a stroke of deLay: the blog

Life is a delicate balance. Each day we awake to a new dawn, the sun breaking across the horizon. The fresh air of the morning breathes across the plains and down from the mountains. And we, humanity in all its glory carefully wish in our hearts that today, just today…we wouldn’t screw it all up again like yesterday.

Life is a beautiful thing. Working in a hospital we are always reminded of the birth of a new baby with a special tone. At each moment that sounds my heart warms at the prospect of the continuance of this world. We come before…and they will follow us after.

In the interim between life and death there is much to be learned, experienced and done. Each of us have an average expiration date that God above only knows. For those one hundred (many times less) years it is up to us where we go.

I walk in the shadows of greatness each day. As a manager of a housekeeping crew I follow behind the nurses, CNAs’, doctors and endless specialists and support staff keeping the healing power of the building at full blaze. Walking through the warmly lit halls of my building I am witness to extreme pain, suffering and sights I will never be able to erase. Intensive care units with burn victims, heart patients and those slowly coming out of surgery. The emergency room is a unique hive of activity and focus…but calm compared to how television shows portray them.

In each area I silently walk, doing the job most would raise an eyebrow at if asked, “Is this a job you’d like to do?” followed by a, “Uh, no!”.

I cleaned a room where a man had sat for six months before finally succumbing to the call of death knocking on his proverbial door. Standing for just a moment and realizing that a life had been lost on the bed I stood beside made it far more real than I imagined. In life and in death life is still just that. A life.

I carefully cleaned in silence, mourning a life I did not know.

We cleaned rooms where babies are born and new life elicits that uniquely powerful first cry. You smile knowing there is a full road waiting for that child.

Working in the shadows of greatness is humbling but it can also inspire to see the focus, the intensity and the care in the eyes of those that give it. We laugh and we are stilled to near tears at times.

Such is life and death in the halls of a hospital.