- © 2007 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
Do you know why you're here?”
Truth be told, I thought that was all I did know; that and the fact that in life I had been a physician. I certainly didn't know where “here” was, and wasn't too sure who “I” was …
Can you remember who I was? can you still feel it?1
... or when “it” was. I supposed this was what it felt like to be disoriented times 3.
I nodded at my questioner. “I am here to be judged.” If this was a dream, it was like no dream I had ever dreamt, for the fear I felt was like no fear I had ever felt. Fear of eternal damnation — whatever that meant.
My questioner looked back at me and sighed. “You are here to judge.”
In the silence that followed, I became aware of a nearby shadow. He hung his head in a gesture of resignation, helpless now to influence what was apparently to follow. I recognized him as a fellow physician I had known in life and realized that I was being asked to judge his behaviour in life simply because I, too, was a physician…
Can you find my pain? can you heal it?
Then lay your hands upon me now
And cast this darkness from my soul.1
My being cast in the role of judge struck me as odd and disappointing. I had not known him particularly well, and I vaguely recalled not liking him very much. I felt profound sadness and believe that I was crying. I had always expected — or rather, I had always hoped — that in the end there would be perfect justice. Damnation of the wicked, salvation of the good, a discerning and just but merciful Deity. Now it appeared that justice would be imperfectly meted out by a peer — and a not impartial one at that — much as it had been in life. No divine comedy; on the contrary, just a human tragedy.
I had made a living listening carefully to what people told me, reading between the lines. It occurred to me now that my response — “I am here to be judged” — had not been contradicted. Was it possible, I wondered, that unlike the poor soul before me I still had a chance to favourably or unfavourably influence my own judgment?
This is a test, I thought. Yes, a final test. I must be just but merciful. But, oh my God, what if my judgement is unjustly or unmercifully damning? Would I, too, be judged harshly? Or if my judgement is merciful to the point of being unjustly redemptive, what then? And what if before dispatching this poor soul standing before me they in turn ask him to judge me? Having judged him, how could I protest?
I looked back at my interlocutor. I supposed he knew what I was thinking about. I shook my head in refusal. “I don't want to judge him.”
“You have no choice. You must.” He smiled. “Be just but merciful.”
He knew exactly what I was thinking. I stood my ground. “I am not competent to do so. I do not know him well enough.”
“You are beyond time now.”
Beyond time. In eternity. The concepts of past, present and future had no meaning; they existed simultaneously. The life of the man was suddenly there for me to examine in its entirety. It existed like a gestalt, like a written page or a painted canvass, capable of being experienced in an instant. But it was more than that. It was as if I could move effortlessly and instantaneously through time and space, experiencing any or all of his life in its minutest details, in all of its contextual richness. I was privy to all of the decisions he had made, all of the workings of his mind and heart and of the minds and hearts of those around him. I saw, heard, tasted, smelled, felt everything, the events of his life, professional and personal, and was able to read his motives at each moment. I felt all the joy and pain he had experienced and provoked in others.
I was confused, since he did not always appear as a doctor. He appeared to have various professions, simultaneously if that were possible, and disoriented though I was, I recalled the old nursery rhyme about the “tinker, tailor, soldier, [and] sailor.” It seemed as if he had done nearly everything; but how, in a finite lifetime? It occurred to me that in my travels through space and time, I had witnessed all those occasions on which he had come upon 2 roads diverging; but unlike Frost's traveler,2 he had — on all occasions except those involving moral choice — traveled both while still remaining one traveler, though unbeknownst to himself. And I realized that the blind man had been right after all, that the man's life had been a garden of forking paths,3 meandering through many worlds, with choices in all of them. It had, however, been the moral choices that had mattered most because only they had foreclosed entire universes.
I knew that I was not qualified to judge his professional behaviour in those many worlds in which he was not a physician, yet somehow part of me divined that I was not expected to.
At a certain point I realized that I had seen all there was to see. The man stood before me.
“Decide,” my dogged inquisitor insisted.
I thought about all I had witnessed. The man had been an average internist. He had endeavoured to help his patients when he could, and had tried not to harm them. He had made mistakes, and some had cost patients dearly, but he had never been motivated by greed. He had had priorities outside of medicine — family and self — and was not always sure that he had struck the best balance. He had put himself before others more than he should have. He had taken some shortcuts that he regretted. The man hadn't always been kind, truthful, trustworthy, fair and honest, though he had aspired to be.
“He was a better man and doctor than some and not as good as others.” Would that be enough?
Still he waited. What had he said before? “You are beyond time now.” That being the case, there was nothing to be gained by procrastination. I supposed he was waiting for something less equivocal. I had spent a lifetime making hard decisions and living with their consequences, and implicitly asking my patients to live with them, too. Taking care of patients had been hard work, mentally and physically, and that had been the hardest part of it, hadn't it? Making decisions? If I am unprepared for this moment, I thought, the scores of little decisions I made everyday in the course of a clinical lifetime certainly left me better prepared than most.
I thought again, remembering all I'd seen. “I would not have been unhappy to have had him as my father, or my son, or my brother, or my friend.” I paused. “Or my doctor.”
The questioner nodded.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Where will he be sent?” I asked.
“Where will who be sent?”
I looked around and realized that the shadow of the man was nowhere to be seen. I realized then that it was I who had cast the shadow; and, I supposed that like the denizens of Plato's cave I had only now been released and allowed to turn my head.
“Where should you be sent?”
You alone can light my way.
You alone can make me whole once again.1
I laughed, now, the burden of judgement lifted. Since there was really only 1 right choice, there was no choice at all.
“Back ... Back there,” I said, pointing to my life as I had known it. Back to where I might make all the difference. And in my mind's ear I heard the lines of a song from my youth:
But there's no need for turning back
‚cause all roads lead to where I stand.
And I believe I'll walk them all
No matter what I may have planned.1
I looked back towards my questioner only to realize that I had cast 3 shadows, not 2; but I knew that if I stood and looked down as far as I could, I would see as many shadows as there were roads through woods, paths through gardens; and I knew that somewhere ages and ages hence, sighing, I was being judged by all of them.