"Passed away 8/29/2013"

For the two of you who read this and don't know me personally, I work right now part-time as a home health nurse. I visit people in their homes as a nurse. I actually like it, and it is *mostly* way less stressful than my nursing home days.

Most of my nurse visits are flurries of medication lists, wound care, blood pressure checks and listening to the radio between stops. I don't have *a lot* of critical patients, so I don't often get emergency scenarios like this one from before.

But then I get an email like this (with subject line of a patient's name):
"Passed away 08/29/2013"

...and I am reminded again how life is so fleeting. It is brought close and real again that in the end, we don't last forever. In the end, life gets harder, health fails and we turn the corner.

source

My small prayer today is for this patient and his family, and for all of us in the crazy-mixed-up healthcare world. May we keep ever mindful of the fragility of body, and the permanency of soul.  Amen. 

Crossing the Bar

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Sunset and evening star,

      And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

      When I put out to sea,

   But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

      Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

      Turns again home.

   Twilight and evening bell,

      And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

      When I embark;

   For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place

      The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

      When I have crost the bar.
(source)