Maya y Iglesia - Leah Acosta
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Cadaver Memorial
-Melissa Lanier Park
It seems like ages ago that we started anatomy. As we took our first tentative steps into the lab the warmth of long summer days slowly left us, and the remaining chill brought sharply into focus the reality of death and stillness. Each of our hearts filled with anticipation, apprehension, perhaps fear of what we could not yet know. These lives laid out before us, spent yet still so tangible, served as reminders of the frailty of life. Of how fragile we all are.
And yet, they were more than just models of death and disease. They were more than symbols of the inevitable. These bodies represented something remarkable – a collective choice by a handful of otherwise unrelated people to give themselves, their whole selves, to the foundation of our education. By giving their bodies to science these people became immortally incorporated into the deepest fibers of our minds, and they will live on not only in our memories but also through every patient we see, every student we teach, every life we help to save.
These men and women have chosen such an honorable path, continuing to touch lives in death as I'm sure they did in life. They gave themselves for the benefit of education, for the benefit of us all. And from all we learned from them I hope it's this lesson that's dearest to us.
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