Death

You can’t escape the dark cloak of death when you work in Emergency. It evokes a multitude of emotions in most nurses. We are masters of hiding our feelings and relish in sharing our past experiences to help others come to grips with this difficult part of our job.

I was skimming the newspaper recently and saw 2 obituaries of patients I had taken care of. One was young and one elderly.

Death can be sudden and it can also be so painstakingly long and drawn out.  We meet both kinds in the ER but always manage to do our best to comfort the grieving survivors and send the dead to the morgue with dignity.

Every time I experience death, I place the fresh event in the small part of my brain where all of my death memories are stored. That compartment gets opened a crack to let the new one in and through that little crack, I let an old event out.  Sometimes, there’s a similarity that causes its release, or there’s a need share a story with a colleague as we regroup over our post death clean-up.

Don’t be afraid to open that ‘door’ a crack. It will  help to compartmentalize the multitude of feelings when the death occurs, either abruptly or more slowly. Remembering is part of the journey of caring for others.

R.I.P. Patient Young and Patient Old.