Trust in Belonging

This highlight of my year, rejoining classmates and nursing instructors for a meal, many hugs and visits, and laughter, was made much greater with an afternoon spend with two of my sisters and a brother-in-law.

Upon my arrival at the Hotel Saskatchewan where our annual event takes place, I was seconded to a registration table to welcome the classes from 1945 to 1955.  Some ot those years had graduated two classes. All of the nurses in attendance had been taught by older, even if only by a few years, nurses. We had, and have, taught and worked with younger nurses, some of us in schools of nursing, some of us in clinics or hospitals ~ some working northern outposts. All of us have cared for our patients in various stages of injury or disease; surgery or rehabilitations, psychiatry or addictions. Outside of clinics and hospitals, there are school nurses and travelling nurses. We have worn uniforms of many designs and in some cases, street clothes or civilian dress.

The joy for me is the sense of trust and belonging I feel when with all of these women. Once we were girls from small prairie towns with little idea of the lives that we would live, the crushing pains that we would share with patients and their families, the joy we would share with recovery of the health of our patients and the busy satisfying raising of families. And now we are those same girls, much more mature ~ at least chronologically ~ many of us retired, some of us with our own illnesses, aches or pains, and some who have gone before us. Our families have expanded, some larger than others, with grandchildren and greatgrandchildren swelling the family ranks. We are still the same prairie girls, but many from far flung places on the globe and most of the Canadian provinces.

My afternoon with my sisters was a lovely wander through the Mackenzie Art Gallery that I will tell you about tomorrow.

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

~ Epictetus