Sometimes you find a strange sense of comfort in the oddest places. Work was as busy as it has ever been. I spent one of my two precious 3 minute breaks last night to cry in the bathroom. It can be overwhelming to stop and think about how, as a nurse, I spend my time saving people's lives, but when it is as busy as it was last night the fear of missing something, or having a death in the waiting room is too much to bear for one small heart. I ran for 12 solid hours and when I got home, I had to walk the dog.
It was a beautiful crisp morning and we walked lazily down the street. It was nice to smell something other than sickness and defeat. I listened to music in the headphones and good old Elvis Costello sang:
"I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets. What time erases and memory marks."
For some reason this made me remember something about my mother 6 months before she died. She had been raised a Catholic and was a faithful devotee until I was about 2 years old. She was 17 and poor and for Christmas that year she afforded a used black velvet dress for mass and a red rubber ball for 59 cents. She told me she was so proud to take me to this beautiful mass in my pretty dress. She was giving me faith and community and spiritual togetherness. They passed the basket around and she had nothing to give. She told me that they made her feel worthless and dirty. She never went back to church again except for funerals, weddings, and to comfort the grief she felt when her father died, alone and far away.
Shortly before she passed away, she had called me randomly and told me that she started saying little prayers again and did I think that it meant anything after all these years. I told her a prayer is a prayer. They all get listened to in the end, they might not get answered, but there is never anything lost in saying one. I didn't think much of it then, but now I wonder if she knew she was sicker than she let anyone know. It gives me some comfort that she was getting right with her maker after so many years of drifting alone.
I'm not exactly sure what the line from the Costello song has to do with that other than it ruffled something up in my gray matter. What time erases and memory marks. Yeah, life is like that.
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