The White Coat: In Life and Death

“God sat there, His coat as white as snow.” –Daniel, VII, 9

Until the 20th century, physicians traditionally wore black. To evoke antiseptic cleanliness, the white coat was born and worn. (Original white scrubs however, were soon replaced by blue/green ones.)

I still recall how excited I was to receive my first in our medical school basement. (The celebratory white coat ceremony didn’t begin until decades later.)

I was so proud I wore it on the subway returning home to my parents that weekend. Combined with my Kipa, I convinced myself I was a Kiddush Hashem [sanctifying God’s name] rather than a show-off.

Serendipitously, I encountered a neighbor. She looked my coat up and down, smiled and nodded: “I’m so happy to see that… We really need you… We’re desperate for another kosher butcher in the neighborhood.”

(I never wore it home again.)

I was always struck by how closely (other than pockets) it resembled the Kittel we wear on the High Holidays. As a psychiatrist, I never wore it in my office, but did wear it teaching, lecturing, interviewing patients in hospitals.

Whether in a hospital, synagogue, or at my wedding, it always made me feel special. Donning it, I felt like a spotlight was on me, reminding me I had to be on my best behavior.

Coating in white conveys holiness. Heavenly figures are always portrayed in white, on white clouds. God doesn’t wear tuxedos, blue blazers, brown leather bomber jackets, or stylish black (to look thinner.)

I wore my white coat for a half century, but it was holiest a single year.

Our daughter’s Traumatic Brain Injury precipitated her lying, seemingly comatose, in the emergency room, hours at a time. I discovered, without my white coat, as a parent, I was asked to leave after 20 minutes. With my white coat, I could sit next to her bed, holding her hand, whispering reassuring words she couldn’t hear, until she was finally discharged (with no improvement.)

My father wore his Kittel more than a half-century, but it was holiest a single day.

Before his funeral could begin, because his appearance had deteriorated so dramatically during his extended torturous hospitalization, I had to identify his body. His coffin was rolled out of the chapel, in front of confused mourners, into a corridor. The Funeral Director pried open, lifted the lid, demanded I immediately confirm the corpse is my father.

I study the discolored, grotesquely enlarged face, swollen eyes, protruding lips.

It looks like my daughter’s squeeze-doll. Squeeze the belly, the eyes pop out. Push them in, the lips protrude. It looks like a squeeze-doll, like a cartoon caricature, like a funhouse mirror. But it bears no resemblance to my father.

Then, I notice he is buried in his Kittel and Tallis. 

I recognize the Kittel he had worn decades, praying for the congregation on Yom Kippur, commemorating his parents killed in the Holocaust. I smell the familiar aroma of his Tallis that had enveloped me during my childhood as the priests blessed us.

If it is his Kittel, his Tallis, his white coat, it must be him that we are blessing to finally, belatedly, rest in peace.

We encounter white coats as doctors and patients, in sickness and health, in hospitals and synagogues, in life and death.

They do not make us holier. They do remind us that is what we must aspire to be.