This scary, beautiful, heartbreaking world.
Tornadoes and cancers and moms who will no longer be picking up their children.
We're not kids anymore. These things are so real now.
Last night I sat with a grieving family, a large family, intensely divided in their decisions about what to do with my patient. My patient who had cancer yes, but had been living her life well. My patient who came to the hospital with a pneumonia. Who through the course of the week had suffered enough respiratory failure that she required an intense and uncomfortable oxygen administration in order to keep her alive. During my shift it was the middle of the night and emotions were raw. Eventually her husband took me aside and told me it was time to take the breathing treatment off. So as I was discussing the plan with the doctor, he went to her, his wife of whom he had just celebrated 50 years. And her, under her bipap machine but still completely alert, she held him, tears running down her face, down his face. He crawled into bed with her and they knew it was the last time they would hold each other. It was one of the most raw and tender moments I have ever seen. And with a nod from the husband I administered the morphine. I took off the ridiculously uncomfortable breathing machine, and with her family by her side, she started to slip away. It took longer than most thought, and during that time her family gathered, and cried, and even shared in some laughter. Their matriarch was dying. Two hours later she took her last breath.
Each moment that we have each other is a treasure. Each time you pick up your child from school is a blessing. I think many of us know, on some sort of a spiritual level, that you have to appreciate the present moment. But that knowledge often escapes us. Often we are focused on our memories and our plans, and in doing so we lose sight of the precious moments that are happening now.
I know I am not alone in my struggle to find peace with the fact that so many children just died while a tornado ambushed their elementary school. Peace in tragedy. It's such a dichotomy.
And yet, it somehow happens.
We are born into a world where everything changes. Where things grow and things die. We open up our hearts to love, we feel connections to each other, and we do so at our own risks. We are vulnerable creatures, and sometimes our coping mechanisms are unhealthy.
I like to think we do our best.
I will tell you, as the silent observer last night as I watched my patient die, I couldn't help but feel touched by the amount of love that was in that room. A matriarch was passing, and the family was there, grieving, and she was not alone. And she knew she was loved. It was the kind of death scene you see in the movies, the kind where you get to say what you need to say, where you get to say goodbye to warm flesh and blood.
It's the kind of goodbye we should wish for. But not the kind of goodbye we are promised.
I heard a saying once that the only way to pass a storm is to go through it. With the tornado that occurred yesterday this is quite literal, but for us observers, this is so importantly metaphorical. There is pain in this world, and we will feel it because we are loving creatures. But it is my belief that the pain can not be avoided. You must take it head on, let it wash over your body, come out of your eyes, come out of your muscles and your bones. Feel it. And then, let it go.
