On an ordinary Friday about a year ago I went to work. While checking my days schedule, I noticed a name of someone I had never seen before. Another girl in the office knew her and told me that her teenage son had drown a few years earlier. I was stunned, how do you get through something like that?
During the appointment I was having trouble making conversation. I didn't know her, and should not have known about her history, besides I was dealing with my own demons. Ever since Curtis had deployed to Iraq in 2008, it was a subject that could creep into my mind as a possibility more times than I could count, but I would always stop myself and say "NO, he is fine, he is coming home to me safe!" Now I was faced, one on one, with someone who knew this pain. I couldn't find a way to broach the subject. The idea of what I would do if I lost Curtis stopped me from saying anything to her. I felt awful after she left, but not as bad as I felt only a few hours later when I found out that when I was seeing that patient, Curtis had already been dead for three hours.
Was she sent to me for a reason and I squandered it? Not that she could have said anything to ease the pain of losing a child, or given any advice at that moment that would have made any sense to me, but I could have listened to her and let her talk about her son. How could I have her in my chair for 50 minutes and not mention it, or say how sorry I was? It's strange how this one hour almost a year ago still troubles me when only a few hours after this happened my life took such a drastic change. I still know nothing about this woman other than she lost her son so tragically, but she made an impact on my life that she will probably never know. I have come to hate the saying "Everything happens for a reason", but in this case I believe it is true.
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