this too shall pass

I’m quite certain that’s a song title. And I’m quite certain that’s okay. There is nothing new under the sun.

I supposed there’s almost an obligatory post in this kind of thing. It’s one of those kinds of moments that everyone feels like sharing in one form or another. I shall probably say right off the bat that I am no poet or philosopher and I have nothing new under the sun to share.

Tonight I visited my grandmother in the hospital as she lay there in probably what will be her last few hours. We don’t know if she’ll make the night. Her blood pressure seems to agree with us. This was something I had been kind of avoiding all week, from the texts describing her condition to telling myself I’d handle it today. I can’t say I’ve ever been close to my grandmother. We see each other at dinner, we barely communicate, and I haven’t really been home in the last four years. I was told tonight it was 9 years since I last had to deal with death in the form of my grandfather. I’m not sure how much I knew about the world at that time and I’m not sure how much I know about the world now. I know I didn’t blog at that point in my life so I can’t recollect what thoughts I had. So far, hospitals have been a place I associate the word thesis and babies with. And generally despite being in the level 3 NICU, these are babies who you generally find a lot of hope in. They might be super sick but generally…they make it out and they become…fully realized people. As I sat in that room for no more than half an hour, I found myself crying. I haven’t cried in at least half a year other than for post-yawning. Part of me regret not coming home earlier and seeing her when she was still able to stay awake yesterday. I could’ve skipped child health. Heck I probably could’ve skipped all of this week. But I stayed and did all the menial things that I usually find myself doing. Today hundreds of people came out for the  death of a soldier who died at the hands of a broken man and in a day or two my grandmother will pass with maybe one or five of her daughters by her side. I cried for probably all the other reasons people cry when they are to face death. I knew I did not know her but this was at the very least the woman who raised my mother, who would go on to raise me. And if I found no reason to be sorrowful, I knew my mom would. For as much as I knew this passing would mean that she has…more opportunities to be out and about, it is no easier for her. She knows it too. The classic questions came to mind. What does it mean for us to live until we’re old and become something we barely recognize? What do we really leave behind? For I know very few of the stories of my grandmother but no doubt she had a youth and she had stories to tell. I imagined myself here at the age of maybe 40 or 50 staring at one of my own parents lying in a hospital bed, shriveled, wrinkled. I don’t know if irony is an appropriate word but it’s peculiar how we start off as children and we end essentially as children. All I know of her was that she spent many of her last days watching TV and as a workaholic, perhaps that’s what I feared. Wasting my life no matter how old I got. This post is a mess but I suppose that’s about accurate of my thoughts. They will contradict and fight and at times be pretty wretched. This too is accurate. I suppose one of the looming questions was asking whether she was saved. For isn’t that the question we ask when we are confronted with whether or not we really leave anything behind? I’m told that she said confessed and believed three years ago in her last hospital spell. But I do not know, as really nobody knows. I wondered what I had done. If I had given up early, citing my lack of language and relationship. We talk about it a lot in Christian circles of what it means to be a light in families, and in harder way, to those who are a generation apart. But there’s a reason for that. I mean the only thing we really leave behind are people. This is my Father’s world. There is nothing new under the sun.

And as I sat/stood in that hospital room, I thought about what I had signed up to do in my life. I thought of myself and my mother and my grandmother and those who would be me in other rooms. You hear it in practice questions and in sessions when people are asked why they want to be in medicine or healthcare. Heck even I’ve said it, that line about wanting to do it because I want to walk people through life at its most vulnerable moments. And I do not in any way mean to say I have discovered this or that I am now enlightened. But I think I’ve had a a glimpse of it and…it doesn’t terrify me. If anything I think it gives me more peace about becoming either a doctor or a nurse. I thought a lot about that scrubs episode (yes I know it’s a tv show) where JD and Turk stayed behind to talk to the man who was dying that night. And I know that most of any profession is not made up those intriguing and story worthy moments. But that state of being…that’s why I’d do it. Not really for any glory or stable income. Now my real nursing friends will call me out on my naïveté probably .  That’s okay.

I end this post with maybe nothing profound. Tonight my services were sold to the highest bidder and that is what I will return to in a few days. But as hard as I’ve been trying, I cannot compartmentalize my life.