Until last week, I had not seen my friend, Dr. Greg “Grammy” Gramelspacher, in 20 years. Not since he had become a doctor specializing in care for the dying poor. Not since he and his wife, Mary Lou, and their three children moved to Kenya to work in the poorest villages there for two years in the mid ’90s, then back to Indianapolis, where today he’s on the faculty of the Indiana University Medical School and works in Palliative Care at Wishard Hospital in the heart of the city. Not since he appeared in Bill Moyers’ series On Our Own Terms on PBS a few years ago.

There’s been a lot of water under the bridge in those 20 years, but we picked up like it was just yesterday back in Jasper, Indiana, when we were dreaming about the bigger world away from there, and aching to get at it. (more…)