I offer this poem and Padraig O Tuama’s comments to remind us of the deep and sustaining compassion that is the stuff of health care. It is imperfect – mixed as it can be with ambition and pride and other survival strategies – but it is always there. The compassion needs encouragement though, so that it is not overwhelmed by mere persistence.
A few months ago, it seemed that the worst of COVID was behind us, the stuff of legend, and we could be grateful for how the experiences strengthened our bonds to each other. Too soon the experiences again had to become the lessons and stories that veterans passed on about how to manage and survive. The struggle to meet too many responsibilities is now always there, despite constant fatigue and the constant need for compulsive caution. It can help briefly to imagine oneself as a battered but angelic Fionnuala, but more realistically the work is not mythic or heroic: it is aggravatingly technical, repetitious, exhausting, endless.
The public’s gratitude helps, but I imagine might seem meaningless if it is not accompanied by awareness of the need for their responsibility. And it is also only an external reward, whereas internal motivations are even more important. The original Fionnula’s heroism is motivated by compassion, the desire to see and care for the suffering in others. That is the stuff that sustained her, and can sustain us.
So be kind to yourself and your colleagues – everyone is trying their best. Seeing, recognizing, sharing one’s burdens helps: sharing helps love to grow and makes pains shrink. We are in this together, even when it can seem sometimes that you are carrying your burdens alone. There is always someone who can “keep you safe beneath her wing.”
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“Leaving Early” by Leanne O’Sullivan:
“My Love,
tonight Fionnuala is your nurse.
You’ll hear her voice sing-song around the ward
lifting a wing at the shore of your darkness.
I heard that, in another life, she too journeyed
through a storm, a kind of curse, with the ocean
rising darkly around her, fierce with cold,
and no resting place, only the frozen
rocks that tore her feet, the light on her shoulders.
And no cure there but to wait it out.
If, while I’m gone, your fever comes down —
if the small, salt-laden shapes of her song
appear to you as a first glimmer of earth-light,
follow the sweet, hopeful voice of that landing.
She will keep you safe beneath her wing.”