Death is inevitably a very prevalent thing in the world of medicine. Yes, our job as doctors is to do our very best to prevent patients from dying, but my clinical years have taught me that this is not always possible, especially when hospital wards are full of very old sick people, many of whom will probably not return home. This inevitability of death is a challenging thing to face, especially when we as medical students haven't actually seen many deaths before. I think it is so important to have a way of dealing with distressing situations, such as death, and my way of dealing with them is through music.
On a more personal note, when my grandad died fairly recently, I found the best way for me to deal with it was to write him a song, about him and for him. I have realised during the last few months that writing lyrics is incredibly similar to writing poetry, so I have included this piece in my poetry section.
These are the lyrics to the song, which I ended up playing at his funeral - one of the hardest yet fulfilling things I have ever done.