The Nonagenarian's Gardener

My experience of physicians and nurses was gained from working elbow-to-elbow with them, in sometimes terrible environs and circumstances.

It was over thirty years ago, but one doesn’t lose the perspective of separating the good from the great, the flesh mechanics from the caregivers, yet, I met only one that ever--even remotely--resembled Michaela Tong.

Tong, my mom’s physician, greets her, treats her, regards her with tenderness almost palpable, as if they were mother and daughter.

I regarded the doctor’s level of interest as curiosity for a patient in her 90s, an oddity or lab specimen somehow exceptional from other octo- and nonagenarians, and couldn't have been more wrong.

This doctor practices with pathos (somebody defined as ‘the emotion of compassion’), evident when she holds my mom’s hand, not looking at her, but into her eyes, sandwiching a frail hand between her own, and connecting on a level I can only begin to approach as an intruder.

Tong may be as much Zen gardener as physician, seeing the woman before her as delicate, fragile and beautiful as the gardener’s wistful regard for a perfect blossom that’s been cut and begun to wither, on a stalk no longer sturdy enough to stand without bending, and leaning against the hand-blown crystal vase that is life’s very edge, so clearly beautiful whilst bereft of any lasting vitality.