Saturday Night

Saturday night. Getting ready to go out, meet up with friends, enjoy myself, let the previous week melt away. My phone rings, don’t recognize the number, answer it anyway. It’s the hospice calling from an alternate line to let me know she died…..so much for letting my week melt away.

She’s been with me since my very first day at the hospice. She was the first patient I ever took care of. Mentally, she wasn’t all there, but there were moments of such clarity that made me pause at the lunacy of it all. The last time I was with her, holding her hand and singing every song I learned in Sunday school, she was clear. She knew who she was and she knew she was dying. Why does death bring clarity when life is spent tripping through the fog?

So, Saturday night?

If I stopped every time a patient died then I would forever be still.