Celebrating Warriors…
My view of Covid-19 might be different from your view, and if so, then I’m pretty sure my Easter Sunday was different from yours as well. I watched Andrea Bocelli perform for the world, I watched Franklin Graham share an Easter message of hope from Central Park, I listened to the First Fifteen podcast, then I kissed my family goodbye and went to work at my community hospital for the evening shift.
There, my coworkers on the front line struggled to cope and I struggled to lift them. I prayed over the phone with a grieving family member who asked me to pray because she was sobbing so deeply and could not pray aloud for her mama. I walked the floors of my community hospital in PPE, providing support & resources, supplies and counsel, rounding, getting updates, checking in on my coworkers, (also in PPE) and we acknowledged each other but could not comfort one another in our usual way. Only words. And the words were sometimes not enough.
Everyone working harder, giving more of themselves-even when they have nothing left to give. Yes, we played “here comes the sun” when someone was discharged. Yes, lives were lost and we had no time to grieve. Yes lives were saved at least for another day. Yes there was sadness and anger, confusion, pain & suffering. None of us on staff that day had a typical Easter Dinner or family time. And nobody talked about what they were giving up or sacrificing to be on the front line this Easter Sunday.
We were together, we worked hard together, we tried our very best to do our very best.
We don’t call each other heroes.
But I call them warriors…because they fight.
They fight to save a life, they fight to stay safe, they fight back tears, they fight through long, difficult days, they fight to be heard, they fight for each other, they fight for us, they fight their inner battles, they fight the virus. They go home exhausted because this fight is more difficult than any other that we, die-hard New Yorkers, have faced before. And then they come back the next day to fight again. Not truly replenished, they return to the fight.
And I love them all.
When love is not enough, when words are not enough, when medicine and ventilators are not enough, we are left with hope. Hope lives at SJH, through the valiant fight of my coworkers.
We are enough.
I hope your Easter Sunday was as blessed as mine.
#AngelsAmongUs
