Today's Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul

[Guest guest]

Finding Your Easter Sunrise

There is a stopping point in the North Carolina mountains

called Pretty Place. Pull off the main road and follow a dirt

one to a clearing and there stands an open-air chapel on the

side of the mountain. Simple concrete benches encompass a stone

pulpit. The area is open on all sides so you can see the breath-

taking beauty of the scenery. There is a feeling of reverence

about the place. People talk quietly, as though in church, in

this wonderful place of solitary reflection.

At Easter time about twenty years ago, a group of friends

and I decided to attend the sunrise service at Pretty Place. I

had always wanted to go but never managed. I was an Emergency

Room nurse and had to work on this particular Easter Sunday too,

but worked it out to go to the service, and then go to work my

shift. We got up about 2:00 a.m. to make the drive to Pretty

Place. We arrived in the dark, parked, and proceeded toward the

chapel. A huge gathering of people collected in and around the

chapel. In darkness, a simple nondenominational church service

was held including a hymn, a prayer and a short message.

I was content just to sit and enjoy the tranquility, the

smell of earth and pine, and feel the coolness of the morning

air on my skin. I heard the birds and the sounds of the woods

around us and enjoyed the pleasure of being with my friends. The

sky lightened as the day broke and a glowing orange ball began

to appear as if it was rising out of the earth. One minute there

was a gray canvas and the next, a glowing sphere of orange,

yellow, pink rose filling the sky. Then, more quickly than they

had come, the crowd took their leave to return to the real

world. I headed for work.

I arrived feeling peaceful and ready for the day. The ER

was quiet too. Since there were no patients, I began cleaning

and restocking.

I heard the familiar announcement, " patient in the hall "

and then the sound of a man's voice calling for help in

desperation and panic. I entered the hallway to see a man

carrying a small, limp, breathless child. Traces of blood and

discoloration smeared one side of her pale face. No other wounds

were visible. The man handed me the little girl, dressed in a

frilly dress, lace-trimmed socks, patent leather shoes, and a

crushed Easter bonnet. His words spilled out. He couldn't see

her when he backed the family van out of the driveway. She was

dressed and ready for church. She saw her daddy leaving. She ran

behind him. She only wanted to go with her daddy.

I rushed her into critical care leaving the father in the

hallway. Someone would come shortly to get him to fill out the

paper work and show him to the family waiting room - not the

usual waiting room, but the small, softly-lit, private waiting

room where families and friends await bad news and pray

desperate prayers for the lives of their loved ones.

As the call of Code Blue went out over the hospital

loudspeaker, a team gathered to do all that was possible to save

this child. Her Easter clothes were cut away and she was

intubated. We began CPR, started an IV, and gave her drugs to

attempt to restart her heart and lungs. It soon became obvious

her neck was broken. We continued to resuscitate her, doing

everything within the power of man and medicine. We couldn't

give up the life of this small child. There is a knowing, an

intellectual process that says there is nothing to do, but the

heart often pushes us beyond this knowledge to try anyway. So

try we did.

After the hopeless resuscitation ceased, I slowly removed

the tubes with tears in my eyes, a huge lump in my throat, and

heaviness in my chest. We took care of the details of preparing

her body for death and for her family to see her. The Emergency

Room doctor went to the family room. His words to the father

would start with, " Your little girl is dead. There really was

nothing we could do, but we tried. " He would talk, trying to

explain what had happened. He would listen for a little while to

give the father a chance to begin to verbalize how he was

feeling.

The cry we heard coming from this man as he was given the

news still touches me at the core of my very being. Some of us

have experienced the misfortunes in life that enable us to

understand the pain and loss this man must have felt.

It's been twenty years since that Easter Sunday. I am

married now and have four children of my own. I traded in the

job of being a nurse for that of being a full time mother and

homemaker. Not an Easter has passed since that I do not remember

that little girl in the arms of her father on that Easter

Sunday. I can always recall the pain and agony of that father's

cry at the news of the death of his daughter. Now, as a parent,

I understand that cry in a way that I couldn't at that time.

Medical personnel must learn to deal with the pain and

suffering of others in order to do their job. We witness human

misery, loss of limb and life, loss of family, and at times, the

horrible unspeakable things that people do to each other. My

saving grace is always that when I remember that little girl

dying I also remember the profound experience of being at the

Easter sunrise service. I'm glad that on that morning I made the

effort to go. I remember the magnificence of that sunrise there

on the side of a mountain and the awe I felt taking it all in.

I experienced two opposite ends of the spectrum of human

emotion that day - wonder and despair, life and death, joy and

suffering, breath-taking beauty and profound sadness. I wrap the

beautiful memory of the sunrise service around me to protect me

from the hurt I felt at the death of that little girl. That

memory of the sunrise was the armor I carried into battle that

day as I went to do my duty in the ER.

As a nurse or a doctor or anyone who deals with pain and

suffering, we must care for ourselves in order to be of service

to others. We cannot give water to others from an empty well. We

must take time to refill the well - to find our Easter sunrise.

By Bollinger

Reprinted by permission of Bollinger © 2000, from the

upcoming Chicken Soup for the Nurse's Soul by Jack Canfield,

Mark Victor Hansen, LeAnn Theimann and -Autio.