It is apparently the start of another academic year.

This year marks ten years since I embarked on this whole learning about the mouth to become mouth-doctor thing, and a little over six years since actually becoming mouth-doctor, and four years since I started teaching other people en-route to being mouth-doctors.

Some days, all of this is a hard slog. Other days, I am so, so, grateful for the encounters I get to have doing the work I do. Occasionally, a day manages to throw up a little bit of both.

Inspiration

In my first year of work, I wrote about about how this practice can be inspiring. I wrote of being inspired by my assistants, patients and support staff. I know that I continue to be inspired by all of these people and their lives to this day.

“I am old and am going to die soon.”

It could seem odd to be grateful for moments when a patient speaks of their impending death. Indeed, hearing it makes one’s heart ache viscerally even six years in. Perhaps it is the lucidity despite her 90 years and a language barrier which makes it all the more gut-wrenching.

But how can one not be grateful for lessons on a life well-lived? For lessons on what it means to love, unconditionally? And For lessons on how it is okay to be okay with the only certainty in life, death?

So thank you Hainanese Auntie, for life lessons and for taking good care of your teeth so that we did not have to take out any.