Writing 101, Day Four: The Serial Killer

Today, write about a loss. The twist: make this the first post in a three-post series.

Closing the door on my nursing career was a choice I had to make because I had so many allergies to medications that even the dust of the medication would send me into an anaphylactic attack.  I used to take care of severely handicapped and cognitively challenged children in a long-term facility.  When I first walked into this facility as a teenager I immediately new this was where I needed to be.  So I worked as a nursing assistant and boy, was my heart filled with a joy I had never known before.

Man, I was so sheltered as a child I honestly didn’t know facilities like that existed.  I know pretty naïve of me, huh!  Others told me straight to my face there was no way I would last there, “you don’t have it in you,” they would say.  All I had to say to that was they obviously did not know me.  I fell in love with these kids from the very first moment I laid eyes on them.

I remember telling those same people who thought there was no way I was going to make that if they only saw what I had the privilege of seeing they would have understood.  Not everyone thinks a corner smile on a little face means, “I love you so much, or thank you for that hug.”  Let me tell you that I was not the only one who gave in this relationship.   Those kids gave so much love back with their little smiles that if someone had measured the amount of love I received, it would had been off the charts.

Walking through those double doors for the last time was one of the hardest and saddest decisions I have ever had to make.  Tears were running down my eyes as I walked away I couldn’t even look back.  I remember feeling like someone very close to me had died. I had an ache in my heart for a long time.  My heart was broken because I had to leave those children behind.  It was the only job I had ever known, first as a nurse’s aide and then as a LPN.  The door had been shut to that part of my life not really understanding why.  The only thing running through my mind at the time was what was I going to do now?  I had no clue but God did.