Reactivating: when your job is grief

Reactivating: when your job is grief

Grief comes, like love, in myriad forms, chameleon-like, shape shifting, shadow dancing, furtive and furious, all consuming, ever-present, ineluctable. It hits with the power of a tornado, obliterating everything in its path and it lingers, a festering presence eating...
Respecting: Life and Death

Respecting: Life and Death

“It’s not life and death!” How often do we say that, euphemistically, to reduce whatever it is we are agonising over to its relevant size? But sometimes it is. Life and death. I knew my friend and neighbour was going to die and that it would be soon, but I did not...
Renegotiating: When Worlds Collide

Renegotiating: When Worlds Collide

The evening started like any other, a day spent sleeping poorly, counting the hours until another long night spent in the emergency department. My disguise laid out; dark green scrubs, pens, stethoscope and an ID badge. My hair is scraped back off my shoulders and I...
Re-awakening: grief

Re-awakening: grief

The message stopped me dead in my tracks when it came through. There, in black and white on my phone screen. In that moment, unable to un-read or no longer know. Fact, reality, life. Or rather death. What was supposed to be a joyous celebration of new life; the...