“Bring me flowers now while I’m living.
I don’t need your love when I’m gone.
Don’t spend time, tears, and money on my old breathless body.
If your heart is them flowers, bring ’em on.”
These are the words of that great philosopher and country music singer, Tanya Tucker. A friend of hers had died, and someone suggested they bring flowers for the deceased. Tanya thought about this a moment. As she reflected on her dying friend, Tanya realized a simple aspirational truth about her own life (and inevitable death), an aspirational truth that inspired her to write these words to this song:
“Bring me flowers while I’m living.
I don’t need your love when I’m gone.”
As physicians, many of us, I think, are often too busy to “bring flowers to the living,” especially to our own loved ones, and even more especially, to our children. We get caught up in what we might call the day-to-day “busyness of business,” the routine “doctor hustle.”
My colleague Jenn works long hours in a teaching institution. One evening, driving up to her home while talking to clinic staff on her cellphone (which had become for her almost an extra appendage), she was greeted by her six-year-old son. “Mom,” he questioned, “if you have a cellphone, why did you have me?”
Perhaps being too busy with the “busyness of business,” too busy with the obsession of the “doctor hustle,” Jenn may have forgotten to bring flowers to the living; she may have forgotten to bring flowers to her own son.
Another colleague, Stephanie, a full-time pediatric doctor, had told me about her wonderful live-in nanny. But a few weeks ago, she confided that she had an experience that saddened her. “All the kids in my son’s second-grade class,” she reported, “made these really cute Mother’s Day cards. My son,” she continued, “gave his to the nanny.”
Is this the story of another doctor mom too busy with the “busyness of business,” too busy with the “doctor hustle,” to bring flowers to the living, to her own son? Maybe.
Finally, another colleague, “doctor mom,” Marsha, one rainy Sunday afternoon decided to spend some “quality time” with her seven-year-old daughter. While the little girl was curled up by the fireplace absorbed by the big screen TV images of Simba in The Lion King, Marsha thought it might be a good time to catch up on journal reading. As she picked up the latest Pediatric Journal, the little girl suddenly turned to her. “Mom,” she scolded, “you’re supposed to watch the movie!”
And maybe that’s good advice for all of us hard-working, multitasking, health care-hustling docs.
Maybe we’re supposed to watch the movie.
Maybe we’re supposed to watch the movie because one of these days, when we look back on our lives, I bet we’ll wish we had.
To my physician colleagues: Many of us may be caught up in the oppressive daily “busyness of business,” in the unrelenting “doctor hustle,” and in the multitasking muddle of our professional lives.
To our loved ones, especially our children, let’s heed the words of Tanya Tucker: Let’s bring them flowers while they’re living.
And as Tanya concludes in the song:
“So if you got love, then you’re sittin’ on a gold mine.
And you can’t take it with you when you go.
So don’t wait to help your sister,
Forgive your brother and your neighbor,
We all think we got the time until we don’t.”
Scott Abramson practiced neurology with Kaiser Permanente Northern California for over 40 years, from 1979 to 2020. Throughout those years, Dr. Abramson was passionately involved in physician communication and physician wellness endeavors. Some of his insights and stories from his experiences in these endeavors can be found in video format on his YouTube website channel: Doctor Wisdom.
