Doc Roberts and the Lilacs

Of all the doctors we had on the island through the years, I think I remember Doc Roberts the best. He wasn't young, he wasn't broke, he wasn't there to just fill a twelve week residency requirement, he wasn't even Canadian.

Just a month shy of his 52^nd birthday, he sold his restored powder blue T Bird, signed over a thriving practice to his partner, packed two small suitcases and a duffel bag into his snazzy little Triumph Spitfire and walked away from his elegant, high rise Chicago apartment. He left his two black labs, Jack and Jerry Lee, with friends until he could send for them and started driving. Several days of back roads and forgotten highways finally brought him to the Maine coast where one overnight trip on the Bluenose and another six hours of lazy summer driving from Yarmouth brought him to us.

Nobody ever knew how exactly he managed to bypass all the rules and red tape but bypass them he did – or he didn't and we were so grateful to have him that nobody ever told – but there he was, moving into the doctor's house across from the Baptist chuch on a sunny June afternoon as if he owned the place. He parked the little Spitfire so that those MD plates were clearly visible and by sundown, the whole village was talking – discreetly, of course – about the latest arrival.

Where was he from, how had he come to be here, how long would he stay, was there a wife to follow, how fast could that little car really go.

James and Lily introduced him at Sunday services - the day before he arrived, they had thought to stock up the house with coffee and other necessities – and they'd been anxiously watching for him. With the pastor's endorsement, a charge account at the general store and a wallet full of travelers checks, the new doctor was ready to go.

He spent a good many days porch sitting with Jack and Jerry Lee, smoking his pipe and watching our very small world pass by. He had a passion for lilacs and dedicated a good deal of his idle time planting, raising and watching over them as well. Then in one frantic week, he got called out a half dozen times. Nora Tibert's first child had not made a peaceful or routine entrance into the world. Uncle Shad with his failing eyesight had liked to slice off two fingers fileting a haddock, treated it his own self and developed blood poisoning. Uncle Len had his first heart attack, Frank Thibodeau his last. Mr. Melanson's tractor snagged a downed power line and damn near electrocuted the old farmer and in an explosion that was heard all the way to Westport, a still on the far side of the island caught fire and then - as Bill Albright so elegantly put it – Goddam, if she didn't blow to hell and back! The general consensus was in just that one week, Doc Roberts had pretty much earned his keep.

Twenty some odd years later, Doc died and - despite the health laws and the fact that the cemetery was just across the road – was buried, just as he'd asked, beneath his beloved lilacs, along with Jack and Jerry Lee. The pastor, always the very soul of discretion, arranged for Ms Clara to dig up the lilacs beforehand and replant them after a very quiet remembrance service.

As Doc had been a lifelong bachelor and had no family that anyone knew of, James reported the death but not the details and as he expected, the province was too busy with other things to concern itself with the passing of one not quite government regulated doctor on an isolated island. A succession of traveling nurses came and went through the years that followed until at long last the province provided funds for a year round nurse practitioner position.

Doc Roberts was the last full time physician the islanders were ever to know. Folks still smile at his memory, the house still stands, and his lilacs still bloom with every spring.