Pretzels and Fruitcake

• Physician practice patterns
• Physician-patient relations
• Attitude to death
• Rural population

It is a peculiar privilege of a rural doctor to walk among one's dead. When I was training in San Francisco, I never considered the cemeteries. I was too busy analyzing test results and treatment options to wonder what happened when my patients went home, or when they died.

In the rural Maine town where I now practice, my patients are also my neighbors. I find myself discussing inhalers in the bakery and clarifying diuretics in line at the supermarket. “Yes, Mr. Randolph, the one that makes you pee.” My patients see me in dirty sweats at the Y, they hear my half-muttered invectives to the referee during high school basketball games. I've traded the safety and authority of anonymity for membership in a community.

My way home winds along a country road through fields and woods with occasional startling glimpses of the sea. Only 3 years in practice, and already the road is crowded with stories. Here lives Susan, who remembers riding …