01/22/2023
A very good read
Last night I went out to dinner with a group of elderly women, all but one were strangers. They were curious how and why I started working in hospice. I shared my story and then told them that when I started writing my second book, The Hospice Heart, I went down memory lane to my childhood, remembering incidents that indicated I started this journey a very long time ago. Below is one of the stories in my book... I thought you might like to read it.
xo
Gabby
My First Death.
When I was about 8 years old, a young man on his motorcycle, came around the corner near my house. I was in my bedroom and I can remember very clearly hearing the motorcycle roaring closely and then I heard the crash, and then I heard silence. He had come around the corner and hit the tree so hard he went one way and the bike went another. I ran out of my house and right up to him, I wasn’t afraid and while it didn’t even occur to me then, I must have had some instinct because I immediately fell to my knees, took the sweatshirt from around my waste and tied it around his leg to catch all the blood. There was so much blood.
I placed his head in my lap and I remember slowly smoothing out his hair and telling him that help was on the way. I am not even sure how I knew that, or whether or not help was actually on the way but it seemed at the time, the right thing to say. I remember hearing sirens shortly after and soon paramedics were at the site. A neighbor grabbed me and pulled me away.
I watched as they all moved around him quickly opening packages of things, and paper flying around and sounds of beeping and activity that felt chaotic. I just stood there and watched. I don’t recall being scared; in fact I don’t think I really felt anything at all, except for wondering where his parents were… I kept thinking his parents really should be there. Which is ironic, because my parents were not there, I was not being supported by family. I was alone, on the side of the street near my home, in the arms of a neighbor.
All of a sudden there was silence, and the team of paramedics that were working on him started to stand up and back away. I watched as they got him up on a gurney, covering him completely and putting him in the ambulance. The police that had arrived during all of this, started to clean up the trash and debris left on the ground. I watched as it took two people to pick up the mangled motorcycle and move it to the side of the road. And then I watched as one of them picked up my ragged yellow sweatshirt that was soaked through with blood and toss it in the trash. Of course I didn’t want it, but no one even asked if I did.
No one really seemed to know that I was still there, or that this might have effected me somehow, or that I was there when he first crashed and held his head in my lap. I imagine now, that he must have died that day, quite possibly while in my lap. I don’t remember anything after that day, any stories that were told, or questions being asked. I don’t remember my family discussing it. I do remember always looking at that tree with a very lengthy gaze each time I passed it by. And now, looking back, I remember how much sense it made to comfort him.
I was such a brave and fearless little hippie girl back then, filled with so much empathy. I had no idea what death meant, or how permanent it was, but I was always the first one to nurse a bird with a broken wing, getting squished insects to safety and always feeling bad for anyone with cuts or bruises, or worse, broken bones. But death… I did not have much experience with. That young man, who died after crashing his motorcycle near my house, was my first death and my initial reaction was to run to his side and provide comfort, and relieve him of fear. I truly believe that was the first moment my heart started making itself open to hospice.
https://www.amazon.com/Hospice-Heart-journey-didnt-have/dp/1706818599/ref=d_pd_sbs_vft_none_sccl_3_2/142-4720583-5125711?pd_rd_w=KkiwK&content-id=amzn1.sym.1e7a0ba4-f11f-4432-b7d8-1aaa3945be18&pf_rd_p=1e7a0ba4-f11f-4432-b7d8-1aaa3945be18&pf_rd_r=308WWJX37D899Z0YNSME&pd_rd_wg=NDS37&pd_rd_r=9f552ed1-afd7-43cf-8fe5-c968c0e77e50&pd_rd_i=1706818599&psc=1
