"THE PITT: Episode 2, Season 1" - Review/Opinion/Inspiration

"THE PITT: Episode 2, Season 1" - Review/Opinion/Inspiration

I’ve been posting accolades on X (follow me @KZA76_NBAstats) periodically about the new, refreshing, masterful medical drama called THE PITT on Max.  Noah Wyle deserves every possible award for best actor in this series, in which he stars as the head Emergency Room Physician Dr. “Robby” Rabinovitch.  The series format makes the drama naturally fast-paced and unpredictable – each episode is one hour of “real time” in the ER at an understaffed hospital in Pittsburgh. As of today (4/10/25), there is still one more episode to go of season 1 -- in which a 12-hour shift has now turned into a 15-hour shift due to a mass casualty event.

As a Muslim convert coming from a family with a complicated and unorthodox (pun intended) relationship toward organized religion, this episode gave me a much-needed framework to feel comfortable with the idea of one day “saying goodbye” to my parents and brother.  I hope they all live forever and outlive me, but in the likely case that at least one passes away before me, I was inspired by this episode’s suggestion by Dr. Robby to a brother and sister choosing to honor their father’s request RE: not keeping him alive with machines.  When the siblings struggled with deciding to “pull the plug” to let their dad die peacefully, they essentially both said “heck no” when asked whether their family ascribed to any religion.

Dr. Robby makes a suggestion for a simple way to say goodbye to a loved one: an ancient Hawaiin ritual called Ho’oponopono in which one uses four simple statements in saying goodbye:

1. I LOVE YOU

2. THANK YOU

3. I FORGIVE YOU

4. PLEASE FORGIVE ME

Families are complicated, and mine is no exception.  The siblings in the show found some peace in using this non-religious framework for clearing the air and saying some final words to their father as he took his last breaths.  They ended up getting emotional and even clearing the air from some of the tension between themselves.  I felt a weight lifting off of my shoulders as this scene played out, knowing that my conundrum has been solved – I now have a non-religious way to say goodbye to my parents and brother, should the time ever come.

My father is Jewish but knew from a young age that he simply did not believe in God and identified as an atheist.  My mother was raised in the Southern Baptist Church but became disillusioned with the hypocritical nature of “competing factions” of Christianity and the frequent shaming of human sexuality.  My mom has always been a very spiritual person with a strong connection to animals and nature, and she considers herself to be agnostic.  My brother and I were kept away from and “warned against” organized religion throughout our entire childhoods and left to make our own decisions about spirituality as adults.  My brother may have considered himself agnostic at one point in early adulthood, but he is now strictly atheist, as is his wife.

I’ve always felt the presence of a higher power but didn’t identify with the personification of God that takes place in Christianity.  I also saw for myself the hypocrisy that my mom had mentioned among the many Christians – mostly Catholics, during the height of the priest-abuse allegations surfacing in the 80s and 90s -- that we grew up surrounded by in southern New Jersey.  I embraced Judaism as an adult and went through an official conversion process (necessary since my father, not my mother, is the Jew) to be a “Conservative Jew." The tenets of Judaism – not personifying God, not claiming a set “known” process for what happens after death, and the concept of “Tikkun Olam,” which means that doing good on Earth and living your life by the golden rule is more important than whether you even believe in God – fit with my natural belief system.  I was proud to be a Jew and cherished learning about my Jewish heritage and culture, but I ultimately ended up being a “secular Jew” because playing tennis on weekends became more important to me than sitting still at synagogue during Shabbat or planning for holidays.

I met my husband, Alhamdulillah (praise to God), via the tennis community four years ago.  He is a devout Muslim who grew up in rural Bangladesh.  So many little things had to happen for us to meet – him getting a job offer to move to Austin after his divorce, my tennis partner being his co-worker, and so on. Both of us have quirks that have irritated previous partners, but we are perfect for one another – a quintessential example of the trope that “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.”  I still love him more every day and am so fully sure that Allah (just the Islamic term for the same monotheistic higher power watching over all of us, that others simply refer to as Lord or God or Adonai) brought us together.  

Shameem could Islamically marry me in the official Muslim wedding process called Nikkah, since I was a “person of the book” i.e. Christian or Jew monotheist, and he never pressured me to convert.  I took my time to read about Islam and really took all of its elements into careful consideration before I decided about a year into our marriage that becoming a Muslim was 100% on my heart, and now I am a proud Muslim-American.

I have thought often about how I would properly say goodbye to my family members who don’t share my faith in Allah.  This episode’s aforementioned 4-step process, suggested by Dr. Robby (courtesy of his mentor whom he lost during COVID), to help with the early stages of grief, has given me the framework and motivation to break family tensions here and now. There would be much I’d like to say to my parents and brother, and I actually am actively working on writing individual letters to each in case there arises an emergency or accident scenario that doesn’t present an opportunity to say any last words.

Thank you, Dr. Robby, for the suggestion that became an inspiration to me.  Thank you, MAX for producing this groundbreaking show called THE PITT. Most of all, thank you to Allah for the life I've lived so far and Inchallah (God-willing) all of the challenges and triumphs for many years to come.

Kira Zahara Ahsan

https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/krudnick79

https://youtube.com/@kza76-nbastats

“Allah is the best planner”

Quran 3:159