Dear Grandad

I think of you a lot these days. I probably thought about you a lot before I started down the path of medicine, but I think about you now in more brilliant colors and great memories. I remember how we used to write each other when I was younger, up until you passed away. You had some great advice in those letters that I've kept and look at some times. I think I'll look at them again tonight and try to find some pearls of wisdom.

I try to call Grandma now and then and it's always so uplifting to hear her positive voice on the other end. At 95, she sounds the same as when I was only four years old. She is a remarkable, inspiring woman, as you know :) She likes to tell me how you are watching over me and guiding me into health care. I think she's right.

It's funny how I've never forgotten your stories about starting out so young as a doctor and feeling uncertain or unprepared. You were my doctor sometimes. Of course, by then, medicine was pretty much old hat. But, I remember in particular your story about sitting vigil for a young child with polio. You did that even though you had four children at home at the time.

I wish you could be here still and give me the dirty truth and the incredible greatness about being a doctor. I wish I could ask you questions and get answers to all of this work ahead of me. But, I will have to settle for the letters you've written in the past and the feeling I do have that you are never far away.

You were my doctor, you were my grandad and you are now my silent mentor.