At his memorial service, a friend opened her tribute to Johan Samanta, MD, with a list: life lessons from Johan. She began, “Do the things you enjoy in life and live life to the fullest. When in doubt, be more authentic and less inhibited. Find joy in everything. Cook your steak right and eat the best food. Don’t be afraid to ham it up, but don’t take attention away from anyone else. Bring people together and laugh. Stay curious and follow where it takes you. Show love without reserve.”
Johan was a neurologist who specialized in movement disorders. He died suddenly last year, at age 54. Recently, his wife Kristen told me, “I had no idea how beloved he was until he died.” While he was an affable and unreserved extrovert, he didn’t talk much about himself, she said. “He didn’t brag.” In the wake of his death, when people from across his life came forward to tell her stories about him, she couldn’t have imagined the full breadth of his impact and the outpouring of love.
Dr. Samanta never shied away from caring for the world around him. He was born in Sweden and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, when he was four, where his family raised Arabian horses. By the time he was an undergraduate student, working as a scrub in the hospital, he knew his calling.
Johan and Kristen met in medical school (she’s a family doctor). As their friends would say, “Kristen was more mild, and Johan was much more wild.” They balanced each other out. Johan would often say that he “married the most patient woman on earth.” Kristen teases that the first time they met, she didn’t like him. She said “he was full of irreverent comments.” But by the time they were paired as partners in gross anatomy, she got to know him more deeply. She saw his sensitive side, his care, his kindness. This was what mattered to her. She was drawn in.
Johan was a perpetual surprise to Kristen. After they had been dating for a couple years, she remembers finding him upstairs at a party talking on the phone. “He was speaking in fluent Swedish,” she said. “I had no idea he spoke the language. It floored me.” Johan was ripe with energy and curiosity. “He expressed loudly and passionately, good or bad,” Kristen laughed. He was known for making delicious food and, she added while laughing again, “lovingly rubbing his meats…We would go to a restaurant and it wouldn’t be as good as he made it.” Together, they loved life, relishing in nights out dancing, eating, and drinking with those they loved. “We enjoyed the festivities of life,” she said.
But what she remembers most is how caring he was. “He loved me unconditionally,” she said. “I miss just watching TV on the sofa with him. We’d rub each other’s feet as we got into different series. We respected each other. We trusted each other.”
And now was meant to be their time. “The kids are grown up,” Kristen said, referring to their two sons. “We were going to finally be spending more time together. It’s sad there’s not more.”
Johan chose neurology because, as Kristen said, “it was probably the geekiest medical profession—and the coolest.” Johan wanted to know how everything in the brain worked. And it was his gift; “he could see things very three-dimensionally,” Kristen said. “No one was quite like him.”
As a neurologist, Dr. Samanta was renowned. He spoke at seminars both nationally and internationally. He developed a wide breadth of knowledge and was innovative in his field. He had a full clinical practice and offered his expertise as a Clinical Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, where he frequently worked with medical students in his clinic. But even more than his undeniable medical skill, the care, loyalty, and humor with which he served his patients won him a place in their hearts.
In his forties, Johan became a race car fanatic, participating in “24 Hours of Lemons,” in which teams raced “lemons” in endurance races, with a limit of only $500 to purchase the cars for races. The events have a carnival-like atmosphere and, there, Johan’s characteristic larger-than-life personality made him a legend around the circuit. On the track, he had an alter ego personality (“the G.D. Yo Man”), where he’d sport over-the-top attire and develop irreverent race car themes. It was this spirit—enthusiastic, gregarious—that he carried from his life into his clinic. Alongside his expertise and time spent with those in his care, this is what made him beloved by thousands of patients.
At Dr. Samanta’s memorial service, patient after patient got up and shared their stories. One man talked about how they met. In 1998, when he was 36, the man was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. At the time, his doctor was moving, so he gave him three recommendations for other physicians. “They’re all great,” the doctor said, “so I can’t choose one for you—but, after a hard day, I’m going for a drink with Dr. Samanta.” The patient laughed while retelling the story, saying, “I thought, well, that’s interesting advice for a Mormon guy with seven kids. But, at the time, I was a 40-year old with seven kids and a fabulous wife and Dr. Samanta knew I had a long road ahead and I would need lots of medication, but what I really needed was to laugh. He helped me laugh.” By the end of his tribute, the man was crying: “I need him to still be alive.”
And then there was the man who had been under Dr. Samanta’s care for twenty years. “I will miss him a great deal as a doctor,” the man said, “but even more as a friend.” Dr. Samanta spent more than a handful of his Saturdays running a two-mile course with ten obstacles alongside this man. As time went on, they made it a family affair, joined by children and grandchildren. “He would go out of his way to help his patients do their best,” the man said. “He was always there when I needed him; he took care of me.”
When another patient found out Dr. Samanta died, she was devastated. “He was the best doctor I ever had; he really, really cared,” she said. Upon hearing the heartbreaking news, she immediately reached out to the beyond to help guide him on his way into the heavens. Between laughter and sobs, she told those gathered at the memorial service that she “asked all my dead relatives to look for him and show him the rounds.” She closed, crying, “I’m going to miss him.”
At the end of our conversation, I asked Kristen about her grief: “What’s sustaining you?”
“The outpouring of love,” she said, her voice breaking. “He garnered so much support because it was him. I’ve heard from people I didn’t even know. He gave so much love to so many people.”
Her grief comes in unexpected moments. “I didn’t realize he had so many roles in our relationship,” she said. “Every day, I’ve realized, that was Johan’s role.” She thinks about the way he was the expressive one, the one she relied on for something so simple as words during moments of celebration or transformation. “When the kids graduated from high school, he wrote these beautiful notes to them. He was the one with the words. I didn’t realize how much I put on him until after.”
Kristen is fifty-seven. Some people have asked her if she’ll date again. “I can’t imagine,” she said. “Who else would be him? I don’t use words like ‘soulmate’ because they sound so trite to me, but I’ve lost my partner in life. I’ve lost my person. He’s my person.”
Kristen, their sons, their family and friends, and the movement disorder community that knew and loved him feels like there’s an irreparable hole in his absence. Because his love, Kristen said, “was never fake. He cared deeply about people; you felt it.”
In loss, we cannot carry our person with us, but we can carry their love. In us, undimmed, it ripples out. You can feel it.
