What about working in the hospice at 21?
I honestly do not remember exactly why I did it. Maybe I wanted to face my loss anxiety. Maybe I also underestimated how existentially the time in the hospice would shake my foundations. When I was little, I often cried in the evening because I was afraid of losing my mother or my big sister. That death is there and that it threatens the stability of life, I seem to have understood very early. He then met me during my training as a nurse. Sometimes death came quietly, sometimes unexpectedly and violently. I still remember the first time I stood in front of the monitor after a failed recovery and stared in amazement at the straight line that had just indicated the steady heartbeat of a man who had spoken and joked with me. Five minutes ago.
I wanted to get to know this stranger better
Death confused me. I met him too often to deny him, like most of my peers, but too rarely to get used to him. He was like a stranger who intrigued and disgusted me at the same time. Probably that was the decisive point. I did not have to break him, so I had to face him. Completely. I volunteered at the hospice of my hospital. There I wanted to spend the last months of my education and I have to say: I do not regret it. Nowhere else would I have learned to appreciate the value of a moment as much as there. Because what was first told me was: Forget everything you know about care. None of these people will leave this house alive. Everything that matters here is the moment.
Death can be very ugly
I had met death in the hospital from its ugliest side. Here he showed himself differently. Our guests (no one called the people in the hospice patient) had had the opportunity to deal with their fate. Some of them were taken out of their lives, but they had time to mourn their lives. They were able to settle a dispute, write letters, share knowledge. And that gave them a peace that I had not expected here. But this peace takes time. I cared for a woman who had a huge tumor in her stomach. "You know," she told me one day, "when I found out, I screamed, I cried, I pleaded, I cursed my God, doubted him, and hated him, but then there was that one day when I did He'll do it, whether I scream or not, so I've accepted my fate. " Still tears come to my mind when I think about this moment. This helplessness and the subsequent acceptance have touched me deeply. Although a quick death might be easier, I wish I had the time to accept my end before I left.
What I have learned
I did not become another person. If at 21 I had absorbed all the knowledge of the dying in me, then I would have been too ahead of my time. I still wanted to stay young. Fooling around. Make mistakes that I would regret someday on the deathbed. After all, I am a human. And I did not meet anyone in the hospice who did not bother a bit with the priorities and decisions of his life. That is probably part of it and I will not feel better. But one thing I have deeply internalized: happiness is easier than you think. Sometimes I just sit there looking forward to having two arms that can take care of myself, legs that carry me wherever I want, and a mouth that I can communicate with. Every heartbeat, every brainwave, every movement is a gift. I think I have become more relaxed. If I have a nice minus on the account after a nice holiday, I do not care. I'll make that up again. True wealth is what you experience. When I am old, or when my time has come, I want to say: I have lived. Completely. I may have done stupid things. But there were always moments of happiness and gratitude. If I can say that, then he can come, death. Then he does not scare me.
People are not just their fate
Today I work in a cardiac catheterization lab. Even there we sometimes have to look death in the eyes. I find the handling of grieving relatives still difficult. I wish I could explain to all of you what I saw. That death is usually accompanied by a peace beyond our horizon. And that a person's energy will never be buried with his body. The energy stays. This is not a belief but a physical law. I know for myself, people can not be reduced to their fate. Not even when they die. Not when they mourn. Not when they are ill. People are far more complex than what we get to see from them. From a terminally ill person, an unruly power sometimes comes out. And that stays. Far beyond death.
