hos·pice ( P ) (hsps)n.
1.A shelter or lodging for travelers, pilgrims, foundlings, or the destitute, especially one maintained by a monastic order.
2.A program that provides palliative care and attends to the emotional and spiritual needs of terminally ill patients at an inpatient facility or at the patient's home.
[French, from Old French, from Latin hospitium, hospitality.]
I like that the first definition connotes something of a shelter...my arms acted as the shelter tonight. She lay in my arms...a deaf, blind, contractured, beautiful mess.
Beautiful mess...a seeping tumor growing out of the scalp...an open skull wound exposing a part of the brain...with dressings and gasping breaths that make you hold your own in anticipation of whether the next breath will follow it's predecessor.
What a life: waiting for the last...her parents unable to show the intense emotion they surely feel inside, because the daily chores are overwhelming...with minds that are unaccustomed to things of intensive care and the death of a child...they busy themselves and neglect all of their own needs to get through the day...but then another pounces upon them too soon.
As I walked in the door, she was immediately placed in my arms...sunken, sallow eyes, seeping of the tears she cannot hear. Her bulging head which was surely aching...and she was restless. I rocked her back and forth...and I smiled down at her...when I looked up, I caught a pained expression on her mother's face as she gazed at her daughter...and she quickly turned her head away and gave me the 10 second tour of their own little NICU sprawled out across the living room.
The whir of the oxygen tank in the corner of the room filled the silence in the room as they all left for some time out of the house, away from the responsiblity and impending pain. She laid on my shoulder as I hummed to her...not because she could hear my voice, but because she could feel the vibrations and tonal differences as she laid against my chest...and it seemed to calm her...I held "The Brothers Karamozov" in my other hand, and the oxygen tank sang to us in familiar rhythm. She fell fast asleep and was calm as the hours slipped by...as the tube feedings passed...and through the many diaper changes and dressing changes.
She taught me tonight...she taught me of the persistence of hope. Her life challenged my feeble understanding of the problem of pain...I wanted to scream in the place of her mother...to voice the words she dared not say...though her husband hoped and believed the miraculous...she just wanted to say goodbye. Why?...Goodbye...
So, now I am adding another job to my neverending schedule...a job that I could not turn down. I will be fondly referred to in their house as "nurse Heather"...as their four-year-old squealed my name in the middle of her nighttime ritual to get ready for bed. As I knelt beside her mother and brought the supplies into the bedroom so that she could be next to her mother should something happen...and I could tell that she wanted to cry. She held tightly to her composure, but I was dying inside in her place. At the end of the day...I was in quiet awe...I was a part of something beautiful.
1.A shelter or lodging for travelers, pilgrims, foundlings, or the destitute, especially one maintained by a monastic order.
2.A program that provides palliative care and attends to the emotional and spiritual needs of terminally ill patients at an inpatient facility or at the patient's home.
[French, from Old French, from Latin hospitium, hospitality.]
I like that the first definition connotes something of a shelter...my arms acted as the shelter tonight. She lay in my arms...a deaf, blind, contractured, beautiful mess.
Beautiful mess...a seeping tumor growing out of the scalp...an open skull wound exposing a part of the brain...with dressings and gasping breaths that make you hold your own in anticipation of whether the next breath will follow it's predecessor.
What a life: waiting for the last...her parents unable to show the intense emotion they surely feel inside, because the daily chores are overwhelming...with minds that are unaccustomed to things of intensive care and the death of a child...they busy themselves and neglect all of their own needs to get through the day...but then another pounces upon them too soon.
As I walked in the door, she was immediately placed in my arms...sunken, sallow eyes, seeping of the tears she cannot hear. Her bulging head which was surely aching...and she was restless. I rocked her back and forth...and I smiled down at her...when I looked up, I caught a pained expression on her mother's face as she gazed at her daughter...and she quickly turned her head away and gave me the 10 second tour of their own little NICU sprawled out across the living room.
The whir of the oxygen tank in the corner of the room filled the silence in the room as they all left for some time out of the house, away from the responsiblity and impending pain. She laid on my shoulder as I hummed to her...not because she could hear my voice, but because she could feel the vibrations and tonal differences as she laid against my chest...and it seemed to calm her...I held "The Brothers Karamozov" in my other hand, and the oxygen tank sang to us in familiar rhythm. She fell fast asleep and was calm as the hours slipped by...as the tube feedings passed...and through the many diaper changes and dressing changes.
She taught me tonight...she taught me of the persistence of hope. Her life challenged my feeble understanding of the problem of pain...I wanted to scream in the place of her mother...to voice the words she dared not say...though her husband hoped and believed the miraculous...she just wanted to say goodbye. Why?...Goodbye...
So, now I am adding another job to my neverending schedule...a job that I could not turn down. I will be fondly referred to in their house as "nurse Heather"...as their four-year-old squealed my name in the middle of her nighttime ritual to get ready for bed. As I knelt beside her mother and brought the supplies into the bedroom so that she could be next to her mother should something happen...and I could tell that she wanted to cry. She held tightly to her composure, but I was dying inside in her place. At the end of the day...I was in quiet awe...I was a part of something beautiful.
posted by Adalia at 10:48 PM
1 Comments:
I have to tell you that one of the things I respect most about you is your ability to see beauty. Most people are blind to this. Most people wait for something beautiful to slap them in the face, and refuse to search for it. Beauty rarely finds us without effort on our part. We must constantly be searching and hope to meet it halfway.
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