Grief

Tonight, I left in the middle of my senior's retirement dinner. That, it hardly needs saying, is not what I usually do. I did so because of my daughter's loss of her pet.

Our hamster died this evening.

Our family had talked about the short life span of hamster. One day she would have to leave us. We knew it. But even the fate is somewhat expected, it turned out that mourning was more difficult than I'd have expected. When my daughter left a sobbing voice message on my phone, I knew I should stay with her during such awful moment. We mourned the very fact that our hamster can die. We mourned about her death that early and that suddenly, before we had chance to buy and refill her favorite treat of sunflower seeds.

I remember reading a research on children losing a pet between the age of 6 and 13. Even years after the pet's death, according to the study, some school-age children still described their loss as "the worst day of their lives." In many ways, this is very true. If you are a little disturbed by this, I am with you. For better or worse (okay, clearly worse now that she died), the bonding with our hamster has wired our brains to treat her as a family member. No one could pretend that losing a hamster is anywhere near as losing a toy.

We saw so clearly the need for a goodbye ritual. That helps. She wrote text messages to her friends, the way people announce the death of a family member. After writing a poem and a letter, Jasmine brought hand shovels to dig a grave with us. We held a goodbye funeral. In some sense, we are, all of us, in the end, social animals not supposed to bottle up the emotional pain.

Amen.

Choice

I am sure there are days when you come home late, when everyone is asleep. There is no easy way around this, aside from thinking of another occasion to reconnect. Rightly so: it isn’t easy.

Whew. Looking back, I find it hard to believe I had the first week of this month without a single chance to have dinner with family.

You read that right. I wasn’t able to go home for dinner for one whole week.

I felt my guilt. The hectic week before has taught me to be more sensitive to the personal life and family life. I’ve promised myself: There isn’t an excuse to leave my family without good reason. In turn, I’ve opted to skip a transplant infectious disease conference today. I don’t think it’s too bad a choice when I could spend a weekend afternoon outdoor with my wife and daughter. I just knew that I'd found out something more important than sitting in a lecture hall.

Revived

No matter how much I grow to love running, there are times when it's hard to keep running. The reason I skipped running for one whole month was that I'd been recovering from a knee injury.

As most runners know, such a break is, in effect, wrestling with addicts' withdrawal from coming off drugs or alcohol. Shakiness. Emptiness. Crankiness.

After doggedly following the ups and downs of a professional examination for the Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians this week, I felt like I should learn to get back up after falling down. That's what I told the examination candidates. Somehow, it had never occurred to me that I should more or less follow the same advice. I checked my kneecap, trying to figure out how much the discomfort resulted from twisting injury and how much from ice burns. Pray tell me - not too loudly please - I'm not the only dimwit who burns his own skin after applying ice pack to the knee.

The rain was not too heavy and should get me ready to run for 10 km, I thought. I braced myself for the challenge once I put on my running shoes. Blood rushed to my brain; I felt an animating surge of adrenaline, of picking up my speed, of running at my lactate threshold. It was in this state of mind that I finished my run with shoes all soaked and myself drenched by the rain. And, yes, rejuvenated.