Death is a shadow that wonders the halls of work. He moves with unassuming quiet like some of the porters, or cleaners or security guards. He is neither grumpy nor terrifying but doesn’t really smile much either. He will pass you in a corridor or a ward and acknowledge you with a simple nod and continue around the corner - off somewhere.
Mostly I meet him at work, but on the odd occasion I see him out and about and he mingles in my world of sometimes friends and other times family.
It’s the familiarity that forces us to process death differently.
We are trained to spot him coming a mile away. We are trained to deal with him when he shows up unexpectedly and escourts his patient with all the finesse of 5 burly bodyguards.
Sometimes he sits in the corner and quietly waits for days. Sometimes it seems he’s been stalking a patient for years. Sometimes it’s a little person and it seems he came too soon.
Yet despite the frequent encounters Death is never routine.
There is always a sinking feeling when he nods at you from across the room.
Sometimes I am grateful that suffering comes to an end. Those are the easy certifications to do. There is relief in silent chests and fixed, dilated pupils. Those are the easy phonecalls to make and you sleep a little easier that night.
Sometimes I am so deeply disappointed I cannot look him in the eye. Those are the lives that we fight for...the newborns who don’t breath that we do CPR on for too long. The dehydrated babies that we push needles into bones for, to get fluid into their veins. The 17 year old who had the unfortunate luck of being the unseatbelted victim of a head on collision.
Sometimes I feel responsible, feel like Death isn’t even there; only me.
What there isn’t usually, is time to process. There are relatives that need explanations. There are 40 other folders in the casualty box or sick babies who need you focused. So you shelve it somewhere in your heart...and like that journal article that someone gives you to read, you never actually come back to it. And one day you notice you are quite good at switching off emotion when Death walks into a room. And you accept that like taxes it is inevitable, and you remind yourself that God and not your capability or inability decides who lives and who dies.
And you focus on the ones who live.
On the Tweety’s who nearly died of TB and malnutrition but then who came back to visit us 3 months later flourishing and healthy.
Or the Thato’s, who’s mom we counselled thinking her 8 year old at worst would die of TB Meningitis and at best would be severly brain damaged, yet went back-to-his-old-self-Thato and came back a few months later bragging about how well he’d done in his school athletics.
Or the Owami’s who we thought would never come off CPAP.
OrThe 700grammie who now weighs double and has proved me wrong!
I suppose you appreciate life more when you become familiar with Death.
