Be Care FULL: what we wish for

Health care … Foot care … Car care … Obamacare … Care package … Hair care … Care Bear… Long Term care...

If you listen carefully, you’ll hear the word “Care” bandied about with a care free abandon and a frequency that could really give you cause to care. A slew of professionals of every type are available to care for you, while politician would-be friends and, sycophants of every stripe insist they care about you.

Yet how often do we encounter caregivers who truly give a care (not to mention a damn) about the care needers? Perhaps, rather than “caregiver” the better title is “caretaker” since so very many just take care of themselves, taking very careful care not to do, say, think of feel more than necessary, and, in truth, couldn’t care less.

Well, this past weekend I encountered socially two healthcare professionals who truly care not only professionally, but personally.

Dr. George is a cardiologist who takes to heart your heart as he provides not just the highest level of medical treatment, but a caring concern for what makes your heart, not just hurt, but ache.

His wide, nurse Linda, an R.N (which stands not just for “Registered Nurse” but also for “Really Nice”) and a Ph.D. candidate in nursing, is another unique individual prepared not only to nurse your wound, but heal your pain with a firm and gentle kindness that is itself restorative.

This is a couple for which caring is not simply a component of what they do, it’s an inherent part (and extension) of who they are: Beyond emergency and operating rooms, they participate in community board rooms, philanthropic meeting rooms and neighborhood school rooms, their spacious home overflowing with carefully prepared culinary delights is always open to family, extended family (extended extended family), guests, visitors and he uninsured, looking for a consult. Not coincidentally, it also features a large bird feeder for birds of every size, a berth for an elderly canine, a vegetable garden and a collection of well-cared-for delicate plants all of which bespeak as continuing, encompassing concern, a caring if you will, for all of life in its various forms.

Their (grown) kids’ rooms, empty this weekend because one is a counselor for special-needs children and the other is at an overseas project combating AIDS, contain Free-Darfur posters and essays advocating for autistic children, as well as other items reflecting a social consciousness. It’s a total environment motivated not by sentimentality or political naivety or guilt, but by … caring.

Just as some are blessed with a G-d given talent to paint or sing or run or invent, Nurse Linda and Dr. George just naturally… care.

Their practice of their respective vocations reflects what they preach, and they preach (not through loud words, but through quiet deeds) decency, concern, empathy and sympathy.

Indeed, in a world that often doesn’t know how to care, and, even more often, doesn’t care to know or learn, theirs is an instinctive solicitude for others; a credo of thoughtful attention and a mission to reflexively minister to the needs, however large or small, of others.

In a world battered by the repeated phrase “I don’t care,” it’s uplifting to hear (and watch) two devoted givers and sharers of care quietly whisper, “we do.”

© Copyright © 2013 Ron Goldman

Ron Goldman is an attorney in private practice with offices in Cedarhurst and can be reached at 1-800-846-9013