So.

When I just started the hospice job, I got a patient who was my same age.  MY SAME AGE.  Now I'm not young, but I'm not old and this man was dying.  I could not believe it.  When I looked at him, he didn't look like he was dying and so I convinced myself that it couldn't be true.  Or even if it was, it was going to be a good long time.  It was about three weeks.  From being alert, and just like me to death he was gone in three weeks. 

No one has a promised time on earth.  No one has control over it whether they would like it or not.  As a nurse that's a hard lesson, that you can't prolong a life that isn't meant to be prolonged.  I would have loved to keep this man alive. He was kind, sweet, good natured and beloved by all who knew him.  But God took him away.  I guess it's our selfishness that longs to keep people on earth, because this man was in a lot of pain and perhaps he was tired from fighting his cancer so long.  He had had it for many, many years.  Who am I or anyone to force him to endure because we liked or loved him? 

I had a dream about this man the night I admitted him to hospice.  I dreamt that he put his head in my lap and died.  When I woke up I thought what a silly dream!  He doesn't even know me, why would I be with him at the end?  And in the end, looking back, maybe it was because once he went on hospice he knew he didn't have to keep fighting.  That my admitting him gave him the ability to let go and place his life into other hands (or laps) and he would finally get some rest.  I hope that's what it meant, because if so, what a wonderful gift he gave to me, the trust that putting himself into hospice would mean he could let go peacefully with someone there.

 That is after all what hospice is.