Beautiful days

It was an absolutely phenomenal Vermont spring day today. It was kind of day made for fishing or gardening or kayaking on the pond or hiking and birdwatching. But I did none of that, because today was also, unfortunately, the kind of day made for weekend call {insert a grumbly, frowny face here}. Reluctant to venture too far from home lest the black box of evil (also gloomily referred to as the call pager) begin to shriek, I pondered how to best enjoy the beautiful afternoon. In the end, I gathered up all of my sundry electronics and settled down into one of the wooden Adirondack chairs on the back deck. A perfect amount of gentle breeze was wafting around me – enough to cool down the 80 degree sunshine, but not enough to whip my hair into my face and annoy me. The leaves rustled, the scent of freshly mown grass filled the air, and the distant (and somewhat obnoxious) sounds of the neighborhood ice cream truck filled my world. It was a perfect moment in time. I looked up at the bright blue sky and for the first time in about three weeks, I felt completely relaxed. These quiet moments… the moments where my back doesn’t hurt from carrying around internal stresses, where my head doesn’t ache from all the noise that constantly envelops me, where the headache that lingers between my eyes dissipates…these moments don’t come nearly as often as I would like since I joined the world of medicine, so I’ve learned to seize them as they come and simply enjoy them. They are not

grand moments filled with adventure but for me, they are simply enough. I miss these beautiful moments desperately sometimes. But no matter how quiet and sweet a moment is, a pall always lingers because it is in these peaceful moments that I find I miss Chandler most of all. It is during these moments that my heart breaks over and over and over again. I miss my little brother still. I miss him so very much. It’s been ten months and my world still feels upside down and inside out. And after ten months, I am (still) not even remotely able to understand how Chandler could ever have given any moment of this world up. I can't even understand why that thought even crossed his mind...and I certainly can't understand how he decided that these small moments weren't worth his time, how they weren't enough for him. I am slowly learning to accept that I am not meant to understand these feelings, that none of us are, really, and for that I suppose I am grateful. At the very least this world and these moments are enough for me - so I will savor them enough for the both of us.