My Story - Celia

Blog 1 - My Story

Death. It’s a heavy word, I know. Scary for some. But like most things, talking about it makes it easier to face, makes it not as scary. It feels like I have always been around death, been around the grief it brings, the finality of it all.

I first encountered the experience when I was 10 years old. My great uncle had been killed in a preventable accident while driving a big rig in New York. The family was devastated. The grief heavy in the air. It was hard for my younger brother and I to accept that we would never hear him snore loudly in his recliner as we played our game of “sneak around Tio without waking him” on our visits to New Jersey. I can only imagine how it must have felt for his three children.

The deaths of loved ones continued as I got older. Great-grandparents, grandparents, family friends, my favourite cousin who passed at 28 from breast cancer almost 30 years ago. It was her father who died when I was 10. That loss cut deep. I still cry for her.

And that’s just it, isn’t it. The Loss. It can be so profound, so permanent that it can still take your breath away years later. They say grief comes in waves, and it does. But I’m not going to speak about dealing with grief in this post. That will come another time. I will just acknowledge that yes, most of us carry the burden of grief throughout our daily lives.

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I believe in Divine Purpose. That we all have a reason, a special talent for being. Mine is palliative care. I believe that all the experiences I had with death and grief while growing up helped reveal and sharpen this purpose.

When I first started nursing, I was hired on to the GI/Palliative floor at the old Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, 4 East. We were palliative because we had some private rooms, not because we had any special training. We had a palliative nurse who would visit all the palliative patients in the hospital. She was great and taught us what she could in what little time she had – but it wasn’t enough.

I remember going to work one day and stopping at the doors to the hospital and thinking “What’s the point? All my patients are going to die anyway.” I went in to nursing to help people, save them even. I still hadn’t realized that helping people die well – I know that must sound strange – was helping them. I fought continuing to work in palliative care, but the Universe has a way of pushing you where you should be.

A few years later, I was working in the community and a physician had just asked me over the phone to make sure my patient’s wife understood he was dying.  During that conversation, it suddenly occurred to me that I was good at this. That I was comfortable in this space of grief, sitting with someone, saying the words, and allowing them the space to process their feelings. Just being present.

When I looked back I realized that I had always been comfortable having these conversations. I remember my first year of nursing , back on 4E, sitting on the bed with a patient as she told me she had about three weeks to live. We spoke about what that meant to her, what she thought “the other side” would be like, what she would do when she died. The conversation was inherently a sad one, but we laughed.

Laughter.

That’s the thing with grief. Even in dark moments, little things can happen that make you laugh.

When I was 16 years old my grandfather died unexpectedly when we were visiting him and other family in Portugal. It was supposed to have been a happy occasion, as my uncle was getting married at the end of the month. We were grief stricken.

My brother, cousin and I were sitting at the table as my aunt was getting us something to eat. She had passed us buns and as we tried to cut into them, we realized they were rock hard. We all started laughing uncontrollably as we joked you could knock someone out with them. I admit there was some guilt that I found the situation so funny, but I also realized it’s ok to laugh in the midst of sadness. It’s human. It’s real.

The human experience is a mix of emotions, all jumbled into a beautiful mess. It’s seeing the beauty in death – when a family can come together and surround their dying loved one with love. It’s laughing despite experiencing profound sadness. It’s taking a step forward when you don’t think you could possibly move one more inch. It’s having those tough conversations, the ones that can bring real healing.

So let’s start a conversation.

Until next time, take care of yourself.

Celia Lima