The Dermatologist Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

The dermatologist
He was a big expansive man who had a Homeric laughter
when not shouting at nurses who loved him.
He performed surgery on me and warned the problem
would reappear in a few years; it did.
At sixty-five, he was about to retire and travel the world
before he got too old.
He was a man in whose company people felt good
a man with a good appetite for life, a lover of women
and the best of wine.
When I sat in the waiting room at the diabetes
doctor, he came out looking pale
and thunderstruck, he didn't see anything, only
saw a black wall of despair.
The next thing I knew, he had taken his own life,
which he loved so much; his colleagues were sad
no one had seen this coming.
His dreams of a sunny future were broken like
a street lamp, in the dim autumn light.
We know so little about other people that some
regard as a setback, others see it as a catastrophe
My cardiologist had tears in her eyes,
why, why she murmured, he was so full of life.