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Showing posts from December, 2014

Discharged With Honor

I've been thinking about my friend Nancy today. I’ve been sorting though a box of papers that had collected and found a business card she’d given me years ago.   Last month I went to her memorial service. It was, for the most part a moving tribute to her life.   Intermixed where the funereal recitations of the Christian pastor. I tuned out the bits of empty rhetoric that just didn't seem to fit her and listened to those that did. You see Nancy was one-of-a-kind.   She was an irreverent soul with a wicked smile and a heart of gold. Nancy was a nurse. Several weeks before her death I had called her on the phone about a patient consult. She was a wound ostomy specialist.   She told me I'd just caught her as she was heading out the door. She was pretty ill and had a pneumonia that she said came upon her quite suddenly. A few days later she was in hospital. I happened upon her in the hospital elevator a week later looking rather peaked and gaunt.   We talk...