I wanted to share with you the most amazing revelation. My wife, a nurse at the Youville for 25 years, is dying from cancer. It has been a 6.5-year trip and the end is very close.
First let me say that Carol is a nurse's nurse. She is kind, caring, compassionate and an example for anyone considering this calling. She has the ability to touch people and take their pain away. Medicines can only do so much at the end of a life. The pain is in the soul. Carol was a preacher’s kid and I guess this understanding comes with having your dad sit with a family all night and come home exhausted. Her mom consoled the family. Maybe that’s where she learned it.
She would spend that extra five minutes to sit with a senior and just hold their hands and listen. It was better medication than the chemical painkillers she had to administer. Carol always specialized in caring for the seniors. She loved her people and she loved her staff and she loved working at the Youville.
Alice, one of the aides, stopped me in the hall and said it was incredibly hard to see one of their teachers “like that.” I told her that every kindness they showed her is a reflection on everything she tried to teach them and every time they treated their patients with tenderness they were honouring Carol. I just find it remarkable that you can spend your life influencing so many people, teaching by example and only as you come to the end do you find that your teaching multiplies and multiplies because now the teacher becomes the patient and the students are now the teachers and they in turn teach others how kindness, in the end, is the best medicine.
God bless the staff at the Youville and thank you to so many friends and family that keep Carol in their thoughts and prayers. A special thanks to the caregivers for yours is a special task and if you want to honour your teacher, spend that extra five minutes, give that extra touch to your patient and maybe, just maybe, hold their hand for a while and listen. It means so much.
Al Henry, St. Albert
