As a hospice nurse, a favorite part of my week is my team meeting. It happens every Thursday from 9am until we are finished. When we finish depends on numerous factors, principal among them how many patients died during the week. We also talk about the patients who were admitted, and the ones who need to be recertified. But I’m happy to say that the majority of the time is devoted to the folks who died. We talk about who they were. We describe how they died, how their families coped, and how it was for us. We process difficult stuff, sometimes we cry, on occasion we laugh. Death, it turns out, can be strangely funny.
After we talk about the deaths, our team spiritual counsellors do a little ritual, honoring the patients who died and anyone else we know of who died or has an anniversary or is just having a hard time. Honestly, you have a toothache, you should just tell one of us, we’ll have twenty hospice folks sending you love at 10am on a Thursday. Then we have a moment of silence and we honor ourselves too and the people who care for us. That’s usually the part that makes me want to tear up, but I’ve learned to just ride it out.
Last Thursday, our counsellor decided that since it was almost the end of the year, it would be a good idea for our ‘spiritual moment’ to involve everyone summing up their experience of 2018 in a single word. He put this idea out to the room and then opened it up for anyone who felt like sharing. I usually share, but I generally wait till a couple other people have gone first, so the mood is sort of established and there’s a flow. On Thursday, almost the moment he finished his sentence, I shared. The word that described my 2018 came so immediately and vehemently to mind that it just sort of jumped out of my mouth. SINGLE! I said. It was a bit of a shout, honestly. Everyone looked at me, a little shocked at the volume of my word. I put my hands over my eyes for a moment, as though that would excuse the loudness. We all laughed. Nobody was too surprised, I guess, and that felt good. Being seen by your team is a happy thing.
Other people said their words. They were good words. When I thought about single in relation to them, I sort of wished that something a little more spiritual had come out of my mouth, a little more balanced and optimistic. But there’s something to be said for honesty and spontaneity, and if I’d thought it through for a little longer and come out with something a little less manic, it might just have been less authentic. So there’s that.
After a couple of hours of this meeting, the windowless room gets smaller and smaller and I have to head to the kitchen for yet another cup of coffee. Of course I need more coffee like a hole in the head, but my trip to the kitchen is usually a thinly disguised quest for food. Don’t get me wrong: people bring food to team all the time. Bagels. Assorted cream cheeses. If anyone has been away, they bring food from their vacation: Hawaiian turtles or some weird little cookie from an exotic place. But the trip to the kitchen has the added advantage that it gets me temporarily out of the shrinking room. Sometimes I meet other coworkers while I get my coffee and can have a laugh before heading back to the death talk. Sometimes there’s cake.
Last week there was a giant hamper of food. It was from a local cemetery, but that does not deter hospice workers. Chocolate covered peanut-butter pretzels from the graveyard, yum!
When I got back to the meeting, I amused myself between patient reports wondering what my word for 2019 would be. You might think it would be the opposite of single, but you would be wrong. I think it is FUN. That takes the pressure off, as I have had a ton of fun on my own as well as with partners so either way I should be covered. And fun is finite. In my job, I have been around lots of folks when their fun ran out on them. So I think it’s a good idea to have it while you can.
It’s almost the New Year. Everyone is banging on about how awful 2018 was, and how 2109 just has to be better but that’s what we said about 2018 because 2017 was such a shitshow, and before that we had 2016 and let’s not even go back there in our memories. Ever the optimist, I am feeling excellent about the coming year. Not just because statistically and in all other ways it has to be better than 2018, but because I feel this way about every new year. To try and express my many hopes and dreams for 2019, I have prepared a lengthy speech, and here it is: Thanks for reading my blog. Happy New Year. FUN!
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