High-fives in Heaven

In Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations” the human hand is a recurring icon.  It is used throughout the text as a way of getting to the essence of someone – a manifestation of the past and present, as well as a predictor for the future of one’s life.  As the narrative moves along, so are we introduced to more hands, and learn more details about them.  A quick survey of the hands I’ve encountered and it’s easy to see how Dickens came to this concept – the rugged hands of the laborer, the chaliced hands of a musician, the soft hands of a child, the weathered hands of the homeless. 

It all makes the hand-shake or the high-five pretty special, doesn’t it?  A temporary joining of lives.

I recently learned that I have been accepted into a general surgery training program, which is to say that my hands are going to be of great importance to me for the foreseeable future.  Actually, it means that my hands will be of most importance to my patients who will literally put their lives into the care of my hands.  Atul Gawande writes in his book “Complications, a Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science” that the director of his surgery training program once remarked how rarely doctors came into the program with “good hands” but that, after the five years of training, they all left with the necessary set of skills needed to operate.  That hands can change, to a budding surgeon, is encouraging. 

And so when I called home the other day to tell my parents the news of my being accepted to the surgery program, I was struck by something my father said.  He quietly lamented that none of my grandparents could share this moment, but quickly added, “I’m sure they’re exchanging high-fives in Heaven.”  And just like that we had a temporary joining of lives – me, my father, and my grandparents. 

And it was overwhelming.