I didn't cry

When I stood by your bed as a student nurse and realized you had decerebrate posturing, unresponsive, blown pupils, and were missing ¾ of your skull. Not even when I realized that you had parents, a girlfriend, and a threeyear old daughter. None of which were currently accepting the fact that you arenot ever going to recover. I didn't cry then, but that night driving home I cried as I mourned for you and them. However, by the time I was home I had left it behind me.

I didn't cry as I looked at your wife as she explained that you were childhood sweethearts and she had never considered a life without you.You were in your 50's and on hospice because of terminal cancer. Now you were having a hemorrhagic stroke and it was a bad one. She looked at me with desperate, hopeful eyes as she told me that she knew you were dying, but she wasn't ready yet, not yet. I cried on the way home as I remembered her eyes, but then I put it behind me.

I didn't cry when I found out that the young woman who had laughingly showed me pictures of her children, the oldest of which was five, had died on the operating table while a doctor tried to repair an aortic dissection. I mourned for her family, and the children that would probably not remember her, but then I put it behind me.

Patients and their families touch your heart, but you can't carry it home with you. I tell myself this as I drive home and put it behind me.

So why is it that today, when the sun is hot and beautiful, I am fighting tears?

I shop for brightly colored flowers to plant in my multicolored pots. I put my hands in the dirt as I plant flowers of red, yellow, purple, and white smiling at the cheerful display, but your voice is in my head. I mow the lawn while reveling in the sun on my face and play my

headphones louder that I usually do to drown out your voice, but I see you in my mind. I have helped other patients that lost their unborn children and isn't that an awful term? Lost, as if they were misplaced and might still be found. Why is it your voice, your courageous grief for a child you truly wanted, and the image of your fetus, your perfectly formed, incredibly small baby that never took a breath haunting me? Is it because I couldn't cry on the way home?