Time To Say Goodbye

Last night I discovered on Facebook (of all places) that one of my former orchestra directors is currently on hospice at All Saints. To say I was floored would be an understatement, yet I shouldn't have been surprised. She was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer 28 months ago (normally I'd say two years but this was the number my former private lesson teacher told me when I called her for more information), and last week her health took a turn for the worse. The person on Facebook who posted the info about her told me that she probably had days left, which, again, shouldn't have been a surprise. I'd spent a month in geriatrics; I knew that most people who enter hospice care usually pass away within a few days. But still...this was my teacher. She had always been so strong and aged well, despite being close to 70 when I graduated from high school. And she was dying.

I called All Saints and they transferred my call to her room. Her voice was weak and she spoke slowly, but she still remembered me after all these years. "Teachers don't forget," she said. "You were very special." That brought tears to my eyes, and I had to try really hard not to cry while speaking to her on the phone. I told her that I'd played my violin in college, that I went to medical school and am now living on the east coast doing my residency in internal medicine with an interest in heme/onc. I told her about meeting up with my best friend, who was one of her favorite students, two months ago in New York, and said that we were both thinking of her. She said she was flattered that I thought of her, and I said there was no way I could forget. Before medical school, and before college, orchestra was my whole life. Music was one of the few things I thought I excelled in, and part of it I owed to all my directors. Including her.

I didn't want to keep her talking for fear that she needed rest. After we said goodbye I realized there was so much I forgot to tell her, but at the very least she knows I'm thinking about her. I then called my private lesson teacher for the first time in 7 years (amazing how I still remember her phone number) to ask for more information, since she and my former director were very close to each other. Knowing that I was now a doctor, she left nothing out in telling me how my director's illness had progressed since the diagnosis. I asked if there was any pain, and fortunately she said no. "There was never any pain," she said. For that I'm extremely grateful. I just don't know how to say goodbye.