Spring

During the spring months as I watch the tulips come up in my neighborhood, nature reminds me that this is a time for renewal.  During Critical Incident Debriefings, and in my office over the years, the newly bereaved have stated to me that even before their loved one died, they experienced a stillness and emptiness in the air or felt it in their body.  Even more profound is their description of a strange disconnect from the usual  comfort that they carried by being in a "soulful" partnership with another human being.   Many years ago as I sat and watched a Blue's game with my best friend, who was also my peer on a hospice team, we both experienced a bolt of cold air that our seat mates did not feel.  We looked at each other and said "whoa, what was that?" and asked those sitting in front and to the left and right of us if they felt the same wind.  They did not.  2 minutes later her phone rang and she was informed by the hospice  nurse that her patient had just died.  As we called her a cab so that she could retrieve her car and provide grief services to the family, we stood there on the street silent.  This was one of many signs that we had experienced in our years as hospice social workers and we knew it would not be the last.
I am a believer in "the next place".  I believe that even in death in the theater of war that the dying person has that moment of peace where they are enveloped with the loving arms of comfort and peace that their higher power provides them so that they are given the safe passage forward that they so deserve.  These last two weeks, military families have experienced many losses at home and in the Middle East.   May their memories be a blessing to all of us and may their families someday find renewal and hope.