I am glad that I didn't hear all of the details at first. I arrived a few minutes late to the shift-change meeting where they announced the death of one of our nurses from our sister floor. Some of my colleagues were crying. It wasn't until 14 hours later, when I described it to my housemate, the limited details that I knew, that it hit me.
Later the next day I saw on the t.v. screens further details. She had been beheaded and dismembered, and found in trash bins. I saw her image and recognized her, a spunky, smiley, fun nurse. She had teased me playfully when I worked on her floor.
My hospital floor had a subdued tone. Dustin* said that he hadn't slept most of the previous night, thinking of her three kids. Tracy* had nightmares. The two charge nurses whispered with their heads bowed together, unusually friendly in a quiet way. Food gifts overflowed on our break-room table. When a couple of nurses from her home floor came down, staff slowed from the bustle and stood in circle with them, listening and hugging.
It struck me the interconnectedness of us all. Loosing sleep together. Stricken with grief. Quieted and made more gentle. Us staff from the Phillipines, Belgium, New Guinea, Eritrea, Texas, Alaska, Washington, all nothing together.
I can't shake it tonight. On my way home I see the Columbia Tower, the tallest building in Seattle, sometimes lit in solidarity with France with it's recent tragedy a few months ago. Interconnected we are. I think of my mental health clients, so affected by the news episodes of police brutality and other episodes when they came in for weekly sessions. I think of our political climate, and how we reverberate off of each other. The people on the streets, regardless of their nationalities, seem to breathe a same consciousness, aware of each other... sitting on the bus together on my way home, watching, standing, looking, saying thank you, making space for each other.
How we affect each other, even from a distance, so profoundly at times. This woman I only worked with a few times, now gone, leaves her ripples across hundreds of colleagues in a major metropolitan hospital. We weep, fear, love more consciously, watch more carefully.
Later the next day I saw on the t.v. screens further details. She had been beheaded and dismembered, and found in trash bins. I saw her image and recognized her, a spunky, smiley, fun nurse. She had teased me playfully when I worked on her floor.
My hospital floor had a subdued tone. Dustin* said that he hadn't slept most of the previous night, thinking of her three kids. Tracy* had nightmares. The two charge nurses whispered with their heads bowed together, unusually friendly in a quiet way. Food gifts overflowed on our break-room table. When a couple of nurses from her home floor came down, staff slowed from the bustle and stood in circle with them, listening and hugging.
It struck me the interconnectedness of us all. Loosing sleep together. Stricken with grief. Quieted and made more gentle. Us staff from the Phillipines, Belgium, New Guinea, Eritrea, Texas, Alaska, Washington, all nothing together.
I can't shake it tonight. On my way home I see the Columbia Tower, the tallest building in Seattle, sometimes lit in solidarity with France with it's recent tragedy a few months ago. Interconnected we are. I think of my mental health clients, so affected by the news episodes of police brutality and other episodes when they came in for weekly sessions. I think of our political climate, and how we reverberate off of each other. The people on the streets, regardless of their nationalities, seem to breathe a same consciousness, aware of each other... sitting on the bus together on my way home, watching, standing, looking, saying thank you, making space for each other.
How we affect each other, even from a distance, so profoundly at times. This woman I only worked with a few times, now gone, leaves her ripples across hundreds of colleagues in a major metropolitan hospital. We weep, fear, love more consciously, watch more carefully.
