A Pebble for Each

Cedar Valley News
Fictorial Number 466 · November 14, 2026
A Pebble for Each
By Aisha Khalid

A man I had cared for across 11 years died last month. I learned it the way doctors often do, from a line in a hospital note sent to my inbox between two appointments. I read it. I closed it. I walked into the next exam room and asked a young mother how her son was sleeping.

I did not tell anyone. There was no one to tell, and no time to tell them.

This fall, Duke Today, the university’s staff news, wrote about the hospital’s chaplains, who have now served Duke for 70 years. Tucked into the story was a ritual at the Duke Outpatient Clinic in Durham, North Carolina. A chaplain, Katherine Henderson, and a clinical social worker, Jan Dillard, built it to help their colleagues grieve. Once a month, the staff gathers. They read the names of patients who have died. They share memories. And for each life lost, a pebble goes into a glass vase.

Elissa Nickolopoulos, a social worker at the clinic, explained it this way: “It’s a way to sort of release ourselves from their care, so we can go on to care for other patients.”

Release ourselves from their care. I have read the sentence many times this week, and I keep stopping on the word release.