A grief unobserved

Excerpt

What is grieving like when your work is a dance of life lost, life supported, and life reclaimed? How does one grieve while working in the ICU? Where death and dying exist all the time? For me, grief was loneliness: the person I was closest to and could talk to about anything was gone. For me, it was a restless search: looking for him where we had been together and coming to the disappointing realization that our separation was final. For me, it was a paralysis and an indifference to the external world coexisting with internal turmoil. In this state, the thought of returning to work forced itself upon me (maybe prematurely) a search for myself, for the person I lost and the sense of duty. I wondered if it would be the place where I could be the person and professional I had been before my loss. …