Obituaries From My Father

This episode delves into the story of a young physician, Auggie Lynn Mark, dealing with mystery obituaries sent by his father during the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring themes of mortality, family, and the unique ways people process grief.

1. The universality of grief and the different personal rituals people adopt to process it.
2. The importance of family connections in understanding one's own identity and responses to life's challenges.
3. How the professional lives of caregivers intersect with personal experiences of loss and mourning.
4. The episode highlights the subtle ways individuals can communicate care and concern, even through unconventional means like sending obituaries.
5. Reflection on mortality can lead to deeper understanding and acceptance of one's life and choices.

1: Introduction

Dr. Emily Silverman introduces the episode and its focus on mysterious obituaries received by Auggie. "Emily Silverman: You're listening to the nocturnists, stories from the world of medicine."

2: Auggie's Story

Auggie narrates the strange arrival of obituaries at his home and his investigation into their origin. "Auggie Lynn Mark: In the spring of 2020, a mystery appeared in my mailbox... a white envelope with a red stamp, inside was an obituary."

3: Discovery and Dialogue

Auggie discusses discovering his father as the sender and their ensuing conversation about life, death, and legacy. "Auggie Lynn Mark: My father collects baseball cards. He collects sports books. And in the corner of his basement, my father collects hundreds of obituaries."

4: Reflections and Conclusion

The episode concludes with reflections on the storytelling process and the impacts of the narrative. "Auggie Lynn Mark: I am exactly like my father."

1. Create personal rituals to cope with grief, which can offer comfort and a sense of control.
2. Maintain open communication with family members about life's big questions, including death and legacy.
3. Find ways to document and honor the memory of those who have passed, as this can aid in the grieving process.
4. Reflect on personal beliefs and experiences with mortality to better understand personal and professional roles.
5. Engage in community or professional support networks to discuss and manage feelings of grief and loss.

When Dr. Augie Lindmark first started receiving obituaries in the mailbox, he wasn’t sure whether to be amused or afraid. But soon he discovers the identity of the sender, and enters into a rare an unexpected dialogue about aging and mortality.

Augie performed this story live at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis in April 2023, for an event on the theme of "REBIRTH" which The Nocturnists co-produced with the Center for the Art of Medicine.

Find show notes, transcript, and more at thenocturnists.com.

This episode of "Stories from the World of Medicine" is sponsored by The New York Zen Center.

This season of "Stories from the World of Medicine" is supported by The Physicians Foundation. The Nocturnists is made possible by the California Medical Association.

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Auggie Lynn Mark, Emily Silverman

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Emily Silverman

This episode of the Nocturnus is sponsored by the New York Zen center for Contemplative Care. If you're a physician, advanced practice, registered nurse or physician assistant looking to cultivate well being and joy in medicine through an evidence based training program. Learn more@zencare.org findjoy support for the Nocturnist comes from the California Medical association. At the Nocturnist, we are careful to ensure that all stories comply with healthcare privacy laws. Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality.

Auggie Lynn Mark

All views expressed are those of the person speaking and not their employer.

Emily Silverman

You're listening to the nocturnists stories from the world of medicine. I'm Emily Silverman. Today's story, featuring physician Auggie Lynn Mark, begins with a mystery and ends with a heartfelt conversation between Augie and his father, in which Augie realizes that despite their differences, he and his dad have a lot more in common than he initially thought. After the story, Augie and I talk about how sometimes the easiest way to talk about an issue is actually to talk around it, at least in the beginning, and how Augie's childhood as the son of a pastor gave rise to his physician career. Augie grew up in the midwest but now practices primary care in New Haven, Connecticut, where he's on faculty at the Yale School of Medicine.

Take a listen to Auggie's story obituaries from my father.

Auggie Lynn Mark

In the spring of 2020, a mystery appeared in my mailbox. It arrived in a white envelope with a red stamp, and inside was an obituary. Except I didn't know the person who had died, and when I looked at the envelope, there was no return address. Someone anonymously had mailed me an obituary. At that point in my life, I had other problems.

I was a resident doctor working in the hospital in the beginning of a pandemic, and each morning I ride my bike to the hospital on eerily silent streets. And when I get to work, it is chaos. People are sick and struggling to breathe, and I give medicines that do not work to people who do not survive.

I ride my bike home as fast as I can, because home is safe. The hospital is not. I get home, I strip off my scrubs. I hop in the shower, and I wash the hospital off of me. I put on pajamas.

I go outside and I check my mail. And inside is a second white envelope, red stamp, no return address. The second obituary is the same as the first. It is a complete and total stranger. But at this point, it is also an intruder.

Because death, that's for the hospital, not for home and it was an uncertainty on a pile of uncertainties in a very uncertain pandemic. And when enough questions pile up, I need an answer. And the answer I needed was, who the hell is sending me obituaries?

So I devise a plan, and it is not a good plan. It is a plan that develops after too many hours at home in the middle of lockdown. And when paranoia sets in. And my plan is I. I will sit at my window and I will watch my mailbox.

I may have taken notes. I may have discovered that the postal worker arrived between three and 05:00 p.m. Every afternoon. And when you watch out your window, you learn a lot about your neighbors. My one neighbor wore a cloth mask for herself, and she reserved the n 95s for the flat nose of her 50 pound bulldog.

My other neighbor went to his mailbox. He got his mail, and he discovers he is being watched. Our eyes lock through the window. He turns his head and looks concerned and runs right back to his apartment. And we have not spoken since.

But nothing is suspicious. No one touches my mailbox except the postal worker, who looks shifty.

Perhaps this was a prank or worse, payback. Had I wronged the postal worker? How had I wronged the postal worker? Did I tip the postal worker? Were you supposed to tip your postal worker in the middle of the pandemic?

And if you didn't tip them, did they deliver death to your mailbox, show up at your door and say, you're next?

My postal worker arrives at 411 in the afternoon, and I wait for him to leave. And then I go outside and I check my mailbox. And inside is a white envelope, red stamp, no return address. But this time there's a clue, because as I read the obituary, someone in red ink has edited the incorrect noun verb agreements in the newspaper clipping. And the second clue of all the people who have died in these obituaries, their funerals were either in Wisconsin or Minnesota.

I had a suspect.

My father lives on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota. My father is a retired lutheran pastor who has served churches in Wisconsin and Minnesota. And my father is stubborn. If you give him a silver lining, he will find the cloud. Which is why when he reads the local paper, he then goes through again and edits it, just because he can.

A few months later, I visit my dad in his home in Minnesota, and he opens the door in a blue denim top and blue denim pants. And this is the canadian tuxedo. He looks like a blueberry.

And whenever it's been a while since my dad and I haven't interacted. He does a handwritten list of updates about his life, and so we check off each item on the list in his basement and we update.

My father's basement is a world separate from reality because in it is every sports memorabilia item you can imagine. The walls from ceiling to floor are covered with sports books. From the ceiling hangs sports pennants, and instead of framing family photos, my dad has framed Wedy cereal boxes with Michael Jordan on the COVID And it's at this point I want to ask my dad about obituaries. But I feel a familiar pause, and it's the pause when we approach something too sensitive. We're like two cars at the middle of a Minnesota four way.

Stop asking each other who's going to go next?

But I have to ask dad, any chance you've been sending something in the mail?

And he doesn't answer at first. Instead, he gets up out of his chair and walks to the corner of his basement, and I follow, and he stops at this giant plastic storage container, and he takes off the lid, and inside I see stacks of newspapers, and instead of headlines, I see names of people, and I see photos of people. My dad collects baseball cards. He collects sports books. And in the corner of his basement, my father collects hundreds of obituaries.

I am relieved to know that my postal worker and I are on good terms, and I ask my dad again, why have you sent these to me? And instead of answering, he tells me a story about each one. I leave his house with my question of why unanswered, and I return to my apartment in Connecticut, and I feel a second sense of relief because I have promised I will not be my father. I am not going to collect things. I am not going to have clutter.

My apartment has a bedroom. It has a desk. It has a toilet. Simple.

I have work the next day. And so I sit down at my desk and pull up the health record system on my computer, and as I go through the charts of the patients I will take care of the next day. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a computer file, and in the back of my head I hear this voice that says, don't go there. Avoid. But I click the file, and dozens of names appear on my computer screen, and I know every single one because each person on that list is someone I said hello to.

I said, don't worry.

And I said. I will be taking care of you.

And every single person on that list, every single one, is dead.

And I sit there with the computer screen being the only light in my apartment. And I think I am exactly like my father.

I go to work the next day. It's still a pandemic. It's a different wave. People are still sick. I ride my bike home from my shift.

I do my routine, strip off my scrubs, shower PJ's. I go outside and I check my mail. And inside my mailbox is a white envelope with a return address from Minnesota. It's from my dad. And as I hold the envelope and open it up, a pile of papers, files out, and it takes me a while to realize what exactly I'm looking at.

But there's medical references, and I realize it's an advanced directive. There's not a note explaining why.

The next time I see my dad, it is in Minnesota and it is Sunday, so we are at a church service at a rural chapel in southeast Minnesota. My dad and I sit in wooden pews, and we are surrounded by about a dozen people with masks on, and we watch the small congregation function. There's a pastor. There's an organist. There's someone in charge of the communion wine.

And because this is a lutheran service, all hymns have four part harmony.

And as we sing, my dad alternates between the tenor and the baritone parts based on which part he thinks needs more support at the moment.

We sing a few more hymns, and then the service is over, and we walk outside, and my dad pulls me aside onto this bench outside of the church. It's spring. The air is light and crisp. There's buds on the trees, but they're not yet blooming. And my dad turns to me on the bench and says, I won't be around much longer.

The comment is abrupt, like the obituaries, and my dad is not dying from a terminal illness, but in that moment, I get the sense he is feeling the briefness of the life that we live. And I imagine my dad in his basements with his obituaries, and I can't help but think. Think how lonely it is to be surrounded by death when you are the only one moving.

And as my dad and I sit on the bench, I have this question that arose the first moment I saw that big storage bin in his basement. And I turn to my dad and ask, why do you think we collect death? And my dad goes into what I can only describe as pastor mode, where he pulls the perfect theological or philosophical answer out of thin airs, and he says, I suppose we collect it to make sense of our own.

We sit in silence, and my dad says, I would like to be cremated not buried. And I would like my ashes spread on a baseball field in rural Iowa. But don't put me in center field and don't put me at second base.

I said, why not second base? Because I don't like the idea of someone sliding into me.

I think my dad mailed me obituaries to process his own mortality in the only weird ways that we know how.

But I do know this. I do know when the time comes, when I write my dad's obituary, I will do so in the middle of a baseball field in Iowa. And there will be more sports references than you can count. And, dad, if I ever mail your obituary to friends or family to let them know that you're not here, I'll think twice about including a return address.

Emily Silverman

I am sitting here with Aggie Lynn. Mark, Aggie, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat. So it is 2024 now.

It's been several months since you told your story in Minneapolis, and I'm curious how you're doing. How are you doing in general? And also, does the show feel far away? Does it feel like it just happened yesterday? I think it.

Auggie Lynn Mark

Well, first, thanks for asking. I'm doing great. It feels a little far away. I think it was maybe in March. So coming up on a year, reconnecting with you reminds me of all the tension and the work leading up to the story.

And so it's kind of fun, I guess, to relive that. Yeah. But doing well. What was the evening like for you? I know that all of you put in so much work into developing your stories, and I'm just curious, what was it like to stand up on stage and talk about your dad and tell this story?

It was a little bit of a homecoming because I hadn't been back to Minneapolis in at least a few months, if not a year. And so after the show, reconnecting with everybody, there were some people who I had worked with in various clinics and hospital settings. So it was a night out with the arts, but also a family that you kind of knew and a new family of meeting other people, telling stories and yourself and all the above. It was really nice to have family there. My dad was in the audience.

I had talked to him about the story as I was working through it, but it was really sweet to have him there, listening in the audience in a crowd of people that was alive and exciting. It was overwhelming and fun and joyous all at the same time. What did your dad think of the performance? I think I mentioned this in the story. He has attention to detail, so he had critiques after it, which was kind of funny.

He tends to bring his scorecard to any event in life, whether that's a sporting event or the arts. But overall, he really enjoyed it. His first question was, when could he hear a recording? And I told him I wasn't sure, but that I would keep him posted. Tell us more about your dad.

Emily Silverman

We know from the story that he loves sports. We also know from the story that he is a pastor, I believe. Yeah. Can you bring us a bit into growing up as the pastor's son? What is that like?

Auggie Lynn Mark

I don't know if this is better or worse, but I ended up being a pastor's son twice over because my mom is also a lutheran pastor. Oh, wow. Pastor power couple. Yeah. The abbreviation was PK times two.

I remember having a few friends in middle school that also had pastors as parents, and we exchanged notes on how weird and odd, but also kind of fun that was. I think it means a little bit that you're put on a platform, that you get to see everybody else looking at you because you're supposed to be good and kind. I remember swearing one time, and it made it around through the communication lines of the church, and it made back to my parents. I was like, they have spies everywhere.

It was a wonderful childhood. One thing I do remember is there would be these times early in the morning at 203:00 when we would get phone calls from someone in the hospital. And the phone was one of those big rotary dial phones that when it rings, it'll just rattle off whatever surface it's sitting on. And it would ring at 03:00 in the morning. And it usually meant that someone was dying in the hospital and they were calling one of my parents to come to the hospital to be with the family.

So I grew up thinking that was normal, to get calls early in the morning when someone from their congregation was sick and was requesting to be visited. But it also meant that there was just a community of people. It was at a church in the north side of Chicago, and it was a lovely community of people who came together every week to make sense of life and support each other. And, yeah, pastor's kid, I guess. When the phone would ring, would they go to the hospital and leave you behind?

Emily Silverman

Or were you ever brought along? Like, were you yourself around death a lot? Or was it more in the background with these phone calls? I never got brought along, which was probably legally responsible, and. No, but I remember hearing them wake up down the hall and slowly walk down the stairs, go to the kitchen, and then I would hear the car start and then leave, and then a few hours later, I would wake back up because the car came back into the garage.

Auggie Lynn Mark

I don't think I got too many details other than sitting at the breakfast table wondering why either my mom or my dad appeared a little bit tired, but that was because they weren't sleeping, so I was definitely on the periphery. But I remember the phone ringing. That one's hard to rattle out. Did they talk to you about their work? Did they talk to you about death and funerals and all of that?

Emily Silverman

Or was it something that wasn't talked about explicitly? I don't think it was talked about explicitly, although maybe it was, and it was just normalized. And I feel like if one of my parents was gone, it was either for a wedding or for a funeral. Maybe it was just the repetition of it, that it was familiar and that funerals happened and they happened to everybody. And for whatever reasons in the world, that my parents had an important role whenever that happened.

Did you ever think about becoming a pastor or was doctor always first choice? I think there's probably an element, if your parents are the same profession, that you immediately opposites propel away from each other. And so I don't think that was ever for me. And I will say I'm not particularly religious nowadays, but more spiritual. But I do think there's an element of caregiving and pastoral care that probably imprinted itself in some way, shape or form, or just how to help people navigate certain uncertainties and being okay with uncertainty, because I feel like it's hard to talk about life and death without having elements of uncertainty.

I'm glad you brought up uncertainty, because we're actually working on a project at the nocturnes about uncertainty. Did your parents talk to you about uncertainty or maybe teach you how to handle uncertainty? And was that something that you felt like you brought to the table as a physician, that maybe your colleagues who weren't the children of pastors didn't have as much exposure to? How do you see parallels between your work as a doctor and their work as pastors? I suppose it probably depends on your theology.

Auggie Lynn Mark

I will say the theology of my parents definitely embraced uncertainty. I'm sure there's probably some lines of thinking that doubt is in inherent contrast to faith, but rather it's more a prerequisite. In some ways, I think I was grateful for that. Uncertainty is a lot of what we do in medicine, of trying to answer questions but not always having a clear path forward. And there's a lot of guesswork.

When there's guesswork, there's a space where you need a lot of trust. My dad will reference when he was in seminary, I think it was called clinical pastoral education, where all the seminarians went to the hospital just to observe. And whenever he tells me that story, he recalls a code that he saw, and he will always tell me his role in that code. As all the medical providers were swarming around the person whose heart had stopped. He was the person who.

Who spent the rest of the hour with their grieving family member. There's not a far separation between who's wearing a white coat or who's wearing a clerical collar. It's caregiving, but different forms and titles and all complementary. You mentioned that this story happened during COVID and you open with these descriptions of biking to and from the hospital, just being exhausted, trying to save the lives of people. What was it like for you to be in that space?

Emily Silverman

And were you able to bring any of your spiritual side to help bridge you through that difficult time? Or was that a time, maybe, where you weren't as connected to your spirituality? And is that something you talked to your dad about or more kept to yourself? What was the psychological feeling of being a COVID doctor in the hospital, doing. Direct patient care for people who were ventilated?

Auggie Lynn Mark

During that first wave, it was hard to parse out what was feeling, what was emotion, what was a correct or incorrect response to what was going on. I arrived to my shift, and the patient list that I had yesterday was completely different. And it's not because I'm on a different floor in the hospital. It's because everyone died from yesterday. You know, there's always an element of wanting to be a helper in medicine or other caregiving.

And when your entire list dies, that doesn't make you feel like you're a very good helper. But to your question about, like, who I let into that, I mean, it was definitely my co residents and people that were also going through that experience. I think anything else felt like a big lift to bring anyone else into that, even family members. And so I think it took some time to realize there's actually someone in my backyard and my family that considers this a lot in their entire career. The abrupt uncertainty of what happens when someone is here and the next day they aren't.

Yeah, I forgot the other part of the question. The other part was, did you feel more or less connected to your spirituality during that time? Probably not. Initially because I think I was just hopeless. I didn't have roommates, which probably from an isolation and quarantine standpoint was great.

From a social connection standpoint, not so great. But I think as time went on, I certainly was, because there weren't medications that had data behind them. We didn't have studies to know what was working. We threw steroids at everything just because we always throw steroids at everything. Later in the pandemic, when people were still sick but differently sick, it would be hard to provide care without asking someone, what are your spiritual beliefs?

And I don't say that to make you worried or uncertain, but that's probably an important thing to know right now. And I found myself asking that question a lot of people, but I found myself hesitating about asking it because I think when a physician asks you, what are your spiritual beliefs? When you enter the hospital, the initial reaction might be, am I going anywhere other than outside the hospital? And so asking that question carefully and with some thought behind it. How did people usually respond when you asked them that?

Emily Silverman

Do you feel like they were put off by the question and that it made them fearful? Or maybe did some of them feel seen and feel like it created an opening where medicine doesn't usually create an opening? Or what was the response? I think the responses were everything from I believe in God to I believe in the Boston Celtics. Overwhelmingly, it was never a question that ended a conversation.

Auggie Lynn Mark

It usually opened conversations, especially when you can approach spirituality open ended without any assumptions about particular beliefs or practices, because that's not the point. We all have different ways of how we interpret the world, whether physically or beyond. And there's a lot of different ways you can paint the landscape.

Emily Silverman

Well, you were in the midst of all this very intense work when these obituaries started to arrive in your mailbox. What was your dad doing? You think he was trying to be playful? Or you think it was a cry for wanting to have a conversation that maybe he couldn't tell you directly he wanted to have? Or is that in character for him?

Auggie Lynn Mark

Yeah. Yeah, it totally is. And it's probably in character for me, too, picking up from him of, and I don't know if this is a Midwest thing or it's definitely not an east coast thing, of circling around the point at least three times before getting there, almost dipping your toes into the water just to see the temperature before you jump in. He will test, and I do this, too, but will test out emotions before committing to one. I've asked him that, and his initial response is, well, I just want to keep you posted on things, and he will update me on people in his life that I do not know, but it's important to him that I know about his friend John or Janet or Tabitha, who I've never met, but this person is important in their life, and therefore, I should know how that relationship is going.

And so I suppose the obituaries were a form of that. And as we all were in the early part of that year, 2020, where we all knew someone that had died or we knew of someone who had lost someone, and it just kept mounting, and that felt like a lot. And I can't imagine we all had our most clear responses to that at the first go, and my dad's first go at that was obituaries in my mailbox. I love what you said about. I don't know if this is a midwestern thing, but circling around a point before diving in or testing out an emotion before committing.

Emily Silverman

Can you talk a little bit more about what that means? I feel like I've heard the idea of the difference between I am angry or that is anger, where when something is, that is anger that provides a little bit of distance between whatever emotion has kind of popped in and out. I feel like, at least during the early parts of the pandemic, I felt angry that there were certain things being done on a public health and national level that weren't to protect healthcare workers and to protect communities and to prevent loss of life. So I felt angry. I tried that one on.

Auggie Lynn Mark

I felt really sad, or I experienced sadness. You tried it on? Yeah. And I experienced hopelessness. And I experienced senses of connection and community and warmth in solidarity of people that showed up for their neighbors and just overwhelming amounts of caregiving in a really trying time.

And I feel like we could be subjected to multiple emotions throughout the day. And they all have different purposes. Not to say that they're like a pair of socks or slacks that you can just take on and take off. Emotions. Lingerie.

But then I would say with my dad, sometimes it's a little bit hard to read emotions. Cause they aren't specifically said out loud. There's different tells. Yeah. I remember during the coaching process, and I believe you worked with Kristen.

Emily Silverman

Is that right? I think at the end, I worked with both Kristen and Molly, but Kristen and I started together. Yeah. And I remember you all were talking a lot about this idea of, like, when it's too hard to talk about the thing directly, talk about it indirectly. So talk about it through baseball or talk about it through obituaries.

Auggie Lynn Mark

Yeah. Tell us more about that, because I feel like sometimes maybe that's better than talking about it directly, or maybe it feels indirect, but it really is direct. What are your thoughts on that? I think we have a lot of tokens about things that are hard to talk about, or almost proxies. We certainly do with death, of.

Just, like, saying death in clinical spaces and replacing it. It's done for passing, or, God help me, someone says expired, as if we all have expiration dates, like a food canister. Sometimes it does take a pressure off of things, even thinking about advanced directives. With myself and my dad, I definitely felt there were times when I was employing clinical skills with my dad, with talking about death, where sometimes if you triangulate something, it's a little bit easier. I would say the obituaries from my dad were that token and made it a little bit easier to talk about someone else's death as a segue into talking about our own.

Emily Silverman

And you did eventually get to the heart of it, to the scene at the end where you're sitting together, and he says, this is how I want to be buried. You circled around it, but then you did arrive. Yeah. Which maybe means the midwestern version of getting to a point works in conversations around death. I think I do remember at one point, this was within the last year, I remember talking to my dad about advance directives and wills, and I think I said something to the effect of, I have my advance directive and will completed as an example to encourage him to do his own or to update his own.

Auggie Lynn Mark

And after that, I was like, if you apply that logic to anything else, of, like, well, if I have done this, then it must be fine and easy for you. Like, that's just a terrible way of support for anyone. Hard things are different for everybody. And so to place an accomplishment or that I have thought about this onto someone else isn't helpful. So I walked that one back.

I do think the list in epic that was in my computer was very much like my dad's bins of obituaries in his basement. And that was a space of connection. Cause I know during those first few weeks of the pandemic, there was one recurring thought that I had, and it was, how do I honor and remember the people that I had the privilege to interact with? And I knew in that moment I was gonna forget or block out those faces and names because it was hard to go back to those weeks. It was almost, if you show me your lists of death, I'll show you mine.

And maybe out of that. Well, who knows what comes out of that? But certainly a space that's forgiving and connecting. You talked earlier about how when you're the child of two pastors, you kind of don't want to be a pastor. You want to break the tradition and maybe go off and do your own thing.

Emily Silverman

You also talk in the story about how your apartment is very clean, very simple, no clutter, because you're trying to not be like your father. And then you do stumble upon this list of electronic names. And then there's this beautiful moment, I think maybe even my favorite moment in your story, where I don't know if it's like a smiling feeling or if it's like a holding my head in my hands feeling. But you say I am exactly like my father. And so I'm wondering about that tension between wanting to individuate and diverge and be different, but then also recognizing the similarities and finding that connection.

How was it for you to have that realization? I feel like deep down, we know we're somewhat like our caretakers, whoever they were, and we're always the things that we don't want to be. But maybe that's the grace of accepting ourselves and whatever that is. I do remember when Kristen and I were talking about the story that that was an aha. Moment of, oh, there are residual things here that I am my dad, and as much as I say I'm happy with change, I am stubborn about it, too.

Auggie Lynn Mark

And I cling on to what was. But I think it was also, in some ways, at least in this story, with my dad, a relief, as you alluded to, because in many ways, we were processing mortality in our own corners, which lives is messy and sometimes unforgiving, and then you can just show that mess to someone else and compare and laugh. Yeah. I have a friend who works in palliative care, and her whole job, day in and day out, was taking care of sick people, talking to them about end of life, things like that. So it was very much in her wheelhouse, very much in her comfort zone.

Emily Silverman

And then she, for the first time, ever, lost someone who was very, very, very close to her. And she wrote this beautiful piece about. And maybe we can include the link in the show notes, this beautiful piece about how I didn't know how bad it was, I didn't know how hard it was just when the grief hits you or when it arrives at your doorstep, just how different it is than being in the profession of it. And I'm just thinking about your dad and all those phone calls in the middle of the night and going to the bedside and tending to sick families. It was his whole career, and yet he still struggled so much to talk about it directly with you.

Just curious if you ever thought about that. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure in any instance, if you've experienced something over and over again, it becomes routine. But then in the case of your friend, I would imagine that that's very different. I mean, it's very close and it's not routine, and it feels more central to the life experience, which I think is a hazard in the medical profession of the old adage of the everyday of a clinician as the once in a lifetime of someone who's not. And I think that's important to carry with wherever you are.

Auggie Lynn Mark

I don't know if you ever read the trilogy series, his dark materials by Philip Pullman. Tell me about it. It was a fantasy series that I read as a kid. I remember reading it with my mother, and I reread it during the pandemic in the third book called the Amber Spyglass. There's this depiction of death as a being rather than an event, and it has some of the old characteristics of knobby knees and elbows and skeletal and a hooded figure.

The piece of it that I think has always stayed with me is that it was more so an old friend that's accompanied you in a physical form that instead of spookily showing up one day, just goes along with you for your life and taps you on the shoulder when time is near. And for some reason, that's always stayed with me because it not only normalizes that, but it brings it into the physical spaces that we go in and out. But even that description has its own problems because you run the risk of minimizing or glossing over someone else's experience when it is abrupt and tragic and horrible. I'm not very familiar with lutheran pastor belief system, but is there a belief in a soul, an afterlife? Is there a standard belief system baked into that practice?

Emily Silverman

Or is it still more private and individual? This is going to put my lutheran theology knowledge on the spot. And this will maybe be an example of despite having two parents as pastors, that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm up to date on what's the correct view. I would say in the Midwest, humorous lutheran tradition. The answer might be, eh, it depends.

Auggie Lynn Mark

But okay. I do know this idea of grace or cheap grace, and that whatever happens after this life isn't necessarily dependent on what you believe or how you go about thinking about life and death. But there is a component of what you do and how you carry yourself through life. And are you supportive to the people around you? Do you tend to people who need you?

Are you a theologically team player? I can't say I'm particularly religious in the lutheran tradition, but that is something that resonates with me of like, well, we don't have too much time here, so we might as well be kind to others. And then whatever happens next, I don't know if someone's keeping score, if there's a scoreboard, but can't hurt. I remember when my mom was near the end of her life, she was not somebody who was religious or who talked about this, really at all. But I did ask her in the last, I'd say six months or so if she believed in a God or if she believed in an afterlife or something like that.

Emily Silverman

And I'll never forget her response. She kind of smiled and rolled her eyes, and she was like, you know, I just kind of go with it.

And she's not here anymore. Maybe she's listening, but I'm smiling, just remembering her say that, because I just thought it was so funny. And sometimes when I'm in that place of uncertainty and struggling to find my footing, I think about that and I think, well, I'm just gonna go with it and see what happens. That's beautiful. So just gonna go with it.

I'm here. I'm on this giant rock floating through space. We don't really know why. Just gonna go with it. Let's go together.

It's a little bit somewhere in between. I believe in God and I believe in the Boston Celtics. Yeah, there's a lot of space in between. There sure is. Well, in this last couple minutes, I was wondering if you could speak a bit about the story development process.

We just heard the story. In my opinion, it came out so beautifully, just really well crafted. A lot of humor, a lot of suspense, a lot of sweetness. I'm just wondering if you wanted to see a few words about how you took the story from the seed of an idea to that performance. It felt like sitting on a couch with a really good friend and that big rock was hurtling through space, but you're still sitting on a couch making sense of things, and it felt like that.

Auggie Lynn Mark

I guess it's kind of like medicine, sitting in a space trying to make sense of things. And at the core of caregiving and medical practice, without intrusion, whatever that intrusion may be, an insurance company. There's this core space that's meant to be protected. It was a really beautiful experience and a gift. So I will also add thank you for the opportunity to share it and just a lot of gratitude for the process.

Emily Silverman

Thank you for telling it. Do you have any plans to continue writing? Storytelling? Journaling? What does your creative life look like moving forward?

Auggie Lynn Mark

I think I'm trying to reconnect with it. There's a literary center in Minneapolis called the Loft, and in med school I took some classes there, and after training this past year, I joined a class over Zoom with other people who enjoy writing. And that's been beautiful being in a creative space, and there's not as many medical folks in it. And I think being in creative spaces outside of medicine is also lovely. So creating things alongside other people, beyond that, I don't know what specifics look like.

Emily Silverman

Well, cheers to that. Cheers to creating. Cheers to the cycle of life, and cheers to you and your dad and your family. And I just want to say thank you so much for joining us on stage in Minneapolis and for coming here today to chat with me. It's been a pleasure.

Auggie Lynn Mark

Thanks Emily. Likewise. This was a gift. Appreciate the time spent together.

Emily Silverman

This episode of the Nocturnus was produced, edited, and mixed by John Oliver. Todays Story was coached by Molly Rose Williams and Kristen Moe and performed live at the Nocturnist show Rebirth at the Parkway Theatre in Minneapolis in April of 2023 in partnership with the center for the Art of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Our executive producer is Allie Block. Our head of story development is Molly Rose Williams, and Ashley Pettit is our program manager. Original theme music was composed by Josef Munro and additional music comes from blue Dot sessions.

The illustrations for this season of the Nocturnus are by Stephanie Singleton. The Nocturnus is made possible by the California Medical Association, a physician led organization that works tirelessly to make sure the doctor patient relationship remains at the center of medicine. To learn more about the CMA, visit cmadocs.org dot. This season of the Nocturnus is sponsored by the Physicians foundation, which empowers physicians to lead in the delivery of high quality, cost efficient healthcare by attending to physician well being, supporting medical practices, sustainability, and helping physicians navigate the changing healthcare system. The nocturnus is also made possible by donations from listeners like you.

Thank you so much for supporting our work in storytelling. If you enjoy listening, please like share, subscribe, and help others find us by giving us a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. To contribute your voice to an upcoming project, or to make a donation, visit our website@thenocturnist.com. I'm your host, Emily Silverman. See you next week.