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 talked between floors and she told me after an x-ray that she was leaving to go home. I wished her good health.

I did not know then that it would be the last time I would see her. She died days later from her pneumonia.  Somehow I missed the news and circumstances of her death. I was on special assignment at a clinic giving flu shots to all our employees. It was not until I read my work email a week later that I learned what had happened to my friend.  Because she was a great Hokie football fan (Virginia Tech) her family put off her funeral service for three weeks until there was a break in the football schedule, just as she would have wished. 

The morning of her funeral I had a dream just before I woke.  I was at her service. We, her mourners were gathered in a big circle and holding hands. I looked across at Nancy who was wearing her typical mischievous grin.  She was loving being a part of this...her celebration. I kept thinking, “It can't be her. We are at her funeral. She is dead.” And then I realized she most certainly was there with us.

Someone started a prayer. It was in Hebrew. I did not know it but many did and I heard Nancy's voice reciting the prayer. The next prayer was a Christian one, and the next another religion. "How wonderful" I thought, "that everyone here is being honored in their celebration and in their grief." I woke up feeling happy at having seen my friend.

Nancy’s patients adored her. She just had that caring sort of way with people. When I was a Nursing Supervisor I made a point of stopping by her office every day as I made my rounds. That is how we came to be friends.  She was irreverent and funny and had a way of looking at things that always made me go away smiling. To her patients she was the most caring, loving, person who walked the earth.  Many stayed in touch with her even after they left the hospital. 

She epitomized the nursing profession in so many ways.  So it seemed most fitting a tribute that took place towards the end of the service. Six colleagues stood up.  One lit a lamp to represent "the lady of the lamp." All of the nurses in the audience were then asked to stand.  A white rose was laid at her urn and these words recited, "We honor you this day and give you a white rose to symbolize our honor and appreciation for being our colleague." I had tears streaming down my face as I looked around at my standing colleagues and realized that though not in a circle this was the dream I’d had and Nancy was surely right there smiling big as you please. 

With this ceremony my friend was then discharged out of the profession with the recitation of "The Nightingale Tribute”.  The flame in her lamp was extinguished. She was now no longer in the service of others. The extinguished lamp was presented to her family and her funeral service ended.  I have never taken part in this type of ceremony before. I felt so honored and moved to be a part of it in remembering Nancy as a person and a professional. We, her peers spent the moments afterwards greeting one another, hugging and crying. You know Nancy was in the mix laughing and crying right there along with us. 

I am pretty sure she is Nursing and making mischief in the next realm.