I graduated from nursing at Seneca College in December 1984. During our final student assembly, we had a guest speaker from Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. She was a nurse who worked with patients who experienced pain, mostly oncology patients. She was involved in all aspects of end-of-life care. I do not remember her name, but I remember wanting to be her. I loved the way she described her job through personal stories of things she had done, witnessed and felt.

Since graduating more than three decades ago, I have worked in many places, sometimes in two or three part-time positions simultaneously. From family practice offices, to oncology and emergency departments, to clinical and classroom teaching, I have shared my knowledge and stories with future nurses. I completed my baccalaureate degree with honours in 2015. It wasn’t easy, but I always knew what I was working towards. I was going to help others with grief, emotional pain, and be honoured to do it. I was going to matter.

I am currently a clinical educator and part-time staff nurse on a palliative care unit, and I am finally that nurse. I love every psychosocial aspect of my job, from talking to families and patients, educating them, hearing their stories, to giving a fellow nurse a hug after they have lost a patient.
In the spring of 2016, I was caring for a man who was nearing the end of his life. As is common at end-of-life, he was not talking or waking up often when his family was visiting. Instead, he woke up late in the evenings when the room was quiet and empty.
One evening, he asked me if I believe in God. “Sometimes,”

I responded. “Can you believe in Him tonight?” he asked. I was unsure how to interpret his comments, but he wanted me to be there for him, so I was. He then asked me: “Can you go get Him (God) for me? I need to speak with Him.”

As our conversation continued, he began to speak about his wife, and told me: “I love her very much.” I asked if he wanted to tell her that, and made the first of two phone calls I would make that evening to his wife. During their second conversation, he called her ‘pussycat,’ and told her how much he loved her. She and I were both weepy after that exchange.

Two weeks later, I saw her in the hallway of the palliative care unit. Her husband was still on the unit, but that phone conversation was the last time he had spoken to her. Facilitating and being part of that last conversation is what nursing means to me. It reminds me what I fell in love with during that final assembly presentation at Seneca College in 1984.