Early Monday morning was my usual start-the-week routine: Set up things at the office, update my computer, check the mail, review the week’s schedule.
I was rolling the phones when a text passed by on my screen that a friend had died.
He wasn’t a close friend, but still someone I liked and got along with on the occasional times we ran into each other. Good neurologist, all-around nice person. It was a shock. I’d just seen him a week ago when we crossed paths and briefly chatted about life, the universe, and everything, before going on with our days.
Dr. Allan M. Block
We’d trained together back in the mid-90s. He was 2 years younger than I. I was in my last year of residency when he started the program. I remember being at different gatherings back then with him and his wife, a few with his then-young son, too.
And now he’s gone.
Along with the grief, you think about your own mortality. What can I be doing to hang around longer? To be better? To enjoy whatever time that I have left?
Why a mensch like him?
These are questions we all face at different times. Questions that have no answers (or at least not easy ones). There’s a lot of “why” in the universe.
There are people out there whom you don’t see often, but still consider friends, and enjoy seeing when you encounter them. Sometimes you’re bound by a common interest, or background, or who knows what. You may not think of them much, but it’s somehow reassuring to know they’re out there. And upsetting when you suddenly realize they aren’t.
You feel awful for them and their families. You wish there was a reason, or that something, anything, good will come out of the loss. But right now you don’t see any.
Our time here is never long enough. We make the best of what we have and wish for a better tomorrow.
As Longfellow wrote, the best we can hope for is to leave “footprints on the sands of time.”
I’ll miss you, friend.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.