[Got an anonymous confession or rant you just have to share with the world? Submit it to I, Anonymous HERE!—eds]
What I see, what I touch, what I do every week is not normal for most of you. I have been around more death than anyone I know or meet. I am a healthcare worker, a CNA, who has been working with hospice patients for a few years now. And I can truly say, with profound sincerity, that working in End-of-Life care has affected my entire being. And I get paid $20-something an hour to experience and witness people, strangers, grapple with their own finite existence. Many died quietly, peacefully, while others pleaded, grabbing our hands asking us why this was happening; or begging us to not “let them take me.” Some flew across the country so they could die on their own terms through MAID, and others “graduated” hospice because we were able to take such good care of them that some were able to actually walk out and continue their lives for a while longer. I have worked with enough people who have died that I can simply look at a person or touch them and know they are actively dying and will most likely be gone within days or even hours. I know what necrotic, or rotting flesh, smells like. I have seen people suffer; I have seen people beg God to kill them because they were in so much violent pain. I have seen well known, beloved local celebrities die, and I have seen houseless people with no family or friends at their bedside die. I have seen so much. I wish people understood that what I do isn’t all sadness. It is life, lived. It is you, me, all of us. I just wish we really, truly understood this. For me, I don’t fear death. I fear how I will be treated when I am close to death. As a healthcare worker who knows a thing or two, I think you should be scared, too. Scared of a country, society, culture that doesn’t understand or truly accept death and dying, aging, or illness. The desire, or hope for a “good death” requires that we are given the necessary tools, resources, support for a good life. But what happens when that Cost of Living raise isn’t enough to keep us alive?—Anonymous