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I was reminded lately of a post I'd written about 5 years ago. It still resonates with me so I hope you don't mind me share.
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Just like I've done one hundred times before, I held a young patient's hand as they passed away. We stay in the rooms throughout the passing in order to administer pain and anti-anxiety medication and to ensure they are comfortable and calm in their final moments.
These scenarios are always hard on our hearts as nurses, heavy and difficult and awkward and isolating as we can't talk about them and we are expected to carry these painful and intense moments without being able to share their weight. This time, however, felt even more profound.
I was recently back from maternity leave and I was seeing it all through new eyes. I couldn't hold back emotions as I watched her family say final goodbyes. Her dad kissed her forehead, her brother rubbed her arm, her husband kissed her fingers...and then her mother stepped over.
This heartbroken, grief-stricken, shattered mother took her daughter's serene face in her trembling hands and held it, soaking in her beautiful face one last time and she wept. Her tears fell from her chin, landing on her daughter's calm face and running down into her pillow.
The mother kissed her daughter's forehead, cheeks, temples, her entire face was covered in slow, intentional, lingering kisses. The kind of kisses a mother has given her child hundreds of times, before nap, before bed, first days of school, after nightmares, after skinned knees.
They are kisses that say "I love you", "You mean the world to me", "You are my heart outside my body" and "I would do anything to keep you safe."
They are not rushed, they are not forced, they are not routine or automatic or without intention...they are the only way a mother knows how to tell a child even a fraction of how deeply they are loved.
As we increased pain medications and removed the interventions keeping the patient alive, the monitor showed us as the woman slipped on to her next life and her soul was free from the painful, broken, suffering existence she had known here.
Her mother clutched both of her daughter's hands in her own, rested her head on her daughter's now still chest and wailed. There is a cry a mother makes when she loses her child that I have heard so many times it is imprinted in my soul.
Husbands don't make this sound, wives don't cry like this, even fathers don't wail with this out of body gut wrenching vulnerability.
It is, without a doubt, the sound a mother's heart makes when it breaks.
It is, without a doubt, the sound a mother's heart makes when it breaks.
I stood beside the bed, not wanting to intrude on this moment, not wanting to break this bond they still so clearly shared, and I silently wept along with her. Tears dripped off my chin, soaking into my scrub top and I ached for my little girl, miles away at daycare.
I ached for her innocence, her hope, her optimism, all the beauty the world had yet to show her and all the loss she would, undoubtedly, see in her lifetime.
Being a mother changes everything. It changes your marriage, your job, your priorities, your goals, your hopes, your dreams, your successes and your failures. It changes you to your core in ways you could never anticipate or ever articulate.
After work I held my little girl. I slowly, inch by precious inch, covered her tiny beautiful face in kisses. In a way only a mother can tell her child, I said "I love you", "You mean the world to me", "You are my heart outside my body" and "I would do anything to keep you safe."
