Untamed

I work in a hospital. I am regularly faced with confronting situations, death of children, adults and relatives coming to terms with this grief. Over the last 10 years I have been witness to six children die. I didn’t think this had much of a long-term effect on me. I felt that I dealt with it at the time and that mentally, I was okay.

This last few months has taught me that that isn’t the case. There is one particular case that has been on my mind and giving me panic attacks. This experience was of a 7-year-old boy that drowned five days before Christmas. It was my second week on the job, the job I still currently do.

I can still hear his mums screams when she found out we couldn’t save him. The way we tucked them up in a room just holding onto him so they could say goodbye and the sounds of her grief and the pictures in my mind will never leave. I have been having panic attacks around water lately with my children and that is when I realised I hadn’t dealt with it. I have never processed witnessing something like that. At the time, my son was 5 years old. I kept picturing him lying on that resus bed. And now, I panic when they enter the ocean.

I have written a poem recently about this which I will share on this page for one of my posts. The reason for this post is to advise people that you may think you have dealt with issues in your life, but they crop up at some point. Writing this poem and sharing it with my family made them understand that it is something still within me that I need to deal with and writing it down helped me get my feelings out. Even now, writing this, I am emotional about it.

There is lots of inspiration for poetry in our daily encounters. Poetry is such a therapeutic way of releasing our grief, sadness, anger, happiness. Whatever you may be feeling… Just write.