hospicediary

Guest blog: “Death Cafe”–Not Exactly a Last Supper

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Amy Getter

Thank you to Karen, for sharing her blog. I, too, have been fascinated with the concept of death cafes and enjoyed reading Karen’s story:

Before I knew what a “death cafe” referred to, I pictured a collection of skulls clacking away as they helped themselves to a buffet, with soft foods and liquids being the most favored by far. “Death cafe?” How could food and death be juxtapositioned? One of the leading graphics in an article that unveiled the meaning of this phrase showed elegant blue and white dishware obediently standing in a holder. A skull took up the center of each plate, hogging all the blue, leaving the white to fill in the periphery. Written on the rim was, “Bone appetit.” See that? I’m not the only one who thinks like I do.

“Death cafes” are part of a movement to break cultural taboos against openly discussing such topics as how we want to be remembered, how to bring up the subject of dying with loved ones and how we want our funerals to be conducted. The food part, making this subject a bit easier to swallow, usually consists of beverages and snacks.The very first death cafes began in 2004 and really took off in 2011. The organizers say that by now approximately one thousand people have attended them in countries such as England, Australia, the United States, and Italy.

Karen Kaplan is a rabbi, hospice chaplain, author and college instructor. She blogs at https://offbeatcompassion.wordpress.com

My husband Steve and I, both of us curiosity seekers, went to a death cafe in someone’s home the middle of this month. We helped ourselves to some snacks–the best one was guava paste and cheese spread on crackers–and waited our turn to answer the question of why we were there. Many people said they were open to discussing it because they had lost a loved one at a tender age, or they themselves were young when someone very close to them had died. My answer was that I wanted to see what people were saying about this topic and that I thought I might get ideas for my blog posts. (See?)

We then had to complete the phrase, “Death is……” Naturally I said, “Death is at the edge.” I say naturally because my working book title is “Encountering the Edge: A Hospice Chaplain’s Memoir.” Later when we broke into smaller groups, I said that when I contemplate this edge, it throws life, which is on the other side of that edge, into sharper relief.

I figured that I would have to forgo retrieving any humorous gems from this particular event, but luckily someone said, “Oh, I thought this event was called a “Death Cave.” “Death Cave?” Is that where thoughts on death end up after we chew the fat? When Steve and I laughed about that on the way home, he said “that sounds like the Flintstones were going to host the event.” It’s about time. I never have ever heard Fred and Wilma address the issue, have you?

Karen has since published her book, entitled “Encountering The Edge: What People Told Me Before They Died” (Pen-L Publishing, 2014, available wherever books are sold.) http://pen-l.com/EncounteringTheEdge.html

Posted in death cafe | Tagged chaplain, dying, humor | Leave a comment

Why I Love Clara Barton (Angel of the Battlefield) and my Grandmother!

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Amy Getter

I was never a war nurse.

Clara Barton died over a hundred years ago.

But I love the woman.

I have loved her for many years.

I was deeply influenced by my grandmother. She taught me how to love, actually how to love deeply under times of sadness, bad news, and death. Some of these lessons were learned while being a field hospital nurse in 1918 in France in WWI during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the costliest military campaign in United States military history, involving 1.2 million American soldiers, 26,277 killed and 95,786 wounded.

She volunteered for this duty, “because it was the right thing to do.” She was decorated for heroism. A few years ago I traveled to the battlefields where she worked as a nurse. I stood in an American military graveyard in France, surrounded by some of “her boys” who didn’t survive. I wept.

Clara Barton was one of America’s greatest nurses, feeling that it was her duty to help the soldiers on the front line during the American Civil War. She mounted Herculean efforts to raise funds and gather supplies to bring medical services to soldiers, and then worked to distribute supplies, clean hospitals, apply dressings, and serve food to them. From 1862 she worked on the front lines, once having a bullet travel through the sleeve of her dress killing the man she was caring for. She bore the name “Angel of the battlefield” as a tribute to her steadfast service.

After the war she ran the Office of Missing Soldiers, and also brought her war nursing knowledge to several countries overseas. She was decorated for her efforts and consulted with two US Presidents, helping form and then become the first president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Red Cross quickly expanded its scope to refugees and natural disaster under her leadership.

I am just a hospice nurse who keeps a diary. I record the stories of some amazing true life heroes, their families, and caregivers in their final days. Their stories may provide us a blueprint, since they (the only true experts on death) are gone.

They say it takes all kinds to make a world, but I can’t help thinking what a much better world it would be if there were more heroines like Clara Barton and my grandmother.

Posted in nurses are heroes | Tagged war nurse | Leave a comment

SPEECHLESS

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Amy Getter

I don’t know if I am an advocate of “therapeutic touch” in the contemporary sense (many studies contradict each other regarding the efficacy). I’m not sure people must be trained in a technique that brings solace; nor do I think it is too mystical or inexplicable. But I am a believer in humanity.

I believe we as humans can share compassion, in a glance, in a touch.

I am a believer in touch and presence as a healing balm to the dying, in a practical sense, since this has been my experience time and again, at the bedside vigil. I have actually seen the turmoil and angst in a dying face suddenly disappear, with the gentle kiss of a spouse, or the simple holding of a dying person’s hand.

Vera is my patient whose hearing aids no longer serve to enhance anything; she cannot hear me, without literally screaming into her ear. Her eyesight was poor already, but perhaps now she can no longer read my lips or even see my expressions, as her tired eyes are glazed over and mostly closed.

She probably has mere hours, at the most a couple of days left, in this womb-like state, to have things done “to her” by her well-meaning caregivers, who need to clean her, turn her, and give her medicine.

But her eyes flutter open briefly; I see a hint of recognition for the hospice nurse who has had those loud conversations many times in the past weeks. (We have had miscommunications and what almost seemed like shouting matches in order to address her needs, with many written notes back and forth.) I think of past confidences I have made, and the long sometimes whispered conversations I have had with other patients, who have told me of their fears and worries as they faced their dying.

This isn’t to be with Vera.

Now, after completing the necessary “nursey” things, as I touch her cheek and hold her hand, I see a calm settle on her face. I don’t know if I can describe this as “therapeutic touch” but I have a great need to comfort her, in her silent world, and to let her know I am wishing her well on her journey.

I try to emanate this as I sit quietly next to her. I feel a slight pressure in her hand that lies in mine…I think she got my message.

Posted in caregiving, touch | Tagged death bed vigil | 5 Comments

NOT “JUST THE DAUGHTER”

Posted on March 29, 2015 by Amy Getter

A whiff of lavender can still transport me to the bedside of my dying mother. In the early morning hours, Mom began breathing in shallow gasps, with periods of apnea. Several hours had passed since she had responded to any of us, and her physical form seemed to slip into another realm. My sisters and I had lovingly cleansed our mother with a ceremonial washing, the scents of lavender soothing and preparing her for the journey ahead. Before the early light of dawn, we gathered together and carefully washed the wasted body of the woman who had birthed us and loved us throughout our lives. Amid the cleansing tears and the soft singing, there were prayers for a quickened flight and the final transformation.

I had been preparing my siblings for the past few days as I observed mom’s detachment and the otherworldly look on her face. Her disease process had advanced to the point that very small sips of fluids were minimally tolerated, and most of the body system failure signs were occurring. She was unafraid, peaceful, relishing the moments with her 6 children in attendance. An earlier evening that same week, she had looked across the living room from her hospital bed, laughing at all the frolicking grandchildren, her children, and their spouses, and said to my daughter, “This is heaven on earth.” The love in her little duplex permeated the sadness in her children’s hearts. We were losing our mother a little piece each day, but we were also making a party from the opportunity to be together.

I often think back to the day the surgeon met us in Mom’s hospital room to say there was no additional surgery or interventional treatment possible, that Mom’s prognosis was terminal, and she had stated simply, “Then it’s curtains for me, Doctor.” Her lightheartedness and gentle humor sustained us, as Mom’s family accepted her final desire to forgo palliative chemotherapy or radiation.

I am a hospice nurse. I was also the “out-of-town daughter”. Mom had lived alone since Dad died many years before, and she would require assistance with her wound and colostomy as well as daily care. As Isat with her in the hospital, a day before her planned discharge, I listened to Mom express her one wish: “I just want to go home” rather than a rehabilitation center. (One of my sisters had already made the selection and arrangements).

Advocacy became my directive.

That Sunday morning, I cornered Mom’s doctor, who happened to be the local hospice medical director, and said, “I want to change the discharge plan and send Mom home with hospice.” She smiled and said, “It’s always the out of town relative.” But she agreed with my suggestion. I was certain with six children in the family we should be able to do what I had seen many families with far less resources provide for their loved ones who were terminally ill. I announced to my siblings that we were granting Mom her wish.

We wrote out a calendar, each of the children taking turns being the round-the-clock caregiver. I was not present during the hospice admission, but I met each of them as they came and went, helping Mom and her children. I was certain that I irritated Mom’s case manager by requesting a number of changes in medications. I was the interfering daughter who called on more than one occasion when I heard via phone report of symptoms that needed nursing intervention and my family members were unclear what should be done. So many families don’t want to “bother the nurse after hours,” and my family (especially Mom) was one of those who would wait until the morning, having unnecessarily suffered throughout the night.

I had been encouraged at one visit to “just be the daughter.”

I checked in with my mom each day by phone when I wasn’t there. Every other weekend I made the nearly 7-hour trip down for my 3-day care-giving schedule (working for a hospice, I had phenomenal support to do whatever I needed to be available for my mom’s care). Every one of Mom’s children stepped up to the plate, the squeamish and ill-prepared along with the more capable caregivers. This was one of the gifts Mom gave to each of her children, allowing enough time for us to give back some of the love and care we had received from her through the years. When a task needed doing that she felt was humiliating or difficult and she would say, “Oh honey, I hate that you have to do that!” we would often remind her that now it was our turn to do for her.

After 7 months and thousands of miles driving to and from Mom’s humble home, I realized on this final trip that I would stay the duration. Having cared for so many at the end of their lives, the physical changes were apparent to me. I was struck as I walked through the door by that transparent face with the beautiful smile. Mom was so happy I was there. She would always remark how wonderful it was to have her “personal nurse.” As the days blended together, and the final hours were spent alternating medications in her subcutaneous site with drops in her mouth to decrease secretions and pain, I was on auto pilot in a strange way. As I managed the symptoms of my mother’s dying, I blended the nursing skills, which were second nature to me, with the loving hands of a daughter. The nurse and daughter merged into the one who was able to recognize the physical and emotional needs and know how to provide the care.

I have, since that time, corrected other hospice staff I work with whom I have heard say of a family member “she should just be the daughter.” What an amazing privilege to use my acquired skills for my mother’s dying process. My family would not have called after hours when Mom’s symptoms were out of control since Mom always minimized, and they didn’t know many things could be readily treated. My sisters perhaps would not have known the relief of soothing scents of lavender as we sang and cried over our mother, except what I had learned from the bedsides of others: that we needed to comfort ourselves as well as our mother. My life would not have been as immeasurably complete had I not been able to come full circle, delivering Mom into the next world just as she had brought me into this one.

After the battle was won, and Mom’s spirit soared to worlds unknown, Mom’s hospice nurse arrived. I was at the bedside, where I had been for the past 5 days continuously, starting to remove a Fentanyl patch. One of my older sisters, repeating what had been said to her by a well-meaning hospice person, said, “Let the nurse do that, Amy, and just be the daughter.”

In that instant I lashed out, surprised by my vehemence, “I am the daughter, and I am a nurse.”

I knew then, as I know now, how privileged I was to have both the loving desire and the knowledge to care for my mother. Never have I been more sure of a wonderful truth: I was not “just the daughter.”

Previously published in American Journal of Hospice & Palliative Medicine®
Volume 25 Number 1
February/March 2008 72-73
© 2008 Sage Publications

Posted in death bed vigil, family of the dying | Tagged mother, preparation | 3 Comments

CHOOSE YOUR BEST DEATH

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Amy Getter

I read a blog last December on “cancer being the best way to die” (by Richard Smith, MD.) He achieved resounding cries of “foul” by many for making this statement and also recommending people stop the merry-go-round of aggressive cancer treatment and go enjoy the time left rather than suffer through endless hours of torture from cancer “cure”. I believe this is a crucial dilemma for all who face a life threatening illness. I already hear, quite often, that someone had to “give up and go on hospice”. I want to reiterate something I have said many times: deciding to forgo treatment, choosing hospice, is not necessarily “giving up” but it IS making a decision. Living life is a continuous battle regardless of the choices.

As a person who has witnessed countless deaths from cancer, I have been on a quest, for many years now, of sharing with people their need to stop and consider before they arrive there; what do they want their final days and weeks to look like, how do they want to die? This should not be decided by a medical team! Considering things like: what are their priorities, what is important to spend time doing now? Who begins the discussion and how does a person find a balance, somewhere in the midst of chemotherapy to extend life, becoming Don Quixote madly chasing after the imaginary, and recognizing life is ebbing, choosing to make the very most of the time left with quality of life becoming the focus? (And what does “quality of life” mean for each of us?) Those of us with knowledge about the aftermath of treatment, (that includes the oncology doctors)…do we share honestly about all the likely scenarios? The whole truth should be told so a person whose time is limited can actually make an informed choice.

No one can answer for someone else, what is important and brings meaning to their life. Each of us must find our unique answer. Yet nearly every patient whom I have asked about their priorities as they consider dying, tells me this: they do not want to burden their family; they do not want to suffer tremendous pain; they do not want to lose everything they hold dear; they hope to die peacefully when the time comes.

I was visiting one of my patients with end stage cancer. We had completed the nurse tasks at my visit, and she asked me to sit next to her, while she recounted the losses experienced in her daughter’s life. My patient knew her own death would be a cap stone to all that had happened before for her daughter. She told me she wants to live, yet her questions were poignantly searching and wondering about how it would be as she physically died, and she asked me that question I have heard so many times, “How long will it take, when I am actually dying? What will it be like?” Cancer is robbing her of her energy, pilfering her concentration, and replacing her joy of life with advancing pain. Yet she does find joy, and meaning, and cherishes her time left. And she is brave enough to ask the hard questions and consider her response now, knowing that death is in her near future. She is pleased to have already outlived the prognosis of her oncology doctor, though she chose to forgo the additional “palliative” chemotherapy and declined additional “palliative” surgery.

Her actions are in stark contrast to an acquaintance, whose determination to survive included every imaginable treatment offered for her cancer, undergoing extensive surgery to remove tumor growth, then several additional surgeries to remove cancers growing elsewhere, countless rounds of palliative chemotherapy and radiation, and finally receiving nutrition the only way her body could accept it, intravenously, having lost over a third of her body weight. There were many conversations over the last year and a half, and I only hope her consistent plan of care for continued treatment was one based on complete understanding of the pros and cons of each decision. She is now dying in the hospital setting as a “palliative care” patient, her family convinced that her medical care is too cumbersome to die at home with hospice.

So different, these two women, yet in reality expressing the same desire: to live. How they die, the treatment they have pursued, the plans they have already completed, they have had to consider each bend in the road and determine how they want to continue their journey. Indeed you could say that cancer gave them the opportunity to take time to make these decisions, but I am positive neither of them would wish this for anyone else.
Unlike the movies, dying is not easy and rarely comes with a few well-chosen words and a couple of gentle last breaths. For so many, it is the daily loss of yet one more ability; the excruciating decisions to do more, or less, with the allotted time; the gritty reality of a body that is deteriorating. Dying slowly is fraught with suffering and loss.

The best deaths that I have witnessed are premeditated…the “thief in the night” has been scrutinized and lights in the house are turned on in preparation. And whether it happens in a sudden burst or there are many days and weeks to consider the outcome, I am convinced of this one thing; we mortals will all have to come to terms with our end, and make choices… or have them made for us.

Posted in heroic measures, letting go | Tagged aggressive cancer treatment, cancer, death on your terms, family, Hospice, letting go | 2 Comments

HEARTS, FLOWERS and BUCKET LISTS

Posted on February 7, 2015 by Amy Getter

Hearts and flowers and sweethearts and love are mentioned everywhere in February. I frequently have opportunities to see gifts of love highlighted by the stark light of loss. This week, a bright bouquet of sun colored flowers were featured on the table as I entered, and Liza told me her partner had brought the daffodils home, (those reminders of spring just around the corner), to cheer her. She had been taking care of business, her explanation to me, “I don’t want to leave things undone for my family to be burdened with”. The final plans were her funeral arrangements, which only 4 months ago had not been even a faint line on the horizon and now loomed in the near future. She wouldn’t be here when spring arrived.

Regardless of how many times I have heard people list the business of their dying in plain, ordinary terms, I am so often deeply moved by their acceptance of a life cut short, with the sudden crushing cruelness of a disease robbing them of the years that “could have, should have” been. There are no guarantees that a person gets 70 or 80 years in a lifetime. I had witnessed Liza’s physical decline just in the past two weeks with much of her day now spent lying in a recliner in the living room. Liza was sad and tearful at times during our visit, but there was a resolve and steadiness in her voice that I had not heard before. I asked her what was left on her “bucket list” and after a pensive pause she told me “Nothing’s on my list, but the time I have with my family. There was a time when Australia would have been my answer. But having my daughter here with me, the time we have been able to spend together; that’s all that matters”.

The term Bucket List was popularized in one of my “must see” movies with the same name. It’s a story about two men who both receive life-limiting diagnoses of cancer, who proceed to “carpe diem” the time they have left and complete a list of life-long desires… having some amazing adventures together, things that required a lot of money and energy… and in the end, recognizing the real “bucket list” was right in front of both of them: people they loved and that loved them.
I think about some of the things I would still like to do in my life, and realize, like Liza, most of those wish-list items would be swept away in a moment, if I only had a little time this week. I would hug my kids harder and love more, and want to squeeze every last drop of time to put into my relationships that I will have to leave behind. And as so often happens to me as I leave a patient’s home, I am thankful for the shared gift. The reminder to see what is right in front of me.

February is a month about Love. Don’t miss it.

Posted in daughter | Tagged attitude, bereavement, bucket list, family | 1 Comment

THE ENCHANTED ONES

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Amy Getter

My mother always said that the animals were enchanted, and in another life they will be able to tell us, the humans, all the things that they know, though we give them so little credit. I hear people say, “Animals are very sensitive” and I’d like to add, I am pretty certain that animals really do know things that we, with all our evolutionary advancement, don’t!
I have a visual of a very ancient man, returning home from the hospital to die in his own living room, with his very ancient Great Pyrenees dog lying beneath his bed, only cajoled away for a few times a day, to eat something and to relieve himself outside, hurriedly returning to his master and the sentinel post beneath the bed. And today, another visual, of the King Charles Spaniel lying atop his beloved human mother, with his arms outstretched across her, his face upturned with a soulful, sad look in his huge brown eyes. Though some of her humans had come and gone over the past few days, he had to be physically removed when the priest came, and he remained at her side when she died later in the day.
The death bed vigil. We write about it: the experience of that subdued and sometimes prolonged waiting while someone we love slowly leaves this earth. I myself have waited at my loved one’s side, sensing the moments that seemed to move forward in some time warp that covered us like an approaching fog bank. And along with all the human faces and endearing memories as life slowly dissipated, I have pictures in my minds’ eye; of eagles soaring above, herds of elk silently standing outside the window, beloved dogs who remained constant at the bedside, cats who lay on the pillow and seemed to breathe in the same slowed pattern as their owners. And I think of all the enchanted ones, who cannot tell us how bereft they are to recognize the loss of their human companions, but who remain faithful to the very end.

Posted in death bed vigil, Pets | Tagged dogs, dying; bedside vigil; hospice | 3 Comments

HELLIDAYS ARE HERE AGAIN!

Posted on December 27, 2014 by Amy Getter

“Did you survive the holidays?” I was asked at work, and was immediately struck by the absurdity of the question. I’m not the hospice patient, after all, and I was expected to survive the month of festivities. But I was acutely aware of the melancholy and wistfulness that hung in the air as I walked out of many patients’ homes.

Dismayed at the lack of family visits in some and aware in others of the family caregivers who were doomed to remember this holiday time with a stab in their hearts come next year, thinking back to their loved one’s final days that were punctuated with confusion and sadness. Meals planned with great care, festooned hearths and handmade cards (so many manifestations of holidays- those days set apart from the everyday)-but for some it would be more accurate to coin that term “Hellidays”.

The past month of special days and events seemed to sum up the neglected relationships, the hurts that go unforgiven, and the busy lives that have marginalized those who are shut-in and diminished from their younger, active selves. I often didn’t know their history, but I saw the result of some life choices, patients sitting alone in their homes during the holidays.

I read this morning about a new device, “telehealth for seniors” that has been developed “that allows families and other caregivers to monitor the movements of older relatives”. For example, sensors located on pill dispensers can track if the elderly person is taking their medication on schedule; and door sensors indicate if the elderly person is staying active; one on the refrigerator for ensuring they are eating regularly… All this by a wireless data connection in the home! And a quote by the company, “It’s a huge step forward to be able to put a device in their house that isn’t dependent on any kind of local access.” So now, come to think of it, when the holidays roll around, Dad can be checked on by the internet, and ensured that he is eating and moving about, without having to make a visit.

After all, a visit necessitates dealing with issues that are difficult. Now that, my friends, must be considered progress in the making. Since the holidays have such bittersweet memories for many of us, and the relationships that have been marred by years of collected small and large offences remain unresolved still; this time of year, the easiest way to remedy that gnawing sense of guilt or awareness of unfinished business, might be to connect the old people to sensors…yeah, they are eating, they are opening their doors, taking their pills. What do we need to worry about?

I have been reminded all month of what is taken for granted. Health and family, things we cannot buy for each other. I was asked a question: If it was all stripped away, and I lost every bit of money and stuff I have collected in my life, what one thing would be most important to me?

The one word unbidden that came to mind was family.

Whatever that means to you, remember to spend time NOW with the people that you love, and that love you, with less judgment and self-indulgence, forgiving the offences and forgetting the resentments and take more time…for in the end, we cannot recapture the days and months and years that go unheeded, and those relationships will only be memories. My new year’s resolution: forgive much, love immensely, and live ecstatically.

Posted in family of the dying | Tagged apathy towards elderly, family, forgive, holidays, live, loss, love | Leave a comment

WHAT’S NORMAL GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Posted on December 12, 2014 by Amy Getter

Yet again, reminding all you medical people out there, most folks do not see dying on a daily basis. And most folks would not consider any bit of it “normal” (i.e. “usual, typical, and common”). We hospice people like to say that we “normalize” symptoms for family, and prepare them for what to expect when their loved one comes close to death. But even the “experts”…the hospice team…don’t know any more than the next guy out there sometimes, what is the best route to take.

We “experts” are perplexed, confounded, and at a complete loss at times for the right paths-like preparing the patient who may bleed tremendously at the end of her life from her lack of blood cells due to her Leukemia, or the man whose breathing will be in the vice grip of respiratory failure from his ALS. What to do, what to say, to make any of this very real and terrible process seem normal? Death sometimes comes gently without much fanfare, and sometimes arrives like a roaring lion.

I was blessed at the end of November to witness a birth, fraught with danger due to the mother’s preeclampsia and the baby’s incomplete gestation, and heard the nurse say, “Even though there are procedures and guidelines that we use in each birth, your baby’s delivery will be a totally unique experience”. Ah, I thought, here is someone who knows; we can make it all seem regular and usual, but it never is…

And in this case: a birth that included an unexpected life flight to a major medical center with the mother; while we all waited to know if this very predetermined, “ordinary” process-birthing- was going to be survived by the mother of the baby. We take so much for granted, when considering the events of birth and death. I had a patient today, when I asked how she visualized her dying, tell me she expected to “just die in her sleep”. (Sounds so easy, so normal and natural!) I certainly did not expect the arrival of my newest grandchild to be a life and death struggle, I was anticipating a “normal” birth, just as all my deliveries had been. The delivery nurse was so right… we had “a totally unique experience”.

And so it is with dying: “normal”…yet one of a kind.

Posted in birth | Tagged unique | 1 Comment

HEROES IN LIFE

Posted on November 11, 2014 by Amy Getter

I awaken this morning and pass the WWI medals hanging in my hallway, remembering it is Veteran’s Day, commemorating the morning of November 11th, 1918, “Armistice Day”. That was the morning when the church bells tolled across Europe and America for the ending of the “Great War”. On that morning, my grandmother’s bloodied, muddied boots still crossed between the tents that housed the wounded soldiers, who still died, long after the treaty was signed to mark the end of the fighting. My grandfather didn’t die in the trenches of France, but his lungs bore the damage from mustard gas for the rest of his life.

Though everyone thought the last of the wars had been fought, less than thirty years later there were men and women dying by the tens of thousands yet again in another World War. My father served as a radio operator over countless bombing missions while stationed in England during WWII. He survived but had the guilt that many soldiers do, after living when so many of their fellow countrymen died on either side of them, and I think that contributed to some of the recklessness in his life.

My stepson carries a very large caliber bullet on his key chain, the one that missed his vital organs by only millimeters as he flew a helicopter over Afghanistan during his third tour of duty overseas. He lives his life differently, recognizing the gift he has been given by surviving, to see his children grow up. He now works tirelessly as a researcher in making sure that the body armor is tested and accurate and protects his fellow soldiers.

Nurses and soldiers survive the battles, but are scarred for the remainder of their lives by the experience of war. Trauma marks a person, often defining them in ways that the mundane can’t. I hear countless stories from my dying patients, how they learned to live their life in a meaningful way after surviving catastrophic events in their life. These are the experiences that mold us, change us, temper us, and teach us wisdom.
I remember today, and am very thankful for all the heroes; the countless men and women who died serving their country, and also those who have lived to be the survivors and teach us to live each day as though it was our last, recognizing the precious gift of life.

Posted in nurses are heroes | Tagged gift of life, heroes, survival | Leave a comment