me,

asking who would parent their kids when they were gone.

Her brain bled, his heart stopped, his lungs clotted, her  pressure dropped.

The infection spread, the cancer grew, the bleeding worsened.

They all died.

I understand, now, why others wonder how I do this job,

“palliative care sounds so hard.”

I know I helped them, that I loved them

but the cost of that love is hard to bear.

An elderly Jamaican man was discharged home with  hospice,

but first, asked if he could give me his blessing

and told me he would look for me in heaven.

He gestured me to bend my head down to his chest

reached his hands up, held my face in his hands

puffing from the exertion and the high flow oxygen

and kissed me lightly on the top of my head.

I can still feel it.

In the Jewish tradition, there is a yizkor

a naming of the dead.

I keep a list next to my computer

a reminder of the names of the patients I have loved and  lost.

I wonder if someday, I will die and they will be there

a sea of faces, welcoming me home.