[September 1998 journal entry]
I returned to Baltimore a few weeks after my close friend Tom Elkin’s death to assist his wife with the task of going through Tom’s material at home and at his Johns Hopkins office. Tom died suddenly at home on August 12 in the early morning hours. He was 49 years old. The Ob/Gyn Department chair had left Tom’s office untouched. After several minutes sitting silently together, Tom’s wife spoke quietly, “It feels like Tom will come rushing through the office door at any moment. How do we go on? What was it all about?” I said, “It was about reaching out to young physicians who had not yet lost their resolve to be humane and to exercise a resolute social conscience in the practice of medicine.” It was a moving experience to return to Tom’s office for the first time since his death. Tom’s wife asked if I had any perspectives on his death. As we sat together in Tom’s office, I shared the following reflections with her.
I returned to Baltimore a few weeks after my close friend Tom Elkin’s death to assist his wife with the task of going through Tom’s material at home and at his Johns Hopkins office. Tom died suddenly at home on August 12 in the early morning hours. He was 49 years old. The Ob/Gyn Department chair had left Tom’s office untouched. After several minutes sitting silently together, Tom’s wife spoke quietly, “It feels like Tom will come rushing through the office door at any moment. How do we go on? What was it all about?” I said, “It was about reaching out to young physicians who had not yet lost their resolve to be humane and to exercise a resolute social conscience in the practice of medicine.” It was a moving experience to return to Tom’s office for the first time since his death. Tom’s wife asked if I had any perspectives on his death. As we sat together in Tom’s office, I shared the following reflections with her.
- By trying to make sense of Tom’s life I find my way past/through the need to make sense of his death.
- I see some parallels with Bonhoeffer’s death and M. L. King’s death in that Tom’s life ended while he was still ‘on the field’ and before he became too out of sync with his times.
- It was natural for Tom to have seen signs of another journey and challenge at Johns Hopkins at the time of his death since he approached life was forward-looking.
- f Tom had died while engage in medical relief work in Africa in 1975, it would have been too early to interpret his life, whereas by 1998 he had lived long enough to interpret his life.
- Tom was old enough to remember an era/setting when academic medicine was distinctive (versus the present managed care and business setting, a paradigm shift that made his vision increasingly antiquated).
- Tom’s sons have inherited a ‘good name’, but such can be difficult to manage given where Tom ‘set the bar’.
- Tom and I worked so well together because we were both ‘out of the box’ re our peers.
