Alessandra
“A lot of times it felt lighter after they died, but it’s also a hard moment, obviously. Afterwards I would lie in the tall grass and watch the weeds swaying in the wind. The sound of it was very comforting to me and it just made me feel like there were people, spirits passing through them…you know, how they're swaying in the wind.”
For details of the photo walk with Alessandra click here
Image by Alessandra + Dall-E
“In my first year of nursing, I had a patient who had passed from cancer and I was tasked with removing the jewellery she was wearing post mortem. Being of an Asian background she wore jade bracelets and in their culture they need to be taken off and returned to the family. Her hands were so swollen and getting the bracelet off was becoming difficult and I remember using lots of lubricants to try to pull the bracelets off in front of the family and I felt so embarrassed I was only able to get one off. Luckily the family was understanding and supportive.”
“I made it to him right after and held his hands while they were still warm…it was so nice to hold his hands and be near him after his last breath… his hands were super soft, and I loved how the skin felt.”
“It’s really nice. It's like something was alive and beautiful growing before and then kind of died. And then it stayed, left an imprint”
"it's like you're looking at life. It's really beautiful but it's really fragile and then the wind kind of blows and takes some of the little feathers away"
“I like it because it's the trauma area, but it looks really quiet”
“Sometimes at the end of a very busy shift I would just sit and look at the sides of my worn nursing clogs, picking at them. This was in an attempt to decompress my nervous system and try to focus on something else while there was so much craziness happening all around me.”
Alessandra
“I remember my manager pulling me into the office to speak to me about how long it was taking me to discharge patients and it was taking longer than the desired 30 minutes the hospital had decided on. They asked me “why I was not able to meet this (unrealistic) deadline”? I responded because I’m providing quality nursing care to a human being.”