On Death and Dying

I hate that I've become that person who blogs too much about her job, but today I have to. Twice before I've had a patient die on my time. Once I was lucky and lunch interfered with me wrapping up the leftovers. The next time, I braved it alone, foolishly procrastinating until rigor mortis had kicked in, and had to spend half an hour preying the poor stiff wouldn't wake up and grab me, not dead at all but irritated that I'd disrupted his sleep. Today, three patients... a third of my case load... lay desperatly ill and dying. One had been assigned a one to one sitter to keep from pulling out vital tubes and wiring. One spent the day in silence, eyes rolled back, barely breathing until, suprizingly, my goodbye at the end of shift wasn't his last. One passed. Whatever that means.

This time a nurse as sweet as an angel helped me clean and prepare the body. She spoke his name through the silence, explaining to him what we were about to do as if he could hear. As if. I half chuckled and started a sentence with her name before I realized she was right. In the short minutes that followed, she taught me that while it is never as hard again as the first time, it never gets easy. Nor should it, because fear and grief are natures way of showing respect. She taught me how to let go. And when I discovered my hand patting his back, and laughed at myself for it, she taught me that too was ok.