Death

Dear Readers,

A week ago tonight, I spent the night with someone, dying of a very rare, very rapid cancer that had already spread to spine, heart and liver when it was diagnosed. She died, just as I was getting ready to go to care for her again.

Last night, I was with another woman, born not long after my own mother, comfort measures only, also dying. Tonight, I was there to witness her death. I had just sat down beside her son, on one side of her bed, and her daughter, on the other side of her bed. She looked like it would be soon...and it was.

From diagnosis to death for my first patient was just over one month.

From sitting down by her son to death for my second was less than ten min. Her daughter and son had earlier showed me a picture of her when she worked at the same hospital I began to work for as a newly graduated nurse... We both worked there 16 years..and left the same year... when I saw her picture, I remembered N-----. I am sure that my mother would also remember her with that picture...and that N----- would have remembered my mother. We all worked different shifts, with my mom there longer than N-----or I was.

Tonight, as she neared that time, N----- reached out once again for their hands, looked over at her son, and breathed her last breath... and the only thing that came to my mind to say was.... "I think she just said good bye to you"...

Life, I have learned, ends rather quickly for some, after a long life, or after 57 years.
Some die as a child or infant, some as a very long lived human being.
Some die instantly in an accident, some after years or weeks of suffering.

Some after having a chance to forgive and be forgiven, some without ever having had that chance, others having refused that chance.

Some with their children present, some...like recently happened this past week, after allowing ayoung boy of 13 years who desperately needed to be with friends for a little while to have a break from sadness.... end up without their child present when 'it' happens. I think, in many ways, this was what that Mom had wanted...to protect her child from that memory.

Some deaths are not deaths at all, but loss of friendship...or loss of marriage. Some end in a tragic exchange of words, some end in a slow agonizing way with hurt feelings that never go away. Regardless, everyone near is affected forever.

Tonight, I also got this from another online friend, and it was what I needed to read/hear/see...

Just my thoughts tonight... I have already decided that I just CANNOT work tomorrow. I need time to be alone, to reflect, to rest.

God bless!

---
"Right is still right if nobody is right,
and wrong is still wrong if everybody is wrong,"
--Archbishop Fulton J Sheen author of The Life of Christ .

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Patti

Sometimes in life, you find a special friend;
Someone who changes your life just by being part of it.
Someone who makes you laugh until you can't stop;
Someone who makes you believe that there really is good in the world.
Someone who convinces you that there really is an unlocked door
just waiting for you to open it.

This is Forever Friendship.

This is the sacred RED ROSE.

Pass it on to all your loved ones....May we all be loved so much.

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be
discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."
-Joshua 1:9