without wings

Stronger Than Death (or Keeping Promises)

Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many rivers cannot quench love. Many waters cannot wash it away.
Song of Solomon 8:6

The only way to do my job is to fall so deeply in love that you have no choice but to go on, even to the end. The end is hard and painful and beautiful and sacred. Sometimes, when you are very blessed, a patient might look you in the eyes and show you her spirit. She might kiss you before she goes. She might tell you she loves you and ask you to keep doing your job. She might say she will tell the angels about you. She might ask you to remember her as well.

Remembering you, my friend, as I promised and knew I would.

GOODBYE CEREMONY

Your husband, your son, and your daughter have left. Their disconnected legs are machines that carry sagging shoulders and slapped faces away to restless beds. Out the window, there is no thunder, no raven, no song. There is only the noise of this room, the lights buzzing, the faucet dripping… I say, “Alright, then.”
I begin what is left for me to do.

I close the door and sit beside you, looking hard for a light upon your brow, but you don’t share any secrets with me now. There are lines that, despite my longing to, I haven’t crossed. Most things we never were for each other. We met in this room and you told me stories. I held your hand and spoke in therapeutic riddles.
Still, Beth, aren’t we friends?

Earlier, I held you, your limp weight and escaping heat swaddled against me as we turned your body to clean you and untie you from the lines. Blood gushed from a wound. I had to remind myself there was no longer any urgency. I felt your head against my neck and realized this was the first time we’d embraced.
There was that strangling grip of grief around my throat.

Now, we are together on your deathbed (just the bed in which you hoped and slept and died). I am hot and you are cold. I have brought the best supplies available: soft, white washcloths, clear water, my hyacinth lotion. I wipe old tears from your eyes. I clean the foulness of dying from your open mouth. I remember vomit and how, even as I was hanging another bag of good poison, you’d said if you had the choice you’d not do this again.
I’d paused and asked, “Do you mean it?”And you’d said no.

The rich aroma of hyacinth expands in my chest until it is nearly bursting. I think of your garden. Three months ago, you’d invited me to visit when you got better. I anoint your hands and feet with the lotion. Your fingers are thin and compliant. They curve around my hands.
I wish we could hold on.

–Karen Crone, 2007

Praying

TIME OF DEATH 0013

I say, “Bicarb going in.”
Then, “Three minutes since third Epi.”
Then, “Five minutes since last Atropine.”

It all sounds like a prayer.
Like Hail, Mary!
Like now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

–Karen Crone, 2008

I recently came across this work from 2008. It reminded me of what I have been knowing about praying, especially through-out my career in nursing: Our actions are prayers. The most emphatic kind.

If you have seen a man in incredible pain will himself to stand and , trembling, support his weight on a cane to walk on his own out of the cancer clinic , you will know his prayer. God, let me keep going. Let me live. And when he pulls that tender abdomen to stand up straight, he is praying that he may retain his dignity.

Our actions, I think, are our most emphatic prayers.

I am not talking about the shoulds or the musts–not talking the Ten Commandments here. Although I do not scough at those who wish to do “the right thing,” this is not the same as praying with our whole bodies. When we pray, we communicate with God. We are not following orders. We are conversing, being known, revealing our desires and our fears and our joys.

I have always said a prayer in my car before the start of a shift. At the beginning, this was entirely out of fear. God, please don’t let me kill anyone (followed by about five Hail Marys and an Our Father). Eventually, my prayer became more eloquent: God, please give me the wisdom and strength to do what is right for my patients today. Please be with my patients. Please be with my coworkers. Please protect us. Send me your Spirit. Thank you for letting me be a force for healing. Thank you for letting me witness sacred moments. Amen.

These are both decent prayers. Perhaps the first one was a little obtuse, but it was sincere. Plus, I never did kill anyone (to my knowledge), so He heard me. The latter prayer, which I said rotely each morning, was more developed. I knew better what to ask. It was a comfort to have asked for help before heading into an unknown day. It was a comfort believing God had heard me. And it was a comfort thinking, as I had alluded in this latter prayer, that I was an instrument for His will,.

I still say prayers. In English. Rarely in Latin. Sometimes in Spanish if Mikayla has Spanish homework. But I am more aware now of the depth of meaning in the languages we speak without words. So often, particularly in my work, there are not words to say.

An omniscient God will know these languages, I rationalize. So I pray more often now with urgent footsteps, with hands lain on painful spots, with my heart in my throat… I pray with tears in my eyes and a head bowed at the silent, emphatic prayers of my patients and their loved ones.

without wings

Stronger Than Death (or Keeping Promises)

Praying

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