He considered following his master's degree in English literature with a Ph.D., but entered medical school instead, yearning, as he later wrote, "to find answers that are not in books... to keep following the question of what makes human nlife meaningful, even in the face of death and decay."
... Then 10 years after we met, while we were finishing our final years of training at Stanford, Paul's health began to falter. After a battery of tests, we learned that his back pain and weight loss were not symptoms of exhaustion, but metastatic lung cancer. It was now our turn to face mortality and, more than ever, to follower the question of what makes human life meaningful...
... One night recently, alone in bed, I read "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis, and I came across the observation that "bereavement is not the truncation of marred love but one of its regular phases." He writes that "what we want is to live our marriage well and faithfully through that phase, too." Yes, I breathed. Bereavement is more than learning to separate from a spouse. Though I can no longer comfort Paul, the other vows I made on our wedding day- to love Paul, to honor and keep him- stretch well beyond death. The commitment and loyalty, my desire to do right by him, especially as I raise our daughter, will never end. And I am keeping another final promise...
"my last day as a surgeon" (http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/my-last-day-as-a-surgeon)
As we uncovered the patient, the scrub nurse, one with whom I hadn’t worked before, said, “You on call this weekend, Doc?”
“Nope.” And possibly never again.
“Got any more cases today?” “Nope.” And possibly never again.
“Shit, well, I guess that means this is a happy ending! Work’s done. I like happy endings, don’t you, Doc?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I like happy endings.”
... On my way out to the parking lot, a fellow approached to ask me something, but his pager went off. He looked at it, waved, turned, and ran back in to the hospital—“I’ll catch you later!” he called over his shoulder. Tears welled up as I sat in the car, turned the key, and slowly pulled out into the street. I drove home, walked through the front door, hung up my white coat, and took off my I.D. badge. I pulled the battery out of my pager. I peeled off my scrubs and took a long shower.
Later that night, I called [my co-resident] Victoria and told her I wouldn’t be in on Monday, or possibly ever again, and wouldn’t be setting the O.R. schedule.
“You know, I’ve been having this recurring nightmare that this day was coming,” she said. “I don’t know how you did this for so long.”
"before i go" (http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2015spring/before-i-go.html)
In residency, there’s a saying: The days are long, but the years are short. In neurosurgical training, the day usually began a little before 6 a.m., and lasted until the operating was done, which depended, in part, on how quick you were in the OR...
Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.
Yet one thing cannot be robbed of her futurity: my daughter, Cady. I hope I’ll live long enough that she has some memory of me. Words have a longevity I do not. I had thought I could leave her a series of letters — but what would they really say? I don’t know what this girl will be like when she is 15; I don’t even know if she’ll take to the nickname we’ve given her. There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.
That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.
[Editor's note: Paul Kalanithi died March 9, 2015, at age 37.]