Jerome Groopman tells of two experiences that helped shape him into the kind of doctor he is. The first was the sudden death of his father by heart attack some twenty-five years ago, when Jerry was still a medical student. On that occasion the attending physician told him “Well it’s tough, kid,” a response that he felt entirely inadequate.

About this disheartening event, Dr. Groopman writes “This experience explains in part my powerful commitment to care for patients and their loved ones in a way that my father and my family were not cared for – with genuine compassion and scientific excellence.”

This quotation comes from his fine book, “The Measure of Our Days: A Spiritual Exploration of Illness.” He also talked about his father’s death in a notable television program, “The Healer” shown this past December as part of Dateline NBC. I found this documentary portrait of Dr. Groopman inspiring as he treated two of his patients who had diseases that turned out to be fatal.

The first, Gene Brown, a 39-year-old man with AIDS, is worn down after a thirteen-year struggle with the disease. He now has “the feeling that things are spinning out of control.” At this point Dr. Groopman begins treating him with a new experimental drug. The drug, however, ultimately does not work and Gene decides to call off further treatment.

However, his physician continues to care for him with particular concern for his spiritual well-being. Gene and he have an affectionate relationship, marked by mutual respect and love. At their last meeting, as they hug one another, Gene tells him, “Jerry, I love you” and Jerry replies in kind.

When the television interviewer asks Jerry Groopman if a time comes when he focuses more on the psychological and the spiritual, he says, “Yes, it’s in some ways much more difficult because it requires knowing the person and also knowing yourself and being able to open up to that person.”

The other patient, Elizabeth Sanderson, is a woman in her early sixties who suffers from breast cancer. She, too, goes through a series of ups and downs as various treatments work for a while and then fail to arrest the disease.

Throughout this agonizing cycle, Dr. Groopman  attends to her physical needs and the spiritual concerns of the patient and members of her family. As hopes for recovery fade, he nourishes for Elizabeth and others “a different kind of hope, a hope that their lives will end in a dignified and positive way.”

When I talked last week with Herbert Sanderson, Elizabeth’s bereaved husband, he welcomed my distinction between curing and healing. Speaking of Dr. Groopman, he said, “The healing that he does is the way his patients face death; that’s where it all comes together.”

The other major influence making Jerry Groopman the kind of man he is comes from the history of his family. Many members of his mother’s extended family died in the Holocaust. This agonizing legacy informs Jerry’s faith and spirituality. Referring to this legacy, he told me, “It enables me to be comfortable with people wrestling with doubt and uncertainty,” as so many of his patients must in facing their mortality.

Dr. Groopman also told me of his efforts “to find the sacred core in every-one.” When he succeeds at this, he says, “I’ve seen the soul revealed,” as it was with both Gene Brown and Elizabeth Sanderson. Both of them died in peace. Gene said “I’m a fulfilled man, I’ll tell you.” Elizabeth, surrounded by family members, said “I’m not afraid, I’m more overwhelmed with the goodness of God.”

At the end of the NBC documentary, viewers see Jerry Groopman as he takes part in a prayer service in his synagogue. He is shown reading from the Kaddish, the Jewish prayers for the dead. When you consider his work with dying people and his family’s history, this rite takes on poignant significance.

Asked what was going through his mind while praying, Jerry Groopman replies: “I was thinking what the lives of the people I cared for still mean to me.”

Expanding this thought, he adds: “They live in my heart and my memory. They have shaped parts of my life in very substantial ways and I express genuine and profound gratitude to them through that prayer.”

Richard Griffin