Apostrophe

By October 12, 2012April 11th, 2014Other Writing, Selected Essays

JAMA – Apostrophe by Rachel Toor

From JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association

Because of the specialty you chose, and by dint of your personality and the way you practice medicine, I’m sure this letter will be familiar to you; just another missive from a bereaved family member of one of your patients, gushing gratitude for the care of her beloved (good feelings have to find a place to go, in the mix of the displacement of death and vexed family dynamics and often, I suspect, get planted on physicians, whether deserved or not); just another pile of clichés and the inanities we say and think in times when our thinking is muddied by grief.