Bridget At O’Hearn’s Says Goodbye. Honoring The Art Of The Pharmacy
by Jon Katz
An Era Ends. Bridget Rowan at O’Hearn’s Pharmacy, Cambridge, N.Y., saying goodbye
The phone rang at 3 p.m., Bridget Rowan tends to phone rather than text or e-mail. Better yet, she likes to look her customers in the eye and talk to them. It is part of what she calls the art of the pharmacist.
“Jon, this is Bridget,” she said. “I’m calling with good or bad news, depending on your point of view. I’m closing the pharmacy. Our last day is September 2nd.” I was sorry to hear this news, I can’t say I was shocked by it. Bridget’s world, the world of the independent pharmacy, is vanishing rapidly. There are only two independent pharmacies left in our big county, soon there will be none. Her customer’s prescriptions have already been transferred to the Rite-Aid a half-mile away.
It is a familiar story to many people, I was well aware the day would come.
There are not many independent pharmacies left anywhere, small pharmacies have a hard time dealing with chain competitors, declining reimbursements from insurance companies, suffocating government regulations, greedy pharmaceutical companies, mail order drugs online, staggering amounts of paperwork, computing issues and communications challenges. It’s just too much for a small pharmacy to handle, the Darwinian, mammoth corporate/ government health care system discriminates brutally against the small.
Bridget often talks to me about the art of the pharmacist, her family opened O’Hearn’s Pharmacy nearly a century ago, it is a much loved and appreciated place. She took it over from her father, who retired.
The art of the pharmacist is mostly gone. Pharmacists were once health care counselors, part-time doctors, friends and advisers. In the digital age, pharmacists have become communications managers, constantly trying to reach arrogant and distant insurance companies, sorting through the maze of government regulations, struggling to communicate with busy and overwhelmed doctors, competing with the prices on the Internet, trying to explain to frightened and puzzled customers why they have to pay so much for their medications.
In the modern health care world, it is impossible to talk to insurance companies or understand health plans, harder to reach government regulators, difficult to talk to doctors. The pharmacist is on the front line, they are the only ones out there, everyone can reach them and talk to them, they have fewer and fewer answers. People say they love the personal service, but they love going on the Internet and getting stuff cheaper even more.
The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.
I accept change, it is painful and confusing, but it is also one of the foundation elements of life. If I can’t deal with change, then I can’t live in the modern world, I can’t do my work, I can’t be creative. My world has changed, so has Bridget Rowan’s. This change stings, unlike most. It is personal. I hope the big Rite-Aid store down the street – they bought Bridget’s customer list – will be as nice to people as she was.
I learned to value Bridget some time ago, but especially when I had my open heart surgery last July. I called Bridget at home from the hospital – she gives her customers her home phone number – with a wad of prescriptions in my hand, and no place to fill them at 10 p.m.. She said to drop them off at her house on the way home, she would come into the pharmacy early to have them ready for me. When I could not reach my doctors or comprehend the insurance, I could always call Bridget or come and see her. She was always gracious, patient and eager to talk to me.
If she ever minded, or was ever impatient, she never showed it. I never once phoned her when she didn’t answer right away or call me back within minutes. I will miss her. Pharmacies matter to me now, I visit them often. Every visit to Bridget was pleasant, most often fun. I loved her stories, she loved mine.
Bridget worked hard to keep up. She explained some holistic medications to me, advised me on when to take them and how to deal with some of the side effects of the regular ones. She was a master at the art of the pharmacist, even as if was taken away from her, bit by bit, by corporate chains and giant pharmaceuticals and government bureaucrats computer driven insurance companies. Our world has become so complex we sometimes forget how to be human.
If not for Bridget, I could never have healed as well or as confidently. She made me feel safe and supported. When my doctors barely found time to speak to me, Bridget always found time. When I faced huge bills for some medicines, she helped me string out the cost.
Last year, the town sealed off her store at Christmas season because a building next door was collapsing. She stayed open, but could not let customers into the pharmacy. The town rallied behind her, but she said she never quite recovered from the loss of that Christmas business. She sold jewelry, clothes, crafts to keep the pharmacy going. I had a feeling she was getting weary, that the competition was wearing her down.
Bridget was so precious to me during this past year, and to so many others. Through her, I came to understand my surgery, my medications, my insurance. They did a remarkable job of fixing my heart, then left me pretty much alone to take it from there. She always had time to explain things to me, I never once felt I was bothering her.
When I got to Disney World last year and realized I had left some of my medications behind, I called her up, and she took care of it for me, a local pharmacy soon pulled up to deliver the pills I needed.
Bridget embodies what I love about my town. Even though the economists and politicians have forgotten rural America, we take care of ourselves. We know each other, even if we don’t always like each other. There is still community here, Bridget is such a big part of that.
More important than me, she is precious to so many people in the town. I loved to stand in the pharmacy line and watch Bridget talk so carefully to the old and the poor and the frightened and the confused. The big gruff farmers holding their pills in their huge hands. The children pleading to get the pills they needed for their parents. The old woman fresh from the hospital coming into the pharmacy on their walkers to talk to Bridget and lament their pains. The daughters begging for advice about how to help ease their mother’s pain.
She was constantly on the phone with doctors, insurance companies, government agencies trying to sort out insurance, cost and side affects. She was always looking for a cheaper way, an honest way around a sometimes heartless system.
I don’t know the details of anyone else’s business, but I don’t think anyone walked out of that pharmacy without the medicine they needed.
People struggled to pay for their medicines, told her stories of their sick parents and aunts and uncles. They could trust her and talk to her. If they couldn’t get out in the snow or cold, Bridget would drive their medications to the old people herself. She is my friend as well as my pharmacist, she came to our Open Houses, asked me about my work, loved my dogs. One of the first places I took Fate when she arrived was O’Hearn’s.
Change is a part of our lives and our world, and in many ways, a test of our spiritual and secular health is our ability to deal with it. When Bridget called, my heart sank a bit, and then I shook it off. It’s time for her, it’s what she wants, she chose to get out before her world collapsed around her, and I admire her for that. We are, she said, a dying breed. I think she wants to be part of living breed.
I told her not to let all of the bereaved people in town get her down or make her feel guilty about closing. I could see it was an intensely emotional thing for her, she loved what she did. Several shocked people were coming in, they were already hard at work making her feel bad. Costs would go up, they said, nobody would talk to them like she did. I wanted to be sure not to do that.
When I went down to the pharmacy to hug her and take her photo, it was all right there in front of me, I didn’t have to move or open my mouth. An older woman found some old piece of paper from O’Hearn’s early days, and she brought it in to show Bridget and to wish her well. It was the standard Bridget position, looking into the eyes of a customer, smiling with concern.
When I was done, I just came around the counter to hug her. I said thank you, she said thank you. I left. I was starting to cry.
Bridget possesses nothing if not grace and compassion. She is not sure yet what she will do, but she will do it well and lovingly. I hope she gets some rest first. She told me and her other customers we can always still call her at home if we have any questions about our medicines or prescriptions. The art of the pharmacist will live on in small ways.
I worry about the poor people, and the old people, and the sick people, and the old farmers, people who trusted Bridget and who depended on her guidance and care. It is not easy to find that in the Corporate Nation in our time, companies exist to serve stockholders, not people.
I will not see this again in my life, I thought, she knew it, and I knew it, I could see it in her eyes. That was the hard thing to grasp.
I will be fine, i have good insurance and I know the Rite-Aid’s computers are as good as Bridget’s, probably even better.
There are some very nice people there, and they sell the sell the same pills she does. I’m sure they will do a good job. I hope I still get to see the loyal and efficient Margaret, Bridget’s right hand woman. I loved the way she put all the price stickers on her arm as each customer paid for their medicines, at the end of the day her arms were covered in stickers and she peeled them off and tallied things up.
In our community, we will close ranks, we will find new ways to support each other, to know each other, to keep the humanity in our lives.
I won’t lie and say I don’t think something will be missing, something certainly will. Bridget was a big part of the soul of our small town. It is tough for individuals to survive in our corporate, box store world. I am grateful Connie Brooks is preserving the art of the bookstore just down the road. I hope I do not get the same telephone call from her one day, I suppose I ought to be prepared for it.
In the meantime, I wish Bridget a lot of happiness. She did herself and her father and her profession proud. She was a true artist of the pharmacy. Not too many people or businesses can say they will be missed as much as she will be missed, or did as much good.
As for me, I do not love nostalgia, I do not worship the past, I do not dwell in the world of what was, but the world of what is.
Bridget is not my life, she is doing what she wishes to do and needs to do. I don’t want her feeling guilty on my account.
I have no cause or justification to mourn her, or to use her as an excuse to speak poorly of my life or the world I live in. We cannot understand change in our own time, all change is good in it’s own way, it is the nature of the human spirit.
Bridget is young and smart and energetic, there will be a great next chapter for her. We all make of our lives what we wish to make of them, we get back what we put into them. I suspect Bridget will be both relieved and happy to end her long struggle to push the tidal wave back with her small pharmacy.
I wish her all the peace, happiness and rich future that she deserves.
