Remembering Paul Farmer
The news of Paul Farmer’s passing hit me hard yesterday. His work was the singular reason I became interested in public and global health.
I had the privilege of meeting him twice, and heard him speak on several other occasions, but my most enduring memory of him came after a talk he gave at Harvard about 9 or 10 years ago. He and Atul Gawande put on a show, bringing an energy and inspiration that I still remember vividly, viscerally. By the end, everyone in attendance was ready to run through a wall for him, for the cause. I quit my job and started an MPH about 6 months later.
But that’s not the thing that I thought about when I heard the news yesterday. After the talk, I walked by a breakout room and saw him sitting on the floor, exhausted, working on his laptop. He had three or four phones charging, I’m sure each with dozens or more unread notifications. After giving so much energy to others, he saved none for himself.
I met Tracy Kidder a few years ago and nervously joked with him that I very well might have sent his kids to college with the number of copies of Mountains Beyond Mountains I have purchased as gifts over the years. One time I started a book club with friends when I lived in Texas, and picked Mountains Beyond Mountains as the first book. I was excited to share his story and assumed that everyone would be as impressed and inspired as I was, but the reaction was anything but that—they thought he was crazy, pointed out how selfish it was to lead his life as he did without seemingly any attention paid or effort given to his wife and family. I didn’t understand, although with news of his passing, I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
I had always dreamed of working at Partners in Health. I volunteered when I could in Boston and was even a finalist for one of their digital health jobs a few years ago. But I also heard from those who worked for and with him that he was difficult, or even impossible to work with. That his stubborn idealism and allergic reaction to pragmatism were inspiring (and great for fundraising), but made him a terrible manager and leader. I believe that, but the world is such a better place for his work that wouldn’t have been possible without that stubborness, and that allergy.
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Two things come to mind the day after his passing—one is my favorite bit of graffiti that I first discovered around 2010 and last visited a week ago. It’s at the Brigham Circle bus stop (on the outbound side) and reminds the brilliant, heroic researchers, clinicians and staff at the many teaching and research hospitals in the area to think bigger.
The other is, of all things, a poem by Bukowski. I think I first read it in undergrad, but it never really resonated with me until the day I walked by and saw Dr. Farmer sitting on the floor. It’s being reported that he died in his sleep of a cardiac event, but as I was texting with friends yesterday, I wondered aloud if he just gave all the energy he had to what he loved and ran out at the early age of 62. He died too young, but what an incredible, well-lived life.
My Dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains. For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
-Falsely yours (Charles Bukowski)