Close to Home

I think it's tough to write a post about what I do without sounding cliché. To me, that is. I read other paramedic blogs, or books, and see TV. So sometimes it's hard to write about a topic that has been elsewhere covered and not say what everyone has already said. BUT....I guess most everyone else doesn't know what is said, or what happens. And I remind myself I write this for me anyway. It's a way of processing.

So often in the field we deal with death. Yes, every once in a great while we deal with new life, but more often it is the end of life that we come in contact with. And, for the most part, I'm ok with it. It's not that it doesn't affect me, but I'm able to keep most of it at arms length. It's someone else's emergency. I don't think I'd be very good at what I do if I wasn't able to do this. EMS is not somewhere to wear one's heart on their shirtsleeve.

But death close to home. That's something else. Something I don't do well with. Something I compartmentalize and shut away, to deal with another day. There have been passings in the family recently. People my parents were closer to than I. But that made me take stock of my reality more than I care to. A friend's mother is passing. This too, hits close to home and makes me think of my parents. It's draining, these emotions. I'm not sure what to do or where to put them. I suppose that will come with time. The silver lining? At a memorial service reading recently, a few lines of prose were read that gave meaning to what I do, what I want to do. It's incorrectly attributed to Emerson--it's author is unknown, perhaps Betty Stanley. The part that meant something to me was this:

"To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived
This is to have succeeded."