the opportunity to care for individuals and families at every stage of life. For a family medicine intern, this privilege has a slightly different flavor. It’s the privilege of witnessing the events that bring people into the hospital throughout their lifespan — birth and death and the illness in between them. And as an intern in the midst of a pandemic, I’ve learned that this privilege can go hand in hand with pain. These days, it is the pain of witnessing the profound loneliness created by closing our hospital doors to all but the ill and the people charged with healing them — a loneliness that feels entirely distinctive at each age and stage of life.