Mentally priming myself to work a night shift in the ER on this full moon in May, I said my prayers, meditated, took a long sea salt bath and braced for the wild ride I would inevitably be taking. Talk to any emergency personnel; a full moon brings out the crazy. Superstitious or not, we all know intense insanity will be wafting through the ER hallways like the zombie apocalypse. There would be a howling as the drunks, druggies and the defiled flocked, being guided by the path of the moonbeams to our arena.
As I dressed in my least favorite scrubs in case I ended up covered in blood, vomit or shit, my eyes caught her earrings. “Wear me tonight,” they seemed to beckon.
Cathy had given me these earrings years ago after we first met; after I diagnosed her with a terminal brain cancer. She said the moment she saw them, she knew they were mine. They looked just like my style. I can still see her handing me the delicately wrapped box with excitement. She gave me a gift in return for the death sentence I bestowed. Those priceless gems would come to represent the many gifts that precious soul delivered to me both in life and death.
I never took them off except to sleep and wash my hair. That was until I lost one in the ER after Cathy had just died May 23, 2013. I had scoured the entire department once my fingertips noted the missing jewel. Enlisting every nurse, medic, and housekeeper to help me frantically search for the sacred ornament was to no avail. Mourning her loss was hard enough but now I had also lost the most cherished physical representation of her that I could cling to in times of my despair.
Two days later, a seasoned nurse with her thick, New Jersey accent asked, “Dr. Charfen did you happen to lose this earring? I found it on the floor today and it looked just like your style.”
Squealing and squeezing her with glee, I held the lost treasure in my hands, vowing to never, ever wear them back into the emergency department. In fact, I would only wear them on special occasions to decrease the risk of ever losing them again.
When they went missing a few years later, I did not completely freak out. I knew I had put them somewhere very safe. They were safe enough that I couldn’t find them. By then Cathy had sent me so many signs after her death that I knew she was always around me regardless of physical relics. However, I knew she would help me find them when the time was right. When I opened the glove compartment of my car on her birthday several months later, there they were in plain view.
When the earrings asked to be worn back into the emergency department at least six years had passed. I hesitated and tried to blow off that intense feeling to put them through my lobes. But it was a full moon. Maybe they would protect me from the insanity. And it was Cathy’s death month. By now she had usually sent me a brain cancer patient through the ER at the beginning of May which strangely enough was Brain Cancer Awareness month so that I could feel her presence. To my disappointment, this was the first year since her death that had not happened. Maybe this profound feeling to wear her earrings into no man’s land was just my way of feeling close to her.
Placing the special backing I had bought to prevent loss, I pinched my lobes tightly, indenting the skin almost to the point it could cause necrosis and headed out for the full moon shift.
The night dragged on with our standard bizarre and disturbing folks. There was certainly a heightened anxious and psychiatric tone to the place but not full moon worthy. And then I heard her loud, demanding, screeching and obviously intoxicated voice. Finally, the she-wolf had arrived. A fight with her husband led to a cut on her finger after she slammed down an olive oil bottle in anger. It was 3 am. I was tired and not in the mood for her drunk ass.
Entering her room with a stoic and perturbed disposition, her snide, slurred remarks that she found funny went completely unacknowledged. There was nothing on my face that indicated I potentially gave a shit about what she had to say or that I was the least bit amused. Her loud, impatient voice kept getting louder the more I ignored her attempt to direct her own care.
Avoiding breath contact, I kept my head down and focused on numbing her finger with my needle of lidocaine. She accused me of giving her the anesthetic that she knew wasn’t necessary in hopes of making more money. Barely pricking her regular skin with the tip of my needle just to give her a taste, she cringed in pain. She surrendered her commentary long enough for me to finish the numbing. And then she began again but this time in a different tone. It was not the same voice I had been attempting to tune out.
“You are so lucky that I’m jealous of you. Look at you; a beautiful woman who is also a doctor. Look at me. I’m just a housewife and stay-at-home mom with a cut, bleeding thumb but at least I’m drunk.”
Before I could disagree with her ingratitude for the job she was so fortunate to have, the one that I would covet in exchange, she continued to pontificate.
“I bet you have bad days too. I bet there are times when you don’t feel good about yourself. But you hold your head high lady. You are a rock star. I can see it. Look at those exquisite earrings you are wearing and that fabulous lotus tattoo on your wrist.”
Pausing, my demeanor loosened. She must have noticed my shift and felt my imaginary walls crumble as she continued to share.
“You know how this happened, besides the obvious drinking? I was mad and hurt by my husband. All I wanted was a hug. Instead, he ordered me to cook dinner. He sucks at dealing with death. But I don’t. I’m drawn to it. I spent all day comforting his family’s loss today. I just wanted a little comfort in return.”
This stopped my suturing. Patient’s don’t talk like this, especially not drunk ones. No one wants to talk about death. It may be my favorite subject but certainly not a common topic of conversation in the ER unless a patient is in the middle of doing it. And even then no one wants to speak the obvious, not the patient or the family or even the doctors. Nurses always find it amazing that I ask my patients quite often about their wishes surrounding their death. And then she said it and I knew her lesson.
“I have lost so many people in my life, mostly to cancer. Even brain cancer.”
For the first time, I really spoke to this woman straight from my heart.
“These earrings you pointed out; they were given to me by a dear friend that I diagnosed and who died of brain cancer. This tattoo on my arm; is in honor of all the women that changed my life through their cancers. I live in Hawaii because I was called there to specifically work with the dying and bring more consciousness to the mystery of death. It is my passion in life. It is my calling. That’s why I am becoming a death doula.”
She squealed in ecstasy like she had just found her long lost love. She was so overcome with joy.
“I knew it! I knew there was something special about you. I may be drunk but I could feel that you get it! Death is not to be feared. It’s rebirth. It’s life. God, I wish more people could embrace it differently. Death doula, what is that?”
When I explained that it was someone that wanted to be a witness to death much life a birthing doula or midwife is to birth, she almost fell out of the bed from her glee.
“Oh my god it’s brilliant! Death doulas should be everywhere. Being with the dying is so needed. We try to put it in the closet and pretend it doesn’t exist. It should be honored just like birth. Oh, oh I’ve got it! You should call yourself Double D! Dying men would love it!”
That’s when all our cackling began. Especially after I shared that a nurse who knew my death work had just called me that yesterday and even left a sticky note that read “DD, room 14 can go home now.”
We spent the rest of her visit laughing and gabbing and just enjoying ourselves. It wasn’t until I finished the last stitch, however, that I had finally looked up at her and really saw her face. She truly resembled Cathy. She had the same auburn hair and big, wide smile.
It took me back to the first day I met Cathy and had visited her in her hospital room after I had given her the terrible news. So much laughter was coming from the room, I was sure I had gotten the room number wrong. Instead, I spent the next hour shrieking with laughter with this hilarious woman who was dressed all in monkeys that had just been given a death sentence. We became monkey sisters that day.
Back at my desk, my partner looked at me quizzically.
“What the hell was going on in there? We could hear you both laughing all the way down the hall. It sounded like two long lost friends who hadn’t seen each other in years.”
Smiling to myself, I knew Cathy had, in fact, come for a visit. She sent that drunk lady I’m pretty sure. She needed to remind me and encourage me that I was on the right path. I had a calling to honor death and she did not want me to forget.
As my drunk “Cathy” vacated the building I could hear her voice yelling through the exit, “Double D! Double D! You go girl!”
Moon Image: Unsplash.com
