Glimpses of Heaven

I never dreamed I would be a nurse....and most of the time, I dont think that I am. I am somewhere between caregiver and social worker.....with a little chaplain sprinkled into the mix. I doubt I could manage working a regular floor in a hospital. Hospice is all I have ever known...and in my few short years of nursing, I think it is where I belong. One hospice nurse's reflection, from the book Glimpses of Heaven, is the following:

"This temporary tent, which is our body, is changing, and no one knows this better than the person who is dying. If you sit quietly and listen to them, both their questions and their insights, they will invite you to share in this next awesome step in life's journey. There is nothing left to hide,nothing to gain, nothing to prove or lose, thus making the sharing totally pure. And when you enter into the wonderment of these blessed experiences with them, you yourself will grow."

Another exerpt from the book..written again by Trudy...she shares an experience she had with Mary Ann who is dying of cancer:

"I was not asleep," Mary Ann said to me very pointedly. "I was awake and He came to me here in my room. He put His arms around me, and I felt so safe and warm."

"That was Jesus, " I said to her.

"No, it wasnt , Trudy, it was you," she said with a lovely smile.

What does it mean? I wondered. Is this how God visits with His children, through fragile and broken clay pots like us? How does it happen that God should let our prayers be answered in such intimate and undeniable ways? It's as though He is tapping us on the shoulder and saying, "Do you recognize Me?" It was the first of hundreds of times that God allowed me to see His hand so lovingly and imtimately touch His children as He drew them home to Himself."

Kay Warren writes in her book Dangerous Surrender : "The dying are moved by the love they receive. Because of this, they believe that God must be even kinder, more generous, and so their souls are lifted up by God (Sister Dolores, Missionaries of Charity).

I think the opposite is true, as well. I think those of us who are privileged to be at the side of one who is dying....are lifted up by God. The most courageous people I know are those in the beds of the dying...those who "know" life is ending....and choose to make the journey with grace and acceptance.

I wrote about a woman who was dying of breast cancer. She looked at me and said "Thy will be done."
Her story:
She was a woman in her 50's. The cancer had grown outside of her body. It covered her entire breast and spread to cover the area under her arm. Her arm was swollen, the cancer was seeping with fluid, fungating and had a very bad odor. When cancer smell like that, people are less likely to want to enter the room. I changed her dressing as it drained continually.

The woman asked if I thought she would die soon. I asked her if she wanted to die soon. She said yes. I expressed to her, with broken words, that it would happen soon and that she was more than courageous....and she began to cry. She mentioned her son...she was worried about him (it was hard to understand her words...and she knew she had difficulty carrying a thought). I asked her if she wanted to pray...she said yes....and we prayed together.

It was one of those moments that stand still in time....one in which you feel so utterly humbled to be alive and well.....and yet allowed...privileged ...to stand alongside someone so crumpled.....and so brave. I take a deep breath.......and thank God for so much.

Her words "Thy will be done"...wow.