Last week I drove 200 miles to the Essex town where I practised as a doctor for thirty years, my first return visit since I retired in 2008. The reason was the funeral of my then junior partner, who sadly died recently.
Naturally it was a sober occasion, though also an optimistic and celebratory one as she was not only an excellent GP, but a committed Christian with a sure and certain hope, a hope which she shared with her family. But strangely her loss was not the reason I felt unexpectedly downbeat about the occasion.
On reflection, the reason was meeting up with my old partners, all together for the first time since I left, plus a couple of other local GP colleagues. All are good friends, and it was good to catch up with old times and family news. But all have also now been retired for several years, and I reached the distinct realisation that we are all now well out of the professional loop.
It’s a common observation that once you retire, nobody is interested in your opinion any more. But when you understand the traditional role of the family doctor as a respected pillar of the community (at least for the twelve thousand or so patients my practice served, the local medical education system, the hospice and so on), and the fact that between us we probably had nearly 200 doctor-years in that community, it seemed odd that were were all bemoaning the state of the NHS as outsiders, feeling helpless about the way the new generation of GPs were managing our families, and so on. None of the partners living locally seemed even to know why there was scaffolding on our old surgery – the place in which we had invested small fortunes and spent most of our working lives.
The experience was a stark reminder of the biblical truth that “all flesh is grass,” and that pillars of the community are entirely forgotten as quickly as last month’s TV quiz contestants. It’s not just that all our patients eventually die despite our efforts, but that even any advances we may make to medical knowledge or (as in my deceased partner’s case) medical education are likely to become obsolete in a few years, or be replaced by the dreadful pharma-orientated algorithmic protocols they train doctors in now. Community awards yesterday – irrelevant today.
The truth in medicine, as in pretty well every walk of life, is that any “legacy” we leave behind is mainly going to be invisible, short-lived and personal – but it is no less significant for all that. Perhaps we save the life of a young man or woman, and maybe they’ll be eternally grateful (which is gratifying, but uncommon). But the survivor’s children,whose later existence our intervention made possible by our success, will know nothing about owing their lives to us. Our professional example may help tip one of our young patients to take up medicine rather than environmental studies, but even if he doesn’t forget our influence, his own patients will never know about it.
In this we’re more or less on a level with the supermarket worker whose cheerful smile unwittingly stopped a depressed customer from taking an overdose, or more generally with the grandparent idolised by her grandchildren, yet nothing but a faded photo to her great-grandchildren. So our greatest achievement is, in most cases, to be a useful cog in the machinery of society, rather than a lump of sand. The lack of drama in such an inglorious concept of “legacy” is mitigated by the fact that, according to New Testament teaching, all these things are accorded eternal value in heaven, if done in the name of Christ. It’s scarcely surprising that heaven regards loving your neighbour as more significant than developing a new drug protocol.
On my trip I also decided to revisit our first house from 1978-82, a weather-boarded cottage dating from before 1770, when it was owned by one Samuel Mead, or at least occupied by him under copyhold, as the original documents we were bequeathed by the previous owner showed. It had a pair of quaint Victorian shop windows overhanging the village street. And it provided an apt illustration of the above principle of the invisible legacy.
As the above 1978 elevation shows, the right hand shop window had sagged interestingly over the years, and the picture below proves that the sag was already there at the turn of the previous century.
There was some rot in the ancient window-beadings, which in 1980 I decided I had to repair piecemeal for Grade 3 heritage’s sake. Some of the glass needed replacing, too, but one pane comprised the “bulleye” from what was clearly a handmade sheet, blown before the advent of machine-glass. Somehow I managed to get it out without breaking it, to find that it had apparently slumped along with the window as a whole. It was only a couple of millimetres thick at the top, and thicker at the bottom, as if it had slowly settled down like treacle. It had a curve on it, too, matching that of the sagging frame. Apparently it was of the same antiquity as the original shop window.
After repairing the frame, I reverently replaced this antique glass – pauisng from time to time as ancient villagers stopped to tell me of unaccountably seeing a donkey in my entrance hall as a child, or of the householders emerging to doff their caps to the squire on his way to church. That gave a huge sense of continuity to my DIY project.
And when I strolled past the cottage last week, 44 years later, behold! My dimpled handiwork was still in place! The householder wasn’t around to ask if he’d noticed it, but I fancy he had, because he seemed to have discovered, and carefully restored, a tobacconist sign above the other window.
Now one could say that, as a GP, I restored a few ancient patients to health. But none of them were as ancient as Samuel Mead’s cottage – and none of my interventions lasted as long as the 44 years of extra life that humble pane of cheap handmade glass has seen in the community.
I’m quite please with that legacy.
