Was thinking today and remembered an incident from my "nursing career" that has always had an impact on me. A patient had come into our Emergency Room, and I can't even remember what the complaint was. The short story is that he died in the ER--something that didn't happen very often. We moved him to a private area where the family could have a few moments, and as we did, I noticed the thing that had the impact for me.
As we "prepared" the body for the family, I noticed his watch: it was still running. I know, duh, of course. At that moment it struck me though, for this family the world had stopped, their grief was overwhelming, NOTHING else was crossing their minds. Yet the watch reminded me that time just marches in regardless. Other people are continuing to go about their business and they don't even know someone has died.
I was thinking of this today, because in a lesser degree this is kind of my life right now. I go to the grocery store and the cashier says, "how are you? Did you find everything you needed?" Part of me wants to tell the cashier all about having cancer and how bad it is. Of course, I give the "correct" response: I'm fine, how are you? Reminds me of the watch, because even if I get bad news, or am feeling nauseated/weak/dizzy or just overwhelmed with it all, the world is still marching on.
Interesting how isolated we are from each other sometimes. One person is experiencing grief that has "stopped time" for them, while others of us calmly march on not even aware. So, no idea how that really relates to anything else, just my thought for the day.
1 comment:
I TOTALLY know where you are coming from Nancy on this.
I remember it as if it was yesterday.
When my dad died in' 95, I remember looking out the window in my dads apartment, or sitting outside on his steps and watching everything going by. Buses driving past, people going to and fro, birds flying, kids walking home from school and the mail carrier deliverying the mail.
It was surreal, why couldn't everything just freeze, stop, like I was? Don't they know that someone has died?
It was like I was in a slow- motion time- warp.
For some reason I think about that sometimes.
Clinging to God and knowing he's there while we hold on really tight to him, gets us through even the worst of times, like I know he will for you.:) Lisa F
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