A little brown-haired girl came to my examination table one day because she couldn’t stop crying.

            It seemed that this little girl’s grandmother had been buried that day, and, at the funeral, the girl had begun to cry hysterically, sobbing loudly that she wanted to die too, to go and be with her grandmother in heaven.

            This was more than her mother could bear, so she brought her daughter to me. Entering the room, I looked at the pair, both consumed in their grief. “Dr. Fowler, could you give my daughter something to calm her? She’s so upset about her grandmother’s death that at the funeral she said that she wanted to die and go to be with Grandma.”

            Some things I can handle just fine: Blood, gore, cuts, fractures; these things are no problem for my sensitivity. But, people’s grief, especially the shared sorrow among family members for a lost loved one, is so hard for me to deal with at arm’s length. My heart softens quickly at the side of a family unit who has lost a part of their minds, a part of their very lives.

            Sooner or later I had to look the little girl in the face. Her eyes were wide open, reddened from her sobbing only a few minutes before. She seemed dazed, her gaze glassy and her cheeks tear-streaked.

            "I’m so sorry about your grandmother," I said. She didn’t say anything for a moment, only nodding slowly as her eyes filled again with tears. Then, I leaned to her and held her hand for a moment, unsure of the relevance of anything I had to say.

            "You know, sometimes God loves a few special people so much that He wants them to come live with Him in Heaven," I whispered to her softly, my own eyes now filled with tears. My voice cracked after that and I couldn’t speak.

            "You’ll be with her tonight?” I asked her mother. She said that she would. At this point my Paramedic appeared at my shoulder. I murmured to him to give her an injection of a mild sedative. Reassuring her mother that I felt that this was an understandable anxiety reaction that would pass, I turned my back on the pair and went to the next patient.

            Several days passed. My practice kept my thoughts turned to healing matters of all types. The little girl and her sorrow were forgotten for the moment..

            Then, an evening came at my clinic on Highway 5 when it seemed that most of the people of Douglas County had the flu at the same time and had come to see me. The rooms and halls of my clinic were filled with the moans and groans of misery.

            Emergency medicine is a unique breed of patient care. I must move from room to room constantly, seeing what I see, analyzing data continuously, forming impressions of the people and the problems that I confront.

            My Paramedic stuck a chart in my hand and “indexed” me to the next curtain. Brushing aside the curtain, I entered the cubicle. There was the familiar scene of mother and son, the boy coughing and feverish. A routine exam followed, and medications were prescribed to deal with the problem.

            As I leaned against the counter writing the prescriptions for the chap, his mother walked softly up to me and quietly said, "I only had to give her one of those pills you prescribed," referring to her daughter who had been in the room with her son while I was examining him.

            I nodded, my thoughts engrossed in the mechanisms of disease and of the patients I had yet to see.

            "She was fine the next morning when she woke up," the mother offered.

            "Great!" I exclaimed, distantly.

            "She said her grandmother came to her during the night and, after that, everything was alright," she concluded.

            Remembrance flooded my mind as that little girl’s face from the week before, with the tears and the red eyes, melted into the smiling features of the child in the back of the exam room with her brother.

            "What did you say?" I asked, a little too sharply.

            "She told me the next morning that her grandmother had come to see her during the night. She had been sick for so long and in the hospital; she had had all of those tubes going in her, and she had been so uncomfortable and in such pain," she said. "When Grandma came to her in the night, she wasn’t sick any more. She was wearing a long white robe and was surrounded by a golden light. She told my daughter that she wasn’t in pain any longer, and that she felt well and strong."

            These sorts of stories usually paralyze me, with tears springing to my eyes and my heart pounding. Her mother went on, "And, at the last of her dream, her grandmother said that she loved her and would always be with her. When my daughter woke the next morning, she was fine and not sad any more."

            My mind was reeling from this story, so rich and personal, so cloaked in the hazy matters of the supernatural. I turned to the mother and saw the peace in her heart that the event had brought her.

            And, I turned to the little brown-haired girl, whose ear to ear smile wreathed her face in childlike joy, and gave her a big hug and kiss. Then, I sent them on their way, and excused myself to my office for a few minutes to dry my eyes before returning to my patients.

            These days here in my home town bring such sustaining joy to me as I mingle medically with the lives of friends and strangers. It is so good to be home.