DEALING WITH DEATH

Every person will die.  All of us are mortal creatures. Many of us don’t deal with this fact, but it is true.  None of us are in any hurry to die, but the sooner we face our own mortality the better this life will be.

          This is a talk I give to the student nurses I work with.  It is after I have spent some time with each of them, one on one.  This talk is one I wish I had been given in my youth.  I was fortunate to attend a Catholic nursing school.  It was a special experience, especially since I am not a Catholic.

          I went to nursing school thinking nuns were angels sent to Earth by God to help people on this life’s journey. (I had seen nuns only in movies such as the Bell’s of Saint Mary, and the movie nuns were ever so sweet and pious and kind.)  I found out nuns are very human women who can be very determined and a bit rigid at times.  The nuns at my nursing school meant for the nursing students to walk a very narrow path and to follow the rules strictly.  Yes, I bristled at this; it was 1970 a tumultuous time in America.  Surprisingly I found myself liking the structure and doing well in school.  The discipline and study hours, along with morning prayers were just what I needed. So I learned much about the workings of the human body and how to care for its needs in a Christian environment.  This Christian atmosphere included the emphasis of treating each patient as a child of God; not just the gallbladder in room 402.  The Holistic approach was stressed, treating the whole person “mind, body and spirit”. 

          I am saying I grew a lot in the three years I lived at nursing school.  My faith deepened in the Lord and I learned to accept and respect a religion different from my own.  This is a big part of who I am today.

          When I speak to nursing students today I openly tell them I am a Christian and I believe this life is just the beginning of what is ahead for me.

I also tell them I am not preaching to them.  I am telling them my beliefs so they know I have thought of my own mortality.  I say that until each of us considers our own mortality we can not accept or deal with another person’s death.  In nursing, as in life, I have dealt with death.  Sometimes it had been very up close and personal.  Caring for some one who I have become fond of, caring for them and their family as that patient dies, I have shed many tears.  If I didn’t have a sense of my own mortality I would not have been able to continue working as a nurse.  I would have been devastated by each and every death I witnessed.  I have seen many nurses who have left nursing “because it is too hard” or the honest “I can’t handle this”.

          This is a shame because many of these nurses were very good at caring for patients.  They were well educated and knowledgeable, kind and caring, but “people aren’t supposed to die”.  One nurse told me this and I was flabbergasted.  Nurses don’t become nurses to watch people die, this is true.  We become nurses to help them recover their health.  We study and read the scientific journals to keep up with all the new fancy things that are here or are coming, to help in caring for and curing patients from their diseases.  We keep up with the evidenced based research in nursing. We are willing to work night shifts, weekends, holidays and 12 hour shifts to be there for the patients.  We are willing to endure the back aches, the running around, the anger of patients and their families, when we can’t be every where at the same time, and the over time, spent finishing our charting.  But unless we can accept mortality we just can’t keep working as nurses.  It hurts too much.

          The human body wears out.  This is a fact.  It may wear out from disease or from old age but it wears out. Some experience a trauma that can not be overcome; the damage is too much to heal from.  Each of our bodies will eventually give up the ghost.

          I suggest to the student nurses, and to each of us, to take some time and think about what happens to you when you die.  We all have a soul, some call it a spirit, and this is the essence of who we really are.  This soul or spirit is the most important part of our being.  Yet so often in our day to day lives we ignore it or don’t give it a thought.  I ask you to ponder your true existence, that of your soul.  At least figure out that you have a soul, you may call it a spirit.  I want you to know that your soul doesn’t die when your body dies.

          I listen to the radio on my way to work and often find Sister Ann Shield’s program “Food for the Journey”.  (Yes, I’m back to those Catholic nuns again.)  Her program is only 15 minutes; she reads from the Bible and talks about how to enrich life each day by drawing nearer to our Creator, God.  This reminds me of morning prayers back in nursing school and it helps me start my day in a very positive way.  Strengthened for whatever will come my way during the day.

          You may not be a Christian, but believe me you have a soul and a spirit that needs tending too.  How you go about this is your own business, of course.  But I ask you, for yourself and for your patients, to consider what will happen to you (your soul) when you die.  The time you give to this important matter will aid you in your nursing career, I promise.  You will probably still shed some tears along the way, I do.  Once you figure out your own mortality and deal with that fact, all of life will be easier.