A Way to Honor Life

Nurse Cortney Davis frequently encounters grief. For years, she sought to counter it with cheer and consolation, but now she believes grief is to be embraced as a way of honoring of the fragility of life.
Welcome to This I Believe and NPR series presenting the personal philosophies of remarkable men and women from all walks of life.

I believe in figuring out my own way to do things.
I believe in the power of numbers.
I believe in Barbeque.
Well, I believe in friendliness.
I believe in mankind.
This I believe…

Over 20,000 essays have been submitted to our series, This I believe. What today our assay comes from Cortney Davis, a mother, nurse and poet from Wreting, Connecticut. Here's our series curator,independent producer Jay Allison.

Cortney Davis didn't plan to become a nurse. She was divorced with two children and needed a job that was flexible and paid well. Over time, though,she came to love the profession. In caring for patients she acquired an unexpected belief that now guides her in her approach to the work. Here is Cortney Davis with her essay for This I Believe.

I believe in grief. Almost everyday when I walk into the hospital where I work as a nurse practitioner, I hear crying, moaning or wailing. A young woman has miscarried, an elderly widower is holding his wife's belongings, a mother stands guard over her badly burned child. Once I would have rushed to comfort these people. Uncomfortable myself with their grief, I'd want to ease their sadness with my cheer and consolation. I'd hug a patient and tell her to: "Try to get pregnant next month." I would reassure the widower telling him:" Your wife have a long life." I'd enter the burnt child's room in intensive care with // smile rather than encouraging the mother to weep in my arms.

When my own mother died, I was terrified, confused about how I was expected to act. Was I allowed to be the grieving daughter? Or should I be the competent grief-denying professional? I held my mother's rest, counting her pulse as it slow, after her last breath I ran for the nurse. Heart pounding, I waved goodbye to my mother, her gray hair bright against the sheets, and said:" Bye, mom.” In the cheery voice I'd practiced all my life. I didn't know then that I could' ve climbed into bed and held her that I should have wailed when she was gone.

It wasn't until I had stayed with many dying patients, and finally with my dying father, that I allowed myself to grieve for my parents, for those lost patients, for all their loved ones who as I once did held back their tears. At my father's death I cried like a child, not caring that I made the gulping, I believe this is what u've heard)noises of unrestrained morning. Now years later I know that it is both necessary and human for us to wallow, each in our own way in grief.
I no longer comfort others with false cheer. In the hospital where my encounters with patients are ever more distanced by stereo gloves, computer protocols. and pressures of time. One way I can still be present is during their moments of grief. I don't encourage anyone to move on, to replace, to remarried or put the photos or the memories away. Grief must be given its time.
I believe that both the care-givers and the cared-for should be free to scream and cry and fall to the floor, if not actually then at least in the heart. I believe that grief fully expressed will change over time into something less over / powering, even granting us a new understanding, a kind of double vision that comprehends both the beauty and fragility of life at the same time.

When I grieve, when I stand by others as they grieve, even in the midst of seemingly unbearable sorrow. Grief becomes a way to honor life, a way to cling to every fleeting precious moment of joy.

Cortney Davis with her essay for This I Believe. Davis told us that the opportunities for tenderness in nursing are important to her and she hopes that the profession doesn't move too far toward the technical and the way from the bedside. We invite everyone to submit essays to our series, you can find out more and read what others have written at npr.org.

For this I Believe, I'm Jay Allison.