My Heaven

I dreamed about heaven last night. Not Heaven, but my heaven. Some might call me a heathen. Questions and doubt gnaw at my beliefs. I know there comes a day in everyone’s life when they ask “Why?” or “Why me?” The days I ask myself those questions I surrender to faith in the inevitable, which may or may not involve a supreme being. I liken death to sleep. Except for nights when dreams unearth what’s really in my head, I slip from wakefulness, with my mind working at warp speed, jettisoning me into scenes or characters or action for the next story I want to tell, into nothingness. Black non-existence.

A young friend of mine, Amy, died this week. I think the loss of her made me dream of a heaven defined by more than a vacuous empty place. A hospital building housed my heaven. After forty-plus years of nursing that makes sense. I stood peering down a long hall of rooms where light spilled from the doorways and beckoned me to take a peek.

From one room I heard disco music and saw Rudy, a nurse who died from AIDs before it became a chronic illness. Rudy defined bling, not because he wore a lot of jewelry, but because he sparkled in life. He lived with an intensity from which a person who didn’t know him might have had to back away. His confidence, sense of humor, and frenetic energy rubbed off in a good way. I watched him dance in his pink uniform and thick soled white nursing shoes. He tossed his head back and a disco ball peppered his face with flickering freckles of light. I remembered the day Rudy confided in me about a patient who had commented on his sexual preference. “I told him at the end of his stay if I wasn’t the best damned nurse he had, he could say what he wanted.” When he was discharged, the patient praised the care he had received. I envied Rudy’s courage.

Amy had her own brand of endless energy. She engaged in everything she did with a full court press. She lived with joy, selflessness, compassion. She organized and commanded and executed any task at hand. She was both a jester and a fixer. When I moved into my new house, Amy suggested we have a pajama party. She appeared on my doorstep in flannel pajama bottoms, over-sized squishy slippers, and with rollers in her hair. She also brought the biggest margarita glasses I had ever seen and a pair of flannel pajama bottoms for my husband that said “I love chicks.” Hatching eggs with chicks peeping from the cracks dotted the fabric. I appreciated the time she took to share with us that day.

I’ll remember Amy for the night she saved my husband, Dalt. Hospitalized with tonsillitis, he received a huge dose of steroids for tonsils enlarged enough to compromise his airway. I settled him in bed and went home after a long day of waiting, tests, and more waiting. I had just arrived home and dried off from a shower when the phone rang. “There’s something wrong. Something’s happening.” I recognized the panic in my husband’s voice. I knew Amy was working in CVICU that night. I called her and told her the situation. “Can you check on him? I’ve got to get dressed and then I’ll be there.” I never expected her to say “no.” That just wasn’t how Amy treated people.

I anticipated a floor nurse in crisis mode when I arrived. But I walked in to find my husband smiling. What he said epitomized Amy. “Amy fixed everything.” During my twenty minute drive she had come to the room and discovered that a new graduate was taking care of my Dalt. “She made him check my blood sugar, my blood pressure, and made him give me some Xanax. She showed that new nurse a few things.”

Amy showed us all a few things. And we are better for it. Now Heaven will be, too.