The Worst Illusion
by Mike Litrel, M.D.

death of a four year-old child who had lived on the temple grounds.

The students were distraught. "Master, have you not taught us that all of life is an illusion?"

The Master nodded.

"And does this not mean that the little boy's death is an illusion?"

"Yes," the Master replied through his tears. "It is the worst illusion of them all."

This was the story that I thought of when I saw the young mother again. Sandra stood staring at her beautiful son in a shoebox sized casket. For twelve days Christopher had fought for his life. But his lungs had not been ready. The morning he died, the neonatologist had let Sandra hold him. His tiny body had fit in her palms. Lying in the casket, he was beautiful as a China doll.

I didn't know they made coffins so small.

Driving home, sudden and unexpected sobs wracked my body. It was like a seizure. I couldn't see and had to pull over. I'm not a big crier as a rule. It's a holdover from childhood - tacit lessons passed on from both a stoical Chinese mother and a macho Italian father. But as I capitulated to the feelings, and watched them pass, I felt better.

Pain may be an illusion, but grieving is a reality.

Over the months and then years, I saw Sandra periodically in the office. She had recovered quickly from the surgery. But the loss to her soul lingered - a gaping, inoperable hole torn open when her little boy left. You could see it in her face.

Sometimes these hurts never heal. A terrible loss can lead to a terrible complication - a complication not of the body, but of the spirit. There is such a thing as an abruption of faith - when life becomes only a burden, not a gift. And God is nowhere to be found.

It had been just over a year since I had last seen Sandra. The day she came by the office, Christopher's birthday cake would have had three candles lit upon it. Sandra's smile was tempered with tiny lines of past sorrows. But her eyes shone with a peace that belied the bittersweet smile. She was okay.

Sandra had to speak a while to explain why. She had to relate stories from childhood - stories about an alcoholic father, her family's estrangement, disagreements and resentment turning into silences spanning months and then years.

But Christopher's death had brought them together again. Family loyalty brought them together in the same room, to grieve over the one family member too small and too innocent to be part of the bitter antagonism. And in the end, the pain of that innocent life lost had helped them see the love that still lived between them. Siblings and parents began speaking, cousins became friends, apologies and forgiveness were exchanged like gifts.

Sandra had a family again. And she was amazed.

As Sandra was leaving, she paused in a long silence, staring at her memories, thick in the distance. Unconsciously she cupped her hands, holding them around the memory of Christopher.

She asked softly, not needing an answer - "How could such a tiny baby bring so much Love into this World?"

Dr. Litrel is in practice at Cherokee Women's Health Specialists in Woodstock and Canton, and is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Emory University School of Medicine. He lives in Towne Lake with his wife Ann and their two sons Tyler and Joseph. (mikelitrel@attbi.com)

Being an obstetrician has at least one great job perk they didn't mention in medical school: the occasional medical emergency means you can drive down the highway at very high speeds. And have a good excuse for the state trooper. On one occasion three years ago, a phone call from the hospital was all it took to set the wheels in motion.

A young woman six months pregnant had arrived in the emergency room, in agonizing pain and pouring out blood. It likely meant one thing - her placenta had abrupted. The placenta is the connection between the baby and the mother, and when it separates, the lives of both mother and child hang in the balance.

I refrained from yelling at the surrounding drivers and took deep breaths as I wove through traffic to get on I-575. But once I was on the open highway, I slammed my foot on the accelerator and watched my speedometer creep up over a hundred.

The last time I had driven this fast, I was an idiotic teenager trying to impress my friends. I had to smile - any policeman that stopped me today would hear that I had an emergency at the hospital.

And this time it would be true.

By the time I got to the hospital, my partner Dr. Cross had the ball rolling. The anesthesiologist crashed the patient to sleep. The circulating nurse splashed betadine on the patient's abdomen. The sterile sheets came down. Lights were in place just as I got my gloves on, and then Dr. Cross made his incision.

When it's an emergency C-Section, you don't fool around with finessing a tiny incision as you do for a planned C-Section. You slash the abdomen open and you save the baby. Within twenty seconds, Dr. Cross was reaching into a uterus full of blood and clots and pulling out a one pound baby boy. The baby was alive.

The baby was placed on oxygen and soon turned a healthy pink. The mother was stable. It is moments like these that give the operating room a kind of holy status. Reluctantly, my surgery duties over, I drove back to the office to waiting patients.

And I kept it under the speed limit.

Two weeks later when I saw the young mother again, I was reminded of a story I once heard. It's a teaching story about a Buddhist Master, which depicts him instructing his students day after day on the tenets of Buddhism. Life is pain. Life is also an illusion. Therefore our pain is an illusion

One day the Master's students found him weeping inconsolably. He was mourning the