Friday Morning

I am in the business of people.

Of protection and advocacy and fighting for life.

Sometimes the only way to get me to do a hard thing, is to not give me an option.

The only way, ever, is to not give me an option.

I grew up sheltered from the tragedy of death.  I remember two funerals as a child.

Then there was a funeral when I wasn't really a child anymore.

One of those gatherings you can't even call the celebration of a life.  Listen.  Some people are taken too soon.  Some people make choices, which end it all before it should have been over.  Sometimes the young die.

I just don't go to funerals, ok?  I don't do visitations, wakes.  I am in the business of making sure people are safe.

But I remember my sister and my roommate being nurses.  And I remember stories.  I remember the hours after the twelve hour shifts in the ED ended.  I remember thinking, I am so glad I don't have their job.

So when I got my new job a little over three months ago, there was just a fleeting thought about how I had just opened the floodgates.  I was no longer safe.

Most of my days are spent problem solving with people.  Fighting with them to make choices to keep them safe.  My love for the elderly has grown exponentially and my poker face is stronger than it's ever been.  I can reason with the best of them and I am a favorite among the old men.

But every morning we run a census and a new patient shows up with a hospice code.  Every day, there are names we no longer see on the census.  And it's not because they got to go home.  I've stood in rooms with caring and uncaring families.  With scared and impatient families.  And talked to them about what it means to be actively dying.  I've helped fill out living wills and DNRs and helped sons become their mother's Power of Attorney.

But I'm not there when the dying happens.  I'm just the transition person, as I have always been, helping people get from where they are to where they need to be next.

Friday morning was Friday morning.  I forgot to pack lunch and I didn't have my thermos for coffee.  I strolled into the office, and as is my routine I checked my email and I sorted through the mess from the day before.  We waited for the census to print.  Multiple people poked their head into our suite and said certain family members were looking for me.  I got ready for a busy day... and then my coworker's extension rang.

I can always tell when they're calling for me.

"I'll send her right down" they said.  Repeating which triage room I needed to go to.

The Emergency Department never calls me.

All anyone said was that the ambulance was there and so was a distraught family and the person in the hospital who's best at this job hadn't come in yet.  That's all anyone said.  But I didn't have an option.

For those of you who have lost loved ones tragically, I don't even know what to say to you.  I am sorry?  How can I help?  Let me give you some space.  I'm still learning.  But the last one seems the most appropriate.

My job was to make sure an impossible situation was handled.  Really what it felt like was, "Anna, make sure the grieving stays contained.  We have a job to do down here."  Because my job is to keep people safe.  And their job is to save people's lives.

But they couldn't Friday morning.  Save the life.

And the next thing I knew my job became something more like, help them say goodbye.

I've been trying to process ever since.

After it was all over, I felt the gracious heaviness, which comes when you have a job to do and must remain grounded.  Kept my breathing steady.  Head down, one foot in front of the other, I walked back to the case management suite and grabbed my thermos.  All eyes were on me.

I've never seen a dead body before, I told them as a matter of factly as I could.

There wasn't enough coffee in the world.

The pity in their eyes was more about them remembering than it was about me.  Like when you ask someone about when they fell in love the first time.  They have to dig back in the recesses of their memories, through a lot of pain and grit and years and everything they've suppressed.  You are making them remember something they forgot out of self protection.

Oh, they say somberly.

Go get your coffee...

And I left the room.

I am, and will always be, in the business of keeping people safe.

I suppose sometimes this means standing in front of a lifeless body and holding someone close -- someone who is still full enough of life to acutely feel everything happening.  Safe doesn't mean shielded from pain.  Safe doesn't mean no bad will come.  Safe just means they're alive and pointed gently in the right direction.

Growing up, he called it the Island.  A place where people came, alive and pointed in the wrong direction.  A place people came, voluntarily or not, to get redirected.  And when death happened, the Island experienced an imbalance.  The day death happened, we always knew because life is always hard, but is especially hard on the days it ends. And he ate a lot of cheese sandwiches in his sleep the nights after.

Perhaps it takes looking at a body, no longer alive, to understand how deeply you are passionate about keeping people safe.

To understand how sacred and fragile life is and how sheltered you have been.

The prayer right now is a fearful one.

But I would imagine when we are allowed to experience the end of another's life, not only is it a privilege, but it is also an opportunity to grow.  To grow in respect for our own lives.  An opportunity to grow in our passion for those still living.  My guess is the intention, the plan, is not for us to live in fear.

But at this point, I'm still having a hard time closing my eyes.