Sometimes it hits you when you least expect it. Sometimes you don't even realize when you are experiencing it that it's affecting you like it is. Sometimes it takes a young girl singing her heart out on a television show for her dying father to really bring it out and up to the surface and I can do nothing but sit and cry. It's hard, it's sad, and in the end, it's my honor.
I believe that it truly is an honor to sit with a family as they make the choice to give up the fight for their loved one that can no longer fight on their own. You stand witness to the most gut wrenching time in the lives of people you didn't know existed before their loved one came to the ICU. You watch as the doctor talks and you can actually feel the hope fade as the reality of what they already knew sinks in. When the family looks to me, their nurse, and asks "do you see a chance for recovery?" they already know in their hearts what my answer will be but I can see them physically yet almost imperceptibly brace for the sound of the words they dread.
It is these times that my job becomes sacred. I am not just a body coming in and out of a room titrating IV medications, drawing labs, emptying drains, monitoring vitals and intracranial pressure, and even turning loved ones from side to side. In those moments I am still those things but I become more. I become a part of their history that can never be erased. When they think about the final days they had on earth with their precious loved ones - fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, or daughters- my presence will be there. My actions will be felt and remembered by those families long after their loved ones have left my care and I've had many patients in their place. I take that role very seriously and it tears at my very being as I know it does to my fellow nurses as well. Yet I know there is no other place on this earth I would want to be. To have the opportunity to provide comfort to the sick and the dying is an occasion that I don't take lightly. To witness a life leave this place for what I believe is a better place is truly a gift that I am lucky to receive. Not because I enjoy death but because that is the closest to true humanity I will ever see. It is my job but it is so much more.
I hope that I bring some measure of comfort and peace to families during this difficult time. I pray I can be a calm in the middle of their worst storm. I can't take the pain of losing a loved one away from my patient's families. What I can do is offer them my heart and my hands and my physical acts of titrating IV medications, drawing labs, emptying drains, monitoring vitals and intracranial pressure, and even turning loved ones from side to side. And when the time comes I can give them my time and oftentimes my tears. It may sound strange but I embrace those moments just as I embrace the very mourners left behind. As nurses we don't only care for our patients but for their families as well. It is with them that the memory of our actions and words will always remain.
