Milestones are universal, measurable events to mark the progression of life. It signifies movement into the next stage of our lives. But what if movement is not just moving on, but beyond?
Graduating high school is such a remarkable time in human life. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve seen movies about senior year, prom, and/or going to college. Being so overly exuberant about the chance to finally start your life.
But graduating for him meant the end of his.
I had become acquainted with *Sam in the first few weeks of training on the floor. I remember literally *gasping* at seeing his age on my report paper: seventeen. A teenager? I’m not a pediatric nurse. I had never worked with a patient that young before. I strictly worked in units for adults. I was curious as to what could bring someone so young into my care.
When I met him, he already went through multiple surgeries for brain cancer. His life consisted of “normal life” for a few months, then a hospital readmission brought about by changes in vision, debilitating headaches, or seizures. Accompanied with or without subsequent surgeries and procedures.
All these tumor growths and surgeries eventually rendered him unable to walk, unable to speak, and unable to see clearly. At best, his daily physical activity consisted of waving and blowing his mother a kiss. Such a sweet boy.
At this point in time, visitation privileges for pediatric patients allotted one adult to be at his side at all times. For him, it was his mother.
A mother’s love. I’m not sure there’s anything more powerful than the love of a mother for her child. Here she was, night after night during the workweek and nearly 24 hours on the weekend. We knew her and she knew most of us on a first name basis. She did her best to keep his existence as close to that of the average teenager as possible.
His hospital room was just like any other teenager’s room at home. Posters on the wall, cards from friends, pictures with loved ones. We set his TV to the channel that played movies around the clock. Teenagers like movies, right? Multicolored Christmas lights adorned the ceiling for the holidays.
On his 18th birthday, his mother finally let him have that tattoo he’s always wanted. She had a temporary one made based on a design he had conceptualized prior to all of this. She still had conversations with him as if they were at home, collected around the dinner table recapping the day’s events.
I got lost in his story.
When I spend time with people, I build comfort. Gradually, I find myself interested in their lives and ongoings, whereabouts and where to’s. Even though I never had a legitimate conversation with Sam, I felt like I intimately knew him through the anecdotes his family and friends shared with us.
I developed a softness for him and found myself wanting what’s best for him, not only from a professional nursing perspective, but from a personally emotional one.
Like a true, northeastern snowbird, he was discharged from the hospital in the winter only to return to us in the spring. During this reencounter, I reached my 1-year anniversary of working in the ICU and he graduated from high school. Cap, gown, and diploma ceremony at the bedside and everything.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was the last night shift nurse he would have. Our journeys ebbed and flowed to where he would meet me at my beginning, so I could be there for him at his end.
That night, like every night, I prepared him for the next day’s events. Changed all of his linens. Made him squeaky clean and presentable for when his mother returned from breakfast in the morning. Asked him about the movies he had watched that evening.
At the resolution of my shift, he waved goodbye to me and I waved back. Goodbye, Sammy boy.
Later that day, he left for hospice where he quietly graduated from this life.
I imagined him to be in a room that resembled a home, surrounded by all of the people that love him most. His mother, his aunties, his friends. That he entered this world with love and exited with it, too.
During one of his many enduring stays, his family gifted the unit with bracelets. Sammy’s Angels, they said. A bracelet that I still wear on my ID badge to this day.
To remind me of deep love and care and the fragility of life.
Author’s Note:
Names have been changed for obvious reasons: HIPAA
Christine Vera Polintan 