Why do I find it so much easier to deal with death after the fact than I do watching its slow, looming approach, like the shadow of a cloud creeping over my face? I think of cupping water between my hands, the spaces between fingers that I cannot hold tight.

Medical student Davy Ran reflects on how their perspective on death has changed since they began medical school.

This essay placed second in the 2021 Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay Contest and was published in the November 2021 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.