Yesterday I visited the Intensive Care Unit on Six North at the Bryan-LGH East Hospital Campus in Lincoln. That was the unit where Anne received heroic, compassionate and capable treatment. I had not been in the building in the last eighteen months, much less on that floor.
We have, as many of you known, used a portion of Anne's memorial gifts to fund scholarships for nurses and nurse educators through the Bryan College of Health Sciences. The first scholarship recipient was Ashley Peterson. Ashley is a wonderful ICU nurse now on the BLGH West Campus, having graduated in December. Ashley was also one of the wonderful student nurses who cared for Anne while she was in the ICU.
Ashley and I met on Sixth North yesterday to have our picture taken together for a newsletter related to the hospitals and the hospital foundation. When that article appears, I'll be sure to note it here and try to make it available. I am honored to know that Anne's legacy includes the caring work of such an excellent nurse and a very fine young person.
There is a lot of cynicism among us baby boomers about the following generations (still so smug in our narcissistic superiority). I find, however, that whenever I run into young people, I feel hopeful about our future. Ashley is one of those young people who gives me some of the greatest hope that we and our world will be left in very good and caring hands.
The ICU unit has been remodeled in the last eighteen months. The rooms now have hardwood floors that are quite beautiful. The walls are soft and comfortable colors, and the equipment has been updated yet again. It was all the same and also different. I couldn't look into room 633 where Anne stayed. That was probably just as well. One of the rooms was empty between patients, and we took our pictures in that room.
The unit reminded me of the ongoing story of my life and our lives. In order to find and construe meaning in our lives, we tell stories. In fact, it would seem that we are neurologically wired for story. I refer you to an article on "narrative neuropsychology," a growing sub-discipline that examines which parts of the brain light up when we tell narratives and why.
We seek meaning and purpose. We attribute meaning and purpose. We make meaning and purpose. The chief way we do that is by telling stories. This isn't some fancy way to be trendy. It is a reflection of how God has made us. We find our identities and our paths to the future through the stories we tell about ourselves and others. Catastrophic transitions force us to re-write those stories in fast and fundamental ways. If we cannot reorient ourselves with a revised story, we may find ourselves lost, depressed, wandering and ready to die.
Bereavement recovery may well be a process, as Robert Niemeyer has said, of re-storying oneself.
(See http://web.mac.com/neimeyer/Home/Scholarship_files/PTG%20narrative.pdf). Some things are the same, as in the ICU on Six North. Some things have changed--we hope for the better in the long run. The story has a different path and my identity within that story is very different now. In "Narrative Identity Processing of Difficult Life Experiences: Pathways of Personality Development and Positive Self-Transformation in Adulthood," Jennifer Pals concludes that
"the narrative integration of exploratory narrative processing and coherent positive resolution may create an enduring sense of positive self-transformation within narrative identity, fostering a mature sense of well-being that is enriched rather than threatened by the most difficult experiences of adult life. Difficult experiences, as challenges to identity and an inevitable aspect of adulthood, constitute critical building blocks within the life story that not only reflect but may also meaningfully shape how adults progress through their lives." http://academic.udayton.edu/jackbauer/Readings%20595/Pals%2006%20self-transform%20copy.pdf
Bereavement recovery is a process of re-storying oneself. For us as Christians, that re-storying takes places within the larger story of how God has reclaimed all of Creation from death and destruction.
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