[This writing was from late February/early March 2020. This was my last home visit before the pandemic hit my city.]

I rushed from a busy ward floor of the hospital to my car to drive to go meet Ms. Bee for a home visit. Her rose colored wooden house with peeling paint surrounded by overgrowing vines and grasses appeared to rise up from the earth organically. It felt out of place on the side of a very busy four-lane thoroughfare of our city and surrounded by newly built, imposing condo buildings that lack the character and charm of her small dwelling. Her house was like a lush desert island in a sea of concrete. “My mail box has been knocked over so many times by drunk drivers. I can’t even count them anymore! One time it got dragged all the way to the corner store,” she recalled with genuine amusement.  

We met in her living room of her home. She sat in her burgundy recliner that seemed to envelop her tiny, bony body, just like her large knit sweater seemed poised to swallow her up at any moment. The moss green carpet beneath our feet felt like an earthy mat. Her medications lined up on the table next to her large recliner gave the impression that Ms. Bee doesn’t move much from her perch. She and her house felt like steady old relics in a city of non-stop movement, expansive growth. Time seemed to slow down a bit inside her little house. There was nowhere to be and nothing left to do other than sit and connect.  

Talking with Ms. Bee was like stepping back in time. When asked if she had any life advice or lessons she’d like to share with young people today, she spoke of her work as an orthodontist’s assistant. You can learn a lot from people’s mouths and learning when to keep yours shut. She also spoke of her childhood picking cotton on her family’s farm and on farms out west where her and her siblings worked with her parents to earn money in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Picking 350 pounds of cotton a day is an unbeatable teacher. She recalled her family’s covered wagon, her father finding a shade tree every summer under which he’d sell the family’s watermelon crop, and the corn they grew for her family of 15 to eat.

Was this modern-day home visit with Ms. Bee a little glimpse into the practice of medicine of yesteryear? Connections were made at home, and a physician was able to assess a patient as a located, contextual, relational human—not as a member of a revolving cast of characters participating in the drama of the contemporary clinic. Similar to how doctors used to visit her family farm when one of her 12 siblings became ill, I met her in her environment, and for that reason, I feel like I learned a great deal about who Ms. Bee is. Seeing where she lives and how she lives painted a three-dimensional picture in full relief of what it meant for Ms. Bee to take care of herself. Her home environment provided me with a glimpse into what made Ms. Bee more than any other elderly woman with a handful of common chronic health conditions; I saw her as a full person rooted deep into the land on which she lives, the same sprawling piece of land on which she was born 99 years ago.