Saying Goodbye
SYNOPSIS
Illustration by Stephanie Singleton
When medical student Peter Park’s grandfather died, he was unable to fly to Korea for the funeral due to COVID restrictions. But in anatomy lab, the cadaver he was assigned to shared some similarities to his grandfather that were difficult to explain. Spending time with the body of this stranger, he was able to come to terms with his grandfather’s death.
LISTEN
storyteller
Peter Park is a fourth year medical student at Burnett School of Medicine at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. He has a background in theatre/comedy improv and continues his artistic side with creative writing and storytelling. He plans to pursue Internal Medicine/Psychiatry residency to treat mental health among patients with chronic medical diseases. Outside of medicine, he can be found hiking National Parks with his wife, bouldering, or playing with his two cats.
Host
Emily Silverman is an internal medicine physician at UCSF and Creator of The Nocturnists. Her writing has been supported by MacDowell and published in The New York Times, The Virginia Quarterly Review, JAMA, CHEST, McSweeneys, and more. She was the Hellman Artist-in-Residency at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in 2020 and served on the COVID Crisis Group, which recently published the book, "Lessons from the COVID War." She lives with her husband and daughter in San Francisco, and tweets @ESilvermanMD.
EPISODE SPONSOR
This episode of Stories from the Word of Medicine is sponsored by The New York Zen Center.
Are you a physician, advanced practice registered nurse, or physician assistant looking to cultivate well-being and joy in medicine through evidence-based training? If so, visit zencare.org/findjoy to learn more about integrating your practice.
CREDITS
Hosted by Emily Silverman
Produced by Emily Silverman and Jon Oliver.
This episode’s interview was recorded at Aerial View Studio in Minneapolis (January 2024)
Edited and mixed by Jon Oliver.
Peter’s story was coached by Kristin Moe and Molly Rose Williams. This season’s stories were originally performed live in Minneapolis in April 2023 at "Rebirth", a performance by The Nocturnists and The Center for Art in Medicine at The University of Minnesota
The Nocturnists original theme music by Yosef Munro
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
Illustrations by Stephanie Singleton
This season of The Nocturnists is sponsored by The Physicians Foundation
The Nocturnists is made possible by the California Medical Association, and donations from people like you!
CME
CE/CME credit is not currently available for this episode. Join our mailing list to be kept in the loop of new offerings!
TRANSCRIPT
click to expand
The Nocturnists: Stories from the World of Medicine
Season 6: Episode 4:"Saying Goodbye"
Episode Transcript
TRANSCRIPT:
Emily Silverman
You're listening to The Nocturnists: Stories from the World of Medicine. I'm Emily Silverman. Sometimes, we notice patterns in the world - symbols or repetitions that seem like they could be a coincidence, but for whatever reason, seem to hold a deeper meaning for us. In today's story, medical student Peter Park takes us on a journey from past to present; from a vineyard in Korea to anatomy lab. And shows us how a series of such synchronicities helped him process the death of his grandfather during the pandemic. Peter is a fourth year medical student at the Burnett School of Medicine at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. He has a background in theater, comedy and improv, and plans to pursue residency in psychiatry with a focus on treating people with chronic medical diseases. Let's take a listen to Peter's story, "Saying Goodbye," which he performed live in Minneapolis in 2023.
Peter Park
It was the first day of anatomy lab and I'm dreadful. You see, I'm the type of person who gets nauseous when they see blood on the screen. Maybe some of you too. And so you can imagine me, a first-year medical student, walking through the basement double doors. And as I push, you feel the freezing cold temperatures giving you goosebumps under your scrubs. Before you look out, you see metallic tables with baby blue body bags. Okay! I walk over to my cadaver and there's a sign on the table and it says "elderly female, 76-year-old, stroke." Okay, can't really work with much there. But I go over it and I unzip the cadaver bag. And the first thing that hits you is the smell of formaldehyde. Which by the way is a warning to never eat breakfast again. And then I start to observe my cadaver. I notice her knees are bent inwards in a way that feels unnatural. The tips of her fingers are stained yellow - smoker, maybe? And the drops of formaldehyde hang off her hair like morning dew. Well, let's get started. Masks, gloves, goggles, I grab a scalpel my right hand and my lab partner says we start with the abdomen. I almost forgot where the abdomen was. And I look and I make an incision across the midline. And I think that's what bothered me most that day- was how easily the skin broke underneath the blade. Thank God I didn't throw up that day. And luckily each day after that got a little better. I get less nauseous, I feel more confident. And of course, right when I get the most confident I am, that's when I get the call. It was in the middle of the night and I'm driving back home to my apartment after a long day in the anatomy lab. And I get to the intersection right before my apartment. And I get a call. And it's my dad. Which is weird because he's the type of person to text you before he calls you. And it's also 10:30 at night. Something's wrong. I pick up, "Hey, what's up?" And all he says is, "할아버지가 돌아가셨다" (Korean)/ “hal-abeojiga dol-agasyeossda” (English pronunciation), which translates to "grandfather's dead." And I watch as the intersection light turns from red to green. But I can't take my foot off the brakes. You see, my family and I have been struggling with my grandfather's Alzheimer's for the past couple of years. But before we even get there, I want to tell you the man he was before his diagnosis. The few summers I went to Korea to see him, my brother and I would go and, I think I was 12 maybe, and he would greet us with his huge burly open arms, showing off all his muscles that he had on the vineyard. And he was tan- like he was not part of our family kind of tan. And he would brag about his vineyard all the time. And I hated it because he would make us wake up before dawn and he had roosters so it know was before dawn. We'd walk up the mountain that's in his backyard, all the way to the top to see his two acre vineyard and he'd be like, "let's get to work." He had a bucket, and chopsticks, and garden shears. And my brother and I were both children, by the way, are going to be working every day in the hot, humid sun in Korea just to come back home. We'd scrub our feet clean and stomp on grapes until like 10pm. In middle school, my teachers would ask, "are you excited for summer?" and I was the only kid who was like, "No." "I am child labor." And that was an interesting PTA meeting. The last time I saw my grandfather alive was the summer before medical school. And it was the first time as an adult too. And the man that I knew, the strong farmer man - I could barely recognize him now. He was being wheeled down in a wheelchair. His muscles had atrophied. And he was pale. My father is the first to greet him. And he goes to my grandfather and says, "Hey, Dad, it's me. Do you remember me?" No response. And I see my dad's nose flare, his lips tremble. And he gets flushed. When he tries again, he kneels onto his right knee, his best suit. And he meets my grandfather eye level and says, "Dad, can you remember me?" He looks at my family. "Can you remember anyone?" And suddenly my grandfather looks up. But it's not at the person. But it's just to a sound really. And he looks to my dad, but doesn't recognize him. And then he looks to the person behind him, which is me. And he raises his finger. And he points and says, "stubborn kid." And I watch as everyone's neck just turns back at me. And then I feel this sense of guilt and shame. Because for the few years he didn't recognize anyone until this point. And it was me of all people. Not surprisingly, my family didn't talk to me the rest of the trip, actually. And my brother and I that night, we were sharing a bunk bed and he was below me. And I could hear under his breath, "you should feel lucky." Luck? This is guilt. In fact, that feels like survivor's guilt. Because out of everyone that he knew more, he only recognized me. And somehow I'm a core memory? I don't want this. A car honks behind me before I'm back into the intersection, the light turns yellow, and I just - I miss my turn, I just pull over to the side of the road and I just start crying. My dad's on the other end, clearly not hearing me crying. And he's talking about logistics. He's asking me to come back home to California because my sister needs someone to take care of her because she's still in high school. And I asked why can I go to Korea for the funeral. And he said because COVID. COVID had restricted, at least in Korea, that only immediate family members could go for funerals, which excluded grandchildren. And so I go back home. I spend a week. And before I know it, I'm back in the anatomy lab. And it's kind of eerie how the routine settles back in. Masked, gloved, goggled, I grabbed a scalpel in my right hand. But this time, it feels different. It's not the coldness of the room. It's not the stiffness of my shoulders. No, it's the thoughts in my head. I should be in Korea. I should be with my parents, I should be with my family, I should be with my grandfather, I should be by his body. And instead I'm with a body of a stranger I never knew. Why am I here? And I feel a tap on my shoulder. And my lab partner says, "you good?" I don't know the right way to grieve, but I know I didn't do it right. I start to lose sleep. I start to lose weight. I start to lose my appetite. And I feel like I'm losing my mind. There is a point in the anatomy lab where we're dissecting parts of the neck. And we get to the common carotid, which is a huge artery to your brain. And I have my scalpel and I'm just dissecting away some fibers and it just gets caught on a couple, and I'm just pushing and pushing and I just get so frustrated. I cut it in through. I feel in my gloves, a mixture of old formaldehyde and blood. I start to get nauseous. And for some reason I'm back in the vineyard. But this time, I'm 12 again, and I'm squeezing a grape in my fingertips. But I see blood. I get nauseous, I run to the bathroom and I just throw up. I can't do this anymore. I get out of the lab, and I get a text from my dad. And we hadn't talked from the funeral or anything, just random text. And it's just a screenshot of an autopsy report. And he's like, "can you read what this says?" And so I'm calling him, talking about words like atherosclerosis, and yada, yada, yada. And then I get to the part that says "probable cause of death: stroke." Stroke. My cadaver. The sign on the first day, "it's a 76 year old female: stroke." They died of the same thing. This can't be real. There's, there's got to be a meaning behind this because it's got to be a connection there. This can't be a coincidence. And then I think maybe there is a message. I didn't get to see my grandfather. But maybe in the afterlife, he met with my cadaver and was like, "you're gonna see my grandson." I didn't get a chance to say goodbye. But maybe you can. Can you tell them this message?
Peter Park
And so the next day, I go to anatomy lab, excited for the first time, because I want to figure out what this message is from my grandfather. And before, her vasculature was a net that I had to cut through, but now it feels like a beautiful highway directing me towards my goal. This day is the last day and we have to flip her over to expose her back. And I'm at her head and I say "okay, we're gonna flip around three, okay?" "123." And in one sweeping motion, she flips over with a thud. Formaldehyde fluid splashes onto everyone's scrubs, and everyone winces back. Except for me. Because I'm captivated by the blue butterfly tattoo on her back. Because those were the same butterflies from the vineyard. I close my eyes. I feel warm. I see the butterflies fluttering past. And I'm 12 again. I have garden shears in my hand and I'm following my grandfather's footsteps. He has a bucket and chopsticks in his hands. And he's asking me, "point out the caterpillars. We got to get them out of here." And I point and I point, and I mistakenly point to a cocoon. And he says, "no, no, we leave that alone. It has escaped us." He hands me the garden shears and he starts pointing all the branches we need to cut. And I keep cutting and cutting, and at some point I just get frustrated. "Grandpa, these are all healthy branches! Why are we cutting these off?" And he laughs at my childlike innocence. And he says "yeah, they are healthy branches. But they've done their job. They produced these sweet grapes." And I watch as he grabs a grape, plucks it off the vine, and tosses it in the air. For a moment, I watch as it eclipses the sun. Before falling into his mouth. I remember now, the taste of sweet memories. I love you, grandpa.
Emily Silverman
I am sitting here with Peter Park. Are you Dr. Peter Park yet or not yet?
Peter Park
Not yet. The goal is to get there.
Emily Silverman
The goal is to get there. Well, Dr.-to-be Peter, thank you so much for being here today.
Peter Park
Thank you so much for having me.
Emily Silverman
So I re-listened to your story this morning and I have to admit, I teared up at the end. It just gets me every single time and I'm wondering if you have re-listened to it since you performed it, and if so, what was it like to hear it again?
Peter Park
In preparation for our meeting today, I listened back and it was actually the first time I listened to it. And I had so much trouble listening to the whole thing, because I had to get over that cringeworthy, oh my gosh, I said, Um here. I said this... that was such a bad joke... you know, things that came up during the actual live performance. But, I think, it did bring me back into that moment again. I think it had been almost nine months since the actual live event. So for me, it was a real good pleasure to hear it again.
Emily Silverman
Well, let's talk about the story a bit. One of the things I loved most about it was these flashbacks to your time in Korea as a kid. And I was wondering if you could tell us more about growing up, and how often did you travel to Korea, and bringing us into your childhood and some of those trips overseas?
Peter Park
Yeah, so my family, they immigrated from Korea, right before I was born. And I'm the middle of three children. So my older brother who grew up in Korea was born there. And then we moved over to the states in Oklahoma, of all places. That's where my dad got his PhD. But, we still had a connection in Korea, obviously with all our family and all our distant relatives are all still there. And so I do recall, I don't necessarily remember how many times, but at least two or three times during middle school going back to Korea in the summer. And as I mentioned, it was super hot, super humid, a very tropical climate. And whenever I would go stay with my grandparents, he would always wake us up super early at dawn to go help him out in his vineyard. And it was quite miserable. Even looking back, I'm not really fond of the work that we did. It's not really a all a kid summer that you get to enjoy, "vacation" versus just being put to work all the time. But I think it was through that labor, I got to knew him a lot. In the sense of I got to knew what he enjoyed. He enjoyed spending time on the vineyard, focusing on growing these grapes that are really only seasonal in the summer. And in a sense, it was this weird bonding thing, where he wouldn't really speak to me in a lot of words, he would just tell me what to do. And hopefully some cool, very awesome, manly lessons would come out of that. Though, mostly it was just early morning grunts and displeasured children, so...
Emily Silverman
And the vineyard - was it in a rural area of South Korea, or where exactly was it located?
Peter Park
There's a region in Korea. And it's like the north side of South Korea. And my grandfather had this vineyard - they lived on a on a hill, and you had to climb up probably like 1 or 2000 feet elevation to get to the actual hillside. And on the top of the hill, he had land for the vineyard, essentially. And so that was pretty much my entire summer for a couple summers, where we would just work there all day. What was funny, and I didn't mention this in the live recording, but he was the first Christian in our family. And that meant a lot for our family as well. But ironically enough, he made non-alcoholic wine, as well as alcoholic wine, from the grapes that he made. But he never drank it himself at all. It was more of a bridging point to meet with people in his community, even though they'd said his mind was amazing, but he never had a sip of it himself.
Emily Silverman
So you said he was the first Christian in your family. Can you tell us more about that and the significance of that?
Peter Park
In Korea, prior to I believe World War 2, it was primarily Buddhist culture and society that comes from historical Chinese background and things like that. And I think... I could be wrong... Post World War 2, there's a lot of Christian missionaries that came from the West into Korea, and somehow had an influence on my grandfather. He bridges away from the previous Buddhist cultural background and started going to church as a Christian. And there's a lot of internal conflict within his family to do that. But at the time, he felt that that was right. After he became the first "Christian" in our family, that kind of sparked the whole thing within our family to have actually five pastors in our distant family in total, including pastors' wives, and things like that. So that created, I guess, the route for Christianity within my immediate family and distant family.
Emily Silverman
And your parents are Christian as well?
Peter Park
Parents are Christian, always been, born and raised. And, my dad, he likes to brag about this all the time. He got his PhD in finance, he went to a Christian university, only because he wanted to get his PhD in theology. And so now he's a double doctor.
Emily Silverman
Wow. Well, I want to get back to the spirituality part of your story. Let's talk about when your grandfather started to develop symptoms. of dementia. You were far away in the States, so were you really aware of the changes that were going on in him? Were people there reporting back to you? Or was it more of a surprise where you showed up to visit one year, and you were like, "Oh, wow, this is just a different person than it was before."
Peter Park
I think it was well-known because we had kept up with family pretty well over online messaging apps and things like that. And my parents were also sending money over to the nursing facilities for his treatment. And so we were pretty well aware about his condition. However, I mentioned in the live recording that the last time I saw him in person was right before medical school, right before COVID-19 at the time. Prior to that, I'd only seen him since my middle school days. And so you can imagine this transition between a childlike perspective of their grandfather, who at the time was like the strongest person besides my dad I knew, who had these huge brawny muscles. I talked about his tan skin from being out in the sun all day. And so, when I imagined coming back to Korea, right before medical school, of this man thinking, "yeah, he has dementia, but he's still a strong guy. And even his mentality, his character, was going to be like that." And I was actually a little bit nervous to see him again, seeing that, you can't tell on the podcast, but I'm a pretty scrawny dude. And so I didn't live up to, potentially, maybe his expectations of me. And then, the dramatic discrepancy between my expectation and the reality as he gets wheeled out from the nursing facility, and he's the palest person in the room. I can see his atrophied muscles, very similar things that you see in elderly folk who maybe haven't had that exercise, or even those who are in the living facility for a long time - you see that muscle atrophy, you see that temporal wasting of their face, and things like that, where it really shows a lot of frailty that I was not expecting. I had the knowledge that he had dementia, that he had issues with cognition. But it wasn't the emotion. It wasn't the experience. It wasn't the perception that came all together until that moment, that he was being rolled out by a nurse.
Emily Silverman
And one of the key moments in your story is when they wheel him out, and he looks around, and he doesn't really recognize the family. He doesn't really recognize your dad. And then he sees you. And he recognizes you. And it's not necessarily a happy thing. I think you say later in the story that you didn't want this, it felt like a burden. So I'm wondering if you can bring us into that moment, and him recognizing you and then how that was experienced by you.
Peter Park
Yeah, we're out on this, I would say Country Road area, and there's not much room in the facility, because there's other families, other patients. And so we just get wheeled out in the front of the facility where there's cars going by. And my dad is a first-degree to him because that's his father. And you can tell that my dad's gone through this before. He's been to Korea prior times, but not with the whole family. And there's almost a performative aspect to it, where he knows the result. They've danced this dance before. And he knows he's not going to expect or get the outcome he expects. However, he still is emotionally pulled to hope that my grandfather, his dad, would recognize him. And as I mentioned, he always brings the same best suit that he has, kneels onto the dirty gravel. Because for him, that's the performative act of it, just giving respects. And then like you said, this time is a little different. And then I say in the recording, he points me and says "stubborn kid," which is what he called me during my time in middle school with the vineyards when I visited him.
Emily Silverman
Were you stubborn?
Peter Park
I was. I was 13 in Korea, and my friends got to play Xbox while I was in a vineyard, plucking grapes for 5, 6, 8 hours a day. I would say upset was an understatement for sure. So, all the time, I would push back when he would literally drag me out in the morning and be like fighting him and pounding the floor as he drags me out the front door. But going back to that moment, he pointed at me, and said "stubborn kid," and in the live show, the audience laughs because of this easy recognition. Haha. He's a little stubborn kid. But I wasn't expecting that at all. I was actually terrified. Because it seemed like such an important moment and important spotlight for my dad, who wanted that recognition, who's seeking that attention. Who wanted some sort of connection that he had maybe lost with my grandfather, who, at the time, three years of this dementia, he hadn't recognized anyone really. There were spurts and moments where he would recognize, and then shortly after, wouldn't know who was talking to him. And so, to suddenly recognize me, which seemed like the least involved in his life at that point, felt wrong. It felt disrespectful. And it also felt, especially coming from a Korean honoring society honoring culture, it felt shameful, in a lot of ways. It felt like I was disrespecting my father. It felt like I was stealing the spotlight or taking this moment from him. And in my defense, it felt like without my intention. And that's why I kind of transitioned in my story, saying that I could hear everyone's neck turn back at me. As if to glare, and say, "this moment is not for you. Why are you taking this?"
Emily Silverman
Hmm. And how did your family work through the next few hours and days? It sounds like in the story, there was definitely some awkward energy. And I'm just wondering how that played out.
Peter Park
There's a little thing where in Korean culture, you can take the yelling and the verbal abuse - what you can't take is the silence. That's what it felt like. Especially the dinner after, where it was just silence. Where there are multiple elephants in the room. And I mentioned too, that night, my older brother - who also had spent more time with my grandfather, had a, I would say, a stronger relationship than I did, felt also that it was inappropriate. That I got the attention when he could have, or that I was recognized when he wasn't. And he said that to me, while we were like in bunk beds, as well. And so that was also a moment where, that feeling of survivor's guilt, where, after a tragedy, you survived, but someone you know, does not - and you feel like, I shouldn't have survived this. While it's not as intense as that as someone passing away. I did mention that there's a trickling of that, at least when it's someone's memory, remembering you - why me? And those thoughts kind of trickle in my head, especially that night, where I'll be honest, I couldn't sleep because of those thoughts, where I felt so undeserving of his memory, of his space in his brain that was already deteriorating.
Emily Silverman
You just said, "Why me?" and I'm curious, why do you think he remembered you, stubborn kid?
Peter Park
Probably he was so angry at me. We know like the emotional centers in our brain are right next to the memory centers. So maybe that was a core memory for him. Some would say that's pretty impressive. Little kid pissing off his grandfather so bad, that it's the one that you remember,
Emily Silverman
That not even Alzheimer's can wipe the memory away.
Peter Park
And maybe that's how profound that effect was for him. I don't know, something sticked.
Emily Silverman
So when he died, you couldn't go to Korea. Tell us about trans-continental grief in COVID times, when travel is limited.
Peter Park
The world was already struggling with COVID, not only in the hospital system, but also with human connection. And for people like myself, who are either childhood immigrants or people who were immigrants themselves, who already have this straining relationship between their home country and America, as well as maintaining what fragile relationships you have with your distant relatives overseas, this felt even worse, I already have limited connection with my family in Korea. So the one that I felt like I had a decent relationship with, I couldn't see him in his funeral, I couldn't see his body. And that was because Korea had pretty strict restrictions at the time. That at least for funerals, was only limited to immediate family members, which included whoever was immediately related, which was my dad and my mom. But of course that rules out grandchildren. And so it's those things where you feel like, if this tie that I have through blood is so thin already, the one moment that we can celebrate and celebrate their life, I can't even go to that. It feels disrespectful. It feels hurtful. There's a strong connection and Korean culture historically with the dead, respect to those who have passed away, and that trickled in as well. And obviously, no one would necessarily blame me because, of course, the country of Korea bars it, but it still didn't lessen the impact it felt personally.
Emily Silverman
So you're kind of trapped in the United States. You're kind of trapped in anatomy lab. You're in this formative time of medical education where we're closer to the dead maybe than ever. And the only means by which you have to process your grandfather's death is interacting with this cadaver. And you start to notice similarities between your grandfather and the cadaver, like that moment where you discover that they both died of the same thing - they both died of a stroke. And one of my favorite moments in your story, is when you wonder aloud if maybe they met in the afterlife and concocted some kind of plan where your grandfather wanted to send you a message through this cadaver. And so you show up the next day excited to see what could this message be? And I just love that it had a very magical feel. And I wondered if that's a way that you tend to think, you know, about signs and symbols of higher forces, higher spirits? Or was that a new way of thinking for you?
Peter Park
What we've learned about the role religion plays in humanity is that it seeks to answer questions that we know we can't find. Well, I personally believe that there is some sort of afterlife. I had to combat those beliefs every day coming to the cadaver lab, because clearly before me, is a tangibly passed away body with no soul inside of it. And add that on, that desperation to seek some closure with my relationship with my grandfather, some sort of meaning as to why I'm here instead of over there. Why I have to continue doing this with someone else's loved one, when I can't even see my own. And that creates a pressure bubble, that at some point, I have to have some sort of solution to ease the hope that I'm so desperate to find. And so, it feels like daydreaming of this moment where I thought, "oh my gosh, they died of the same pathology. And maybe that's the one thing they can connect with in the afterlife." Knowing that I would be a part of the life for a brief moment, right? For my grandfather, it was the times that I was with him in the vineyard. And for this cadaver, it was through their body, through that respect that I could give to them to appreciate that they are giving to a body of literature for medical students to learn. And so it was that connection that I desired to make sense of it, and say, yes, it's magical. It's not real, it doesn't make sense. But I need it. I need to make sense of why he passed away, why I can't go, why I'm here. And maybe they met in the afterlife to say, "hey, pass this message along. Tell my grandson I love him."
Emily Silverman
And you flip her over and there's a butterfly tattoo. You didn't know that there was a tattoo, did you?
Peter Park
Not at all.
Emily Silverman
So what happened when you saw the tattoo?
Peter Park
This was one of the last days of our anatomy lab. We had flipped her over to expose the back. And the moment I noticed that tattoo, I was immediately flooded with the images of memories that I had in the vineyard where we would have to take out caterpillars at the time because they would eat really sweet grapes and other fruit. And my grandfather saw it as a failure. If he saw more than a couple of butterflies over this huge plot of land, it felt like he was doing a bad job in that sense. And so it was a rarity to see them, because he had done such a good job. And so when I saw it, I would remember it. And so now seeing it on this cadaver that I made some sort of connection beyond just learning the anatomy for, it felt all the more meaningful as evidence to make that wild magical connection I did earlier that I was meant to be here. I was meant to be here to respect this body. I was meant to be here to find that connection. And maybe only after seeing that, could I really respect and remember my grandfather in the best way that I could. Not as the frail man that I saw with Alzheimer's who struggled to even get up and go to the bathroom, but as the man that I remembered as a child, in the vineyard, plucking off caterpillars, and telling me how great it is to be out here in the sun.
Emily Silverman
You got to be careful, you're gonna make me cry if you keep talking like that. One of my other favorite lines in your story was when he's teaching you about the caterpillars and how they eat the grapes and how we have to get rid of the caterpillars, but then you see a cocoon, and you get ready to remove it. And he says, "no, no, no, leave that." And you say "why?" And he says, "it's already escaped us." There was something about that that was really poetic. And I don't know if it's because, well, now it's no longer a caterpillar, so it's not going to eat the grapes so we don't care. Or if there was something else in there about respect for the cocoon and the fact that it was in this transitional stage. And I also think about you and anatomy lab, like it is a bit of a cocoon. Like it is a time of life, medical school I think, when we are kind of turning from a caterpillar into a butterfly in a way like as we become physicians, and was just curious if you had any reflections on that line of no no no, don't touch that, it's already escaped us.
Peter Park
Yeah, there's a lot to say behind that line. And I can definitely dissect that apart. First, it was the fact that, up till that point, when I was in middle school, my grandfather had always been that hardy, very manly, grandfather for me, and it felt like he had no soft side. And when I hear him say that line, when he pointed that cocoon out to me, I genuinely thought he was just going to remove it, just like the caterpillars, because it was bothering him or it's another pest. But instead, it's very unexpected that he left it alone. Like you mentioned or hinted at, that it was some sort of respect. As if it was like an enemy and a foe that he had been paring back and forth. Like, ah, you got me, you beat me. And in that sense, it's like respect for your enemy almost, which is a very puny enemy for an older man. But who knows. So there's that one part. And the second thing that you mentioned about the cadaver lab, as well as that cocoon and the caterpillar, this is a state in which something is neither dead or alive, Schrödinger's cat kind of situation. And in a lot of ways, we do that with cadavers, we give them formaldehyde to kind of preserve the tissue of the body, to maintain at least the best state of the organs that we can preserve for teaching. But we know at some point, you can't delay the inevitable. We know that death will take over, necrosis, all that stuff. And so there is that metaphor to kind of slip back and forth, to realize this is a very finite time. And now thinking back, it feels like my grandfather could respect that, that this cocoon, this caterpillar, has a finite time left to grow. And it's actually in its most vulnerable state. And it almost feels wrong to take it away from how hard it's worked to get to this point.
Emily Silverman
It's clear in the story that you see the butterfly as a message from your grandfather to you, but I'm wondering if you could send him a message back, what would you say? Would you apologize for banging your fists against the floor and being a stubborn kid? Or would you say something else? I'm just curious what you would want to communicate to him.
Peter Park
If I were to message him back somehow, obviously be saying that I love him, that we all miss you, that it was an unfortunate way to go. But that at least his soul still remains in me in the memories that we paved together. And that, at least I believe that people live on through the remnants of people before us or after us. In that sense, that's the way I can respect him. And in that way, that's how I come to closure, through my grief in the anatomy lab, is to highlight the memories that were so meaningful to me. Whether they were wonderful or bad at the moment, those are just the memories I have. And so to kind of relive those, remind me of those, and reflect on those is the only way I can feel like I am respecting him and moving on with his legacy.
Emily Silverman
So where are you now in your medical training? What's next for you? What are you envisioning for Dr. Peter Park?
Peter Park
Prior to that lifestory event, I was interested in going to internal medicine and GI as a, at the time second-year medical student. But after that event, after going through, what I finished now, my core rotations, I am applying for psychiatry, because I felt like that was some of the best ways that I could connect to patients and find those, as you can already tell, I love deep talks. I love deep, meaningful conversations and slipping in some light-hearted jokes and things like that, but really connecting in a way with people that goes beyond just physical ailments that we struggle with. And so for me, I'll be applying for psychiatry. And hoping to still integrate that GI side. I'm very interested in eating disorders, very interested in working with patients on the psychiatry side with chronic disease. And so finding ways in which I can integrate my interests, but also my deep desire to connect with patients on a level of just beyond what is your medication, but what is your body doing to you? What is your relationship with your body? How do you work together in a way that your self-talk can be self-elevating? And so that's what I want to hopefully do as a physician in the future.
Emily Silverman
Yeah, the mind-gut connection and all those highways of nerves is so interesting. What about creatively? Any plans to keep writing or keep storytelling? Or what's your creative life like?
Peter Park
Definitely I think in order to maintain that art of medicine that a lot of physicians promote, you have to be artsy yourself. You can't just only do art through medicine, I feel. And that same applies for me. I will still continue writing. I'm currently an editor for a website for Humanities and medicine. And one of the things we started at our school was a humanities medicine student interest group. And inspired by The Nocturnists, we've hosted our own live story events from a lot of students who have that yearning to perform and share their clinical experiences in a way that promotes human connection. And so I feel like, to not continue doing creative things would be in a way, a rejection of myself or some denial of who I am. And while residency will be very time consuming, I know that that's my therapeutic release, as well as journaling and other aspects that maintain that connection. So I will definitely be writing, even if no one listens to me. So...
Emily Silverman
Well I'll be listening. I'm excited to see what you do next. And just wanted to say thank you so much for telling that beautiful story on stage and for coming here to have this conversation. I really, really have a soft spot for this particular story. I don't know there's something about it that just really hits me. So thanks again. Peter Park, future-Dr. Peter Park.
Peter Park
Thank you so much. And thank you again for letting me perform and recording this session today. And I look forward to hearing all the great and awesome content that you guys produce at The Nocturnists. So thank you so much.