I don’t usually take selfies at work, but the shift I got this news, I was feeling sad and thoughtful and was in the loneliest assignment on my floor, the back hallway, which I also refer to as Purgatory (not for the patients, just the nurse who cares for them). I wanted to connect with the Chaplain, so I sent him this pic. At the time it was taken, I was chowing down on a Swedish fish, which wouldn’t surprise anyone I work with.
Recently, the Chaplain shared an idea with me from C.S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves. At the time, it was interesting, but didn’t have any real application to me. Then, over the weekend I found out a former coworker had passed away unexpectedly.
The nurse who told me wanted to be able to tell someone who knew her, who would understand.
When I looked up Lewis’ concept, it goes like this:
I still remember the look of disappointment on my Textile professor’s face when I pulled out my final project to present to our class. That term we had learned how to work with our hands. We made our own paper, wove baskets, and made objects from wire and metal. My final project had taken hours. I’d hand-dyed and screen printed fabric in different colors and patterns and sewn it together to make a duvet cover.
I co-slept with One from the time he was the size of a football, curled up like a kitten on my chest. It was to maintain my sanity. As I got longer stretches of sleep, I transferred him into a bassinet, then a crib.
Because he was my first, as he got to be an older baby, then a toddler, he snuck his way into my bed some nights. Once he got there, he did what he had done since he was in my womb – he paced. He literally swam laps from the top of the bed to the bottom all night long. It was the pits.
But co-sleeping when he was a newborn was a total lifesaver. So was putting him to sleep on his belly.
I tried not to feel guilty about either of those things, but I didn’t tell a lot of people, either, because I knew I was breaking the rules.
How do you feel about death? Repulsed? Fascinated? A sense of longing? Fear?
I’ve always been fascinated by death, with a small side of fear and revulsion. My faith teaches me that death will be a relief from the longings and struggles of earth. The thought of leaving my earthly body behind while my spirit sails off to heaven to dwell in God’s presence makes me sigh just thinking about it. While life earthside has its pleasures, much of it is just hard.
Years ago in college, a friend who worked with the dying as part of her social work degree described her experience with those patients: “as the body becomes less, the spirit becomes more.”
I loved that description and it has rung true for me.
I haven’t encountered death in my family recently, but as a nurse, I come into contact with end of life with some regularity.
Recently, I was bra shopping with Two. As we walked up to the display, she exclaimed, “Mom, shopping for bras is so embarrassing!”
“Why?” I asked. “Half the world is made up of women and girls. They all have breasts or will grow breasts as they get bigger. How is that embarrassing?”
Her response was something along the lines of, “Well, when you put it like that…”
I remember being a preteen and teen and how Embarrassing so many things felt. It felt Embarrassing whenever I thought I said or did or wore the wrong thing. It felt Embarrassing just to exist in the same space as my parents, perhaps because I was more aware of my self-absorption when they were around.
