An invitation into a patient’s garden

Lucy O’Hagan

Early in his memoir Native Son: The writer’s memoir, Witi Ihimaera introduced me to the idea that stories have a whakapapa. I had an image of a story travelling through generations of tellers and listeners, told in different places: a dinner table, a classroom, a wharenui, a road trip or perhaps as a whisper in a bed. And I imagine each teller and listener moulds that story into something that makes sense to them in their time and place.

I was recently told a metaphorical sort of story by my friend, the thoughtful and passionate GP, Nigel Thompson. It was a story that had been told to him by Richard Bolstad, who had been given the story by psychotherapist George Sweet. I don’t know Richard Bolstad at all, but if he is someone who passed a story from George to Nigel, I feel I would like him a lot.

George Sweet I met once, about 20 years ago, when he gave a teaching session to a group of GPs. I don’t recall in detail what he said but I retain an intense sense of him, a man of warmth, curiosity and delight. I knew I could have told George Sweet any of my secrets and it would have been OK. I later read his book Don’t Save Some Love for Tomorrow. The title speaks for the man. Sadly, George died recently; he was in his 90s.

The story that George, Richard and Nigel told talked of a therapeutic consultation being an invitation into the person’s garden. The garden is a metaphor for the person’s life. It might be tidy or chaotic, pruned or wild, but it is an expression of self.

Not everyone gets invited in. Sometimes the gardener will only talk over the gate, with the ends of a deep hedge allowing just a thin view of a concrete path to a front door.

For some the gate is always open, the paths ill-defined, the garden tools scattered about.

But the invitation can be an elaborate transaction. Internal weather barometers assess the person at the gate. Does this visitor understand and appreciate my sort of garden? Will they judge it or admire it? Perhaps they want to fix it in their way, bringing in weed-around ancillary contractors to tidy it up ‘for my own good’. Does this guest feel safe? Have I been hurt by people like this before?

In any garden, there are precious things. They may be on show, like the line of prize roses at the door, or as hidden as a trillium deep in the shadows. The front garden may display a more curated public version of a life but around the back is where the work of life happens.

The back garden is not always shown to visitors as it’s more likely to be messy – a pile of weeds, a whiff of decomposition, gumboot prints on the step, tomatoes shamelessly on view with unpinched laterals, a rusted clothesline, beds wintering over and an unlit shed with a conglomerated smell of petrol, soil, cut grass and fungus, messily sprinkled by a leaking sack of blood and bone.

A tidy shed is seldom found in an untidy life, unless of course the shed is the only realm one is able to keep orderly, which is satisfying.

A garden’s shameful corners are risky to show. The visitor might choose to graciously ignore them or, if you are lucky, they might laugh in solidarity about their own garden shames, or pick up a fork and help a little while chatting. But there is a chance they might judge, even without words. Still, it can be a risk worth taking because sometimes they might not see the ‘bad bit’ as bad at all, but as a place where something new can emerge. Because all gardeners know that the great life force of nature will burst through, despite us.

I like the garden metaphor because the garden and its aesthetic are a culture I understand; I know the exact particularity of the statement, ‘It needs a little potted colour.’

But lately I have been reflecting that having a garden, particularly a tidy front one, is a privilege, one that requires desire, time and resources. For some there is, say, grass but no mower or petrol, because that money is needed for shoes or food or for something else to ease despair. And in these cases, the garden metaphor doesn’t work.

Today I am at a gate, looking over a desiccated lawn. There is a discarded car parked neatly in the corner near a tarpaulined shed with flaked-paint walls. My garden judgments are kicking in. I hear myself assuming that bad things must happen inside a home with no garden. And I’m arguing with this thought, suggesting to myself there may be a richness here I don’t understand, perhaps a multigenerational collective with their own whakapapa of stories that don’t include ‘a little potted colour’.

And even though I might think of myself as one of the nice visitors, I may not be invited in. My late model Toyota Yaris is parked behind me, my shoes are new, my skin a weathered white and my own whakapapa of stories cloud around me, some shameful, some not.

I am standing wondering what sense of me stands at this gate, and I am remembering George Sweet’s warmth, curiosity and delight.

‘Don’t save some love for tomorrow,’ he tells me.

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Lucy O’Hagan is a Rata Hauora/ GP at Oratoa Cannons Creek in Porirua. She also teaches and mentors GP trainees and writes a column for NZ Doctor magazine.

Lucy recently recorded a collection of columns and stories she wrote during the pandemic. Waiting for Covid is a fascinating reliving of the COVID-19 years, ‘told with grace and humour’, which ‘made me laugh, cry, reflect, celebrate.’ It is freely available on Spotify, Apple podcasts or here.

More stories on her website or Facebook – Lucy OHagan doctor writer.

Don’t Save Some Love for Tomorrow by George Sweet was self-published in 2006. ISBN: 0-173-11150-0