The joy of friendship; the grief of adieu.

FINISHED! Today marks the end of final exams, I have completed all the classroom work for med school!

We had the post exam Christmas party tonight--the annual celebration for completing the marathon. Tonight was very different from years previous. Tonight I cried my eyes out repeatedly, and also had incredible fun, all rolled into one emotional roller coaster. Its amazing how sorrow and joy can co-exist in the same person, practically simultaneously. As I said goodbyes to the dear friends and classmates who are staying in Saskatoon, I discovered that when I accepted the offer to enroll in medical school, I did not anticipate my heart being captured and falling in love with the sixty+ people I went to school with. There is no other way it can be though---if it was easy to leave, it would mean I didnt have the amazing last two and a half years of my life being interwoven with theirs. The price of loving people is having your heart wrung when you are separated. I would rather love and feel the pain of parting, than not love in an attmept to save myself the anguish of separation.

I do have beautiful memories, they will endure--many of them are immortalized in film! I cherish the family atmosphere that has emerged amongst my classmates. I can dance my heart out at our parties, laughing my head off as each of my brotherly classmates spins me around the dance floor in turn, and know that it is simply a riot for all of us, nothing more, nothing less. I can cry on their shoulders as I experience the grief of adieu. I can embrace my girls as we challenge and encourage each other both in medicine and in life. I would not trade the past two and a half years; they have been challenging but very rewarding, and they are an integral part of my journey to becoming who I was Created to be.

“One knows nobody so well as one’s ‘fellow’. Every step of the common journey tests his metal; and the tests are tests we fully understand because we are undergoing them ourselves. Hence, as he rings true time after time, our reliance, our respect, and our admiration blossom into an Appreciate love of a singularly robust and well-informed kind.” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“In a perfect Friendship this Appreciative love is, I think, often so great and so firmly based that each member of the circle feels, in his secret heart, humbled before all the rest. Sometimes he wonders what he is doing there among his betters. He is lucky beyond the desert to be in such company. Especially when the whole group is together, each bringing out all that is best, wisest, or funniest in all the others.” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“In a profession where men and women work side by side, or in the mission field, or among authors or artist, such Friendship is common.” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“ To love anything at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” ~ C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves