Tying Shoes

Yesterday was my last day at my externship. I thought about the finality of it repeatedly during the day. When I got EKG leads from the supply room I found myself laughing remembering how long I searched for them the first week of the summer. While I turned a patient in bed, I thought of my early fears that I would hurt one of my patients turning them (aren't sick people so fragile?). While documenting and discussing my assessments with my preceptor, I remembered when charting used to take me an hour or more at a time because I couldn't decide what to write. I can see incredible shifts and changes in my caretaking approach over the summer, and I'm so thankful for this experience. I have learned more about nursing this summer than I picked up in three intensive semesters at school. And it's hard to leave this place of glorious summer, with the people that were part of it... but I feel resolute, and mostly ready. As mostly ready as I ever feel when I confront finality.

I forgot my shoes at work. They're sitting on top of my locker now, and I'm leaving in Peoria in two hours. I wonder if my forgetfulness yesterday was just my subconscious helping me cope with another ending.

I quit caring about those shoes several weeks ago. I have two pairs, and since June I've worn only one of them. I left the other on my locker. I kept meaning to take them home and never doing it. I think part of me liked the irresolution of not bringing everything home after work. And now I have finally picked up and finished, but the shoes are still there. I'm not going back for them. I hope someone takes them. I hope they wear them. It would make me feel a little stronger, a little fuller, a little more resolved, if they kept having adventures. Like a piece of me - lost, but going on. :) Like the strings of everything get tied, somehow, in the end.