Death.

"Every soul shall have taste of death; In the end to us shall ye be brought back"

(Al-'Ankabut 29:57)

Being attached to the palliative team meant we were constantly seeing people at the far end of their lives, battling whatever pathology they had with gusto only to be told that their time on earth was limited and that the doctors were helpless to do anything but help alleviate their physical pain; making the remnants of their existence just slightly more comfortable.

(And maybe pray for a miracle to happen.)

You may perhaps consider it morbid to impart the knowledge of one's mortality to them face to face. Yet somehow i like to think it is the most humane thing to do - to address it head on without those well-meant but horrible white lies. Lies that give patients and their families false hopes, only to crush those hopes into splintering pieces that cut them deep when the blowing force of truth can no longer be held back.

But then again, what do i know?

During my week with the team, I was required to present a case history so i went up to see one of the patients on the palliative care list. He was a middle-aged man who had a very aggressive type of lung cancer.

He was dying and we both knew it.

I didn't stay with him long. The silent war with death he was battling was too much for me to take. So i gathered whatever info i needed from him, said my thanks and good luck, and walked away not really keen on looking back at his sad face.

I honestly don't know what i got from that experience or what life lessons i learned. But the thing i left with as i walked out of the hospital doors that day was the image of a broken man; his slow, pained voice echoing softly through the quiet, unforgiving antiseptic-smelling hallways and the mutual yet devastating knowledge that this person's life was ebbing away as the seconds ticked by.

His anguished eyes, especially, still haunts me at night sometimes.

I know I'll be seeing more of this in the future, and i know death is inevitable, yet somehow it still manages to shake my spirits to the core; still manages to tug invisible strings that catches my breath.

And I know in time, i would probably be hardened to such pain and misery. I would probably be numbed to the sufferings. I would be able to dismiss a patient's death as yet another number, a statistic, without so much as flinching.

But for now at least, I'm happy i still feel that small, little twinge in my heart cos it tells me that I am only just human~