Last

The invoice makes it seem so very ordinary.  It blandly states,

28 May 2010  Posterior Composite Filling Lower Left Molar

I have been very blessed to have a dentist as a friend!  It goes without saying that he did not become a friend by being my dentist - that's about as likely as making friends by being a Traffic Warden - but having become a friend he became my dentist (and stayed my friend - perhaps even that is difficult!).

Thursday was disconcerting.  A relatively useful day fell apart as a result of an apricot.  It doesn't happen to everyone, and I've had several uneventful apricot encounters over the years, but this one ended with part of the previously mentioned molar sticking closely to the apricot instead of to itself.  A broken tooth!  A phone call.  A Friday drive to my friend's surgery.  A read of the National Geographic in the waiting room.  The most enormous drilling sound - no, it was alright, just a gardener next door power sawing a rhododendron bush!  The smiling welcome.  The chair (aargh).  The light.  The inspection and confirmation of the evil apricot's misdemeanour. "Shall I fill it now?"  The grimaced "Yes, please". Then,

"You're my last ever patient"

Some of the potential threat from such a claim was mitigated by me knowing that some time in the next month or so my dentist was moving over to a teaching post.  But it doesn't take much to set the mind racing in a dentist's chair.  My mind raced between two poles. 

Maybe this was his least important filling ever.  After all whatever happened it would be some other dentist that would next work on my molars. 

Or was it his most important filling ever?  A whole dental career leading to the grand terminus of one of my lower left molars.

Like good professionals everywhere he just filled the tooth as he would have done any other day.  And, having told me not to eat for a couple of hours, departed into post-patient paradise to eat with his staff in celebration.  I wasn't sure what to say as a patient in such historic circumstances, but of course with a numbed mouth saying nothing much was most suitable.

I am fantastically grateful to my dentist.  I vaguely feel the dastardly apricot let me in to a privileged moment.

What I know more certainly is that when on the cross my Lord said, IT IS FINISHED, he really was describing the finale that everything about him had led towards.  Not only the most important moment in his life, purpose and future, the most important moment for me and my dentist too.