And After All Is Said and Done

Whose Idea Was This??

With such an auspicious Hospital background, it's a wonder I didn't finish Medical School. Or even start. Didn't finish Nursing School either, although I did the first two years at University before going crazy and switching majors my Junior and Senior years. How does that go? The best laid plans....

I don't know, maybe there had been signs. Like when I flew home from Utah for Christmas vacation my Freshman year. The hospital actually hired me as a Nurse's Aide for those two weeks. I was so excited! Until I passed out at the bedside of my first patient and hit my head on the bed rails before starting a close relationship with the floor. 

This was following my first ever plane trip the day before, which was in a vintage WWII aircraft that the Pilot and his wife, the Stewardess, had bought to start their own private company. What a ride! Maybe I had a "planeover" the next day? We did actually make it, against all odds, obviously. Unfortunately, the enterprising couple perished in it a couple years later. Anyway, I digress.

So my friends there, the Staff, picked me up off the floor and put me in a private room and monitored me that day. How embarrassing! When they would leave my room, I would jump out of bed and put my uniform back on and start taking care of my assigned patients again. Till the Nurses would see me, and whisk me off my feet and right back to bed. Then they would leave, and I would get dressed again and carry on. Rinse and repeat. Good intentions, but.... The next day was better.

It wasn't the end of the world, of course, but the next summer I decided to apply as a nursing intern at the Insane Asylum, Elgin State Hospital, instead of returning to St. Jo's. What could Possibly go wrong?

Frank Pascente Jr.

Yes. That was his name. Frank Pascente Jr. I think he may have been in room #327 when our paths crossed. I had been a teenybopper Candystriper at St. Joseph Hospital (Elgin) for 3 years by then.

How I had loved serving patients on the 3rd floor of the hospital, whether it was delivering meal trays, feeding those who were unable to feed themselves, filling water pitchers, changing sheets, sponge baths, giving gentle massages, emptying bedpans (ok, not so much, but sterilizing them wasn't bad), taking temps and blood pressures, running countless specimens upstairs to the Lab, other things I can't mention... whatever the nurses wanted me to do. 

But some patients were just more fun, more memorable than others. And my favorite of all time, and the only one whose name I can remember was Frank, the G.O.A.T. What the heck was this young guy doing in the hospital, for heaven's sake? The young were few and far between in those rooms. While I was used to interacting with patients and getting along well with everyone, this was the first time anyone paid so much attention to me, teasing me and basically being the big brother I had always wanted but never had. So yes, he was extra special in my book. I didn't really know why he was there week after week, but I looked forward to seeing him every day that I was there. 

Frank was really good looking, in an Italian kind of way, and really good natured, in an Italian kind of way! In his late 20's, dark hair, charismatic smile. He was married with two young daughters. Happy and fulfilled. Never complaining or upset. So I just assumed whatever he was there for was being handled and all was ok. He was such a bright, bright spot. I didn't ask questions. And so it went. Good times, I thought.

And then that winter weekend I showed up as usual and took the elevator to the 3rd floor, stopped in to #327 to check on Frank and see if he needed anything, before going to check in at the nurses' station. But he wasn't there. Did they move him to another room? Send him home? I went down to the nurses' station and saw the Head Nurse coming out and said, "Where's Frank?"

I knew her well and she knew me well too, and how close I was to him, and she just stopped in her tracks, not knowing what to do. 

"Oh, Muffi, I'm so sorry. We just lost Frank. You knew he had cancer, right? The cancer won."

WHAT?  WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?

I couldn't believe her. And I couldn't not believe her. I couldn't fall apart there in the hallway. And I couldn't not fall apart. The nurses and aides all came to comfort me. But I was out of control. Totally out of control!

I don't know how I found out later what funeral home he was taken too. I don't even know how I got home. I only knew I didn't get a chance to say goodbye. And that I wanted to. Somehow I got it in my head and heart that I should go there for the viewing. 

And so I did. 

When I got there, I froze and couldn't move from the back of the room. Just wasn't possible. So there I was, paralyzed and blending into the back wall. Only a few awkward moments passed, but it seemed like eternity. Then someone noticed me, left the group gathered around the front of the room where Frank now laid, grasped my hand and gently walked me up to the casket. Without saying a word. It was Pat, his widow, whom I had never met, who had no way of knowing me. And yet, somehow she did. 

Who does that? What kind of angel can emerge from the midst of her own grief to reach out to some obscure shy teenager without much of a right to be there, an uninvited distraction at best. I had wanted to melt into the floor until she reached me and gently helped me out of myself and gave me the borrowed strength to see my buddy one last time. 

Who does that? Maybe the kind of person who married the kind of person who earlier reached out to me, despite unimaginable pain and suffering, to make me feel like a mere run of the mill teenager mattered.

In all the millions of moments since that time, I have many times thought of Frank and Pat, and been so glad that these two had each other for the brief time that they did. And that they crossed my path, however briefly. I think they were both very rare humans and I'm so grateful for their example. It's given me the inspiration and courage to be mindful of others in the midst of unbidden trials, in the tsunami of grief, through the many, many decades since these special souls showed me who they were, and how to walk in those footsteps of the One who cares most of all for each and every one of us.