Surprises

One of the perks of working in hospice is that I get to be outside a lot. I drive from home to nursing home within a 30 mile radius of the hospital. There is a lot of open space out here amongst the fields of corn and soybeans, yet each turn can sometimes surprise you.

I think of this part of the country as generally flat, but there are some hills and curves to the roads. While taking that sharp left curve I'm stilled awed by the spread of gleaming white wind turbines (windmills to the more romantic of us) that pop out of the earth. They look like they were planted there. A beanstalk to jack's world in the clouds, only this time on the wind. I want to paint them, but I think they might lose some of their glory.

Surprises at every turn, when you think you can see for miles.

I almost cried today. It surprised me. I have been working with hospice for 6-7 months and I have felt very little emotional tugs on the tear ducts. (I wondered about that, too, but that's another entry). I couldn't pin down what made today different. I was listening to an achingly sad song on the radio... and maybe that's what spurred it... but I don't know. I think it's because for the first time, I have a connection to one of the clients.

I moved here 15 months ago knowing only my uncle and my parents. I had never lived here before, my parents moved here when I was in college. When I was first starting my massage business, a coworker of my mother's (P) bought a gift certificate for her mother, E. It was kind of like when I was in Girl Scouts and your mom brings the cookie order form to work with her and passes it around to all the other employees. I was grateful, she would be my very first client.

After that first time, I didn't see her again, though I did get to know her daughter a little bit. Her daughter is a hospice nurse with my mother... and now I work with P. I didn't know what to expect when I got the notifications that P's mother, E, would be receiving hospices services. I don't feel like I really know this family, but my mother has worked with P for many years and considers her a friend, and E. was my very first client in the town. How could not feel somewhat connected.

E. is dying from breast cancer and it is extremely painful. She has two types of morphine to control the pain, and it still doesn't get it all. Holding her hand before I start, I watch the grimace on her face as she asks me "Why does it have to hurt this much?"

All I can do is my job, which is report her pain to the RN and assess the tolerance of massage. I try to work with her hands and feet to relax her and hopefully reducing some of her pain. This is why I am here, to reduce her pain enough that she doesn't have to be completely out due to pain meds. To help her make the most of the time she has left.

So after a couple of visits like this, I almost cried while tearing over country roads towards the stateline listening to Aimee Mann tell me, "It's not going to stop... 'till you wise up"

Not so surprising after all...

But they're dying

J. is, in truth, a dirty old man. For 72, he still knows how to harrass the help in the most obnoxious ways. He isn't one of my clients, just someone I met recently.

Living in a small town, I've learned there are somethings you can't change. One is the curiosity of what you do with your time. I think people can't imagine anything thing exciting going on, so they need to verify with others, by finding out what exactly they do with their time.

So, when he asks me about massage therapy practice, I tell him I work with hospice

"Hospice?" he says "isn't that.."
"Yes, usually 6 months or less" I say

the jokester glint left his eyes

"that's kind of scary!" he says as he takes a step back. I notice the change in his normally jubilant attitude

"How do you mean?"

"Well, knowing that they are going die!"

"oh, it's not that bad. I know what I'm getting into when I arrive, so I'm prepared"

"But, they are dying!" he shudders

I was shocked at first at this reaction by a 72 year old man with his share of medical issues. I felt a little vidicated that I, "a girl" ,in his eyes, could face something he could not... at the same time I realized that in all those 72 years of his, he most likey has not faced death as a reality in his life as often as I had assumed he had... just because he was old.

I put in check my haughtiness, may pride and my later pity.. This is most of us. We don't think about death the way we should. We are taught to be afraid of it so we will pay our insurance premiums without question.

I was reading about the death of a fellow bloggers friend, and something she said clicked for me, especially dealing with hospice. This person (that was dying) stated that death was part of life and talking about death and accepting death in that manner was not letting go of life, but encompassing the whole of life.

We search for something that completes us, be it a partner, a job, a house. and find ourselves unhappy, or yet unfullfilled. We search and search for that piece of life that we are missing. What if that piece was in essence the absence of life itself. Not as something morbid or frightning... but as night is to day. How much brighter our day becomes after the darkness of night. When we can not be afraid of death, and love it as part of our being, perhaps then we can love our life. Perhaps.