Not forgotten

There's a first time for everything, and today was the first time one of my patients passed away. It won't be the last. I knew it would happen eventually. I've cared for several patients during the last hours or days of their lives, but never actually when their life ended.

It is a unique position, as a nurse. To be the last person a patient sees or touches in their life. To be with them when they learn their life is ending. To listen as they say their goodbyes, or don't. To try everything and still fail, or to watch as life returns, for however long God grants it. We are not the families who post vigil at the bedside, or the funeral homes who make the arrangements afterward. We are not the friends who make phone calls, send flowers and attend memorial services. We stand on the outside of a life, doing what we can. In a relationship more vulnerable and intimate than most, yet more distant. It's unique and unusual, terrifying and peaceful, compassionate and clinical all at the same time.

Part of me was standing back, analyzing the ways I reacted. Will I be able to do this? What do I feel? Compassion, fear, sadness, guilt, repulsion? I've never done this before. Immediately I realized there's no way to know. Each day is different, each patient unique. Each time will be different. What I feel today, I may or may not feel the next time. Today I'm sad. Sad that we couldn't do more to make her comfortable, sad that we couldn't make her last moments more peaceful. Sad that she wasn't surrounded by her family and those who loved her when she died. Sad to close her eyes, to feel the emptiness of her body as I finished caring for her, to pull the sheets over her head. Sad to say my own small goodbye.

I don't think I'll ever forget this day, no matter how many times I do it again.