I feel grief for us all, for the normalcy we have lost and the connections that kept us feeling love from all of those around us. While we still have that love and connection, there is something lost through a virtual hug and a computer screen.
I teach undergraduate nursing students. We faculty have been tasked with the unenviable task of transitioning the remainder of the semester online while still meeting the necessary requirements for our accreditation and board of nursing. While we have done this, and done it well I might add, it makes me sad. One of my clinical groups had taken to calling me "clinical mom" because they said I was kind and looked out for them mind, body, and spirit as they navigated learning to care for patients, but that I wasn't afraid to call them out if they were out of line. One of them, H., said "You're like our mom, you want us to succeed, but you'll ground us if we mess up!" I loved that because they could see that I had their best interest at heart in all that I did. While I still have their best interest at heart, I wish I could give them a hug and tell them everything is going to be okay on the other side of this. I don't know that. I was jarred yesterday when I watched a Facebook video about a 44 year old New Yorker that is a marathon runner and in excellent health who had to be placed on a ventilator. I am 44 and not a marathoner. Like my own family, I wish I could hug my nursing students and tell them it was going to be okay. We are training them and sending them out into a new version of the healthcare world that none of us have ever seen. Given the projections of the path of this disease, and what I know of epidemiology, I think the worst is in front of us. I pray every day for industry to magically accelerate the production of ventilators and PPE to keep up and catch up. I pray that they do.
This morning I was supposed to have a meeting with my PhD Dissertation committee chair and co-chair. Due to a technical error on my part I deleted the meeting and it didn't happen. It's been rescheduled. But, I have grief for what my dissertation proposal and research process is going to look like. I have lost momentum in the overwhelm of transitioning everything online and having my kids at home with me full time. I don't know what is going to happen with my PhD. I'm not giving up but it isn't high priority for me right now. Quelling the fears of my students and my children is. But I am sad for all that has been and will be lost.
I was present and remember clearly the morning of April 19, 1995 when a coward committed the Oklahoma City Bombing. I remember watching the news and seeing the nurses from St. Anthony's running towards the building to help. I watched the second plane hit the second tower as the realization that America was under attack washed over me. I remember seeing the first responders and healthcare workers going in when others were running out. I was a member of the Oklahoma Army National Guard and helped in the search and rescue/recovery efforts after the EF5 tornado that devastated a large portion of the state in May of 1999. I was part of a medical field unit that helped. We ran in when others ran out. I am honored now to be a nurse and be part of the efforts to help. As all the collective memories of tragedy have taught me, this will be okay. We will persist, we will see the best in people and the worst in people, and in the end, those of us that are still standing will be battered but we will thank God for our unconquerable souls.
But, there is grief. There is grief because I know that for my all my kids, my biological kids as well as my students, there will be innocence lost and it will be replaced with the unfiltered reality of tragedy. It will change them, it will change us all. Tragedy and heartache changes us all. It toughens us. It forces us to add another layer of steel to the armor we wear into our day to day lives. And so, I grieve. Because I want them to do what is needed so that they can carry on, but I don't want it to harden their hearts. I grieve for what could have been. For what was lost and will be lost.
Ingrid
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever Gods may be for my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced or cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.
-William Earnest Henley
