It was the weekend of the New Year. I had gone to see a patient that Friday who was having a lot of pain from lung cancer.
For those who don’t know, I’m a hospice field nurse. I go to the homes and facilities of patients in the end stages of a terminal illness. My job is to keep them comfortable. My goal is to relieve any pain or other issues, such as constipation, nausea etc., to enable the patient to spend remaining quality time with their loved ones, without being sedated. My reward is achieving all of the above.

This patient was in a great deal of pain when I arrived. After reviewing her medications and calling the doctor, the patient’s daughter gave her an additional PRN (as needed) pain pill. As the medication took effect, the patient fell asleep. I stayed a while longer making sure her daughter knew what to give and when, and then left.

Sunday, while at home, my husband received a text message on his cell phone from one of the guys he works with. The message read, “Happy New Year Pigeon”. Laughing, my hubby told me that one of the guys at work says “cool” way too much. The others were trying to get him to say ANYTHING else, and had created “pigeon” as an alternative. We laughed, and went on with our day.

Monday morning I did a follow up visit with my patient to make sure she was comfortable. When I called the daughter to ask if I could come, she said, “Mom’s been seeing a lot of people in the room who are deceased” She told me that she knew Mom was close to dying, and was okay with it because she didn’t want to watch her suffer and/or decline anymore.

When I got to the house, I determined that the patient was not in pain and asked her about the people she’d seen in her room. She described people she knew, like her husband and son, and also described people she didn’t know. (I have had many patients described a woman with long, dark hair, accompanied by two children – a girl in a dress with a pinafore, and a boy wearing jeans, t-shirt, and no shoes.) This patient described these three as well.

Then she said, “You left Friday before I got to say thank you for helping me with my pain”. We talked a little about this, and I answered the patient’s questions about her dying process. Her daughter was in the room with us, and said, “Mom’s been depressed, and I think it’s because she can no longer get out of bed. She was always very active in the community and never sat still very long.” The patient looked at her and said, “I got out of bed on Sunday.” I was surprised she said this, since she’d been too weak to get up for the last week prior to this visit. Her daughter looked skeptical, and asked her what she did when she got out of bed. The patient said to me, “I went to your house to thank you. You were talking with your husband.” I asked her what we were talking about, expecting her to say something like, “Dinner plans”. She thought about it a minute, and said, “I don’t remember the conversation, I only remember one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The word PIGEON.”

Of course I was shocked, to say the least. I had never discussed any of this with her or her daughter. I hadn’t seen either one or spoken to them over the phone since the Friday before. And “pigeon” happened on Sunday!

I’m not posting this for skeptics to convert. I’m posting this as a reminder to me and others who believe that there is a WHOLE lot going on in this world, and the next, which we don’t understand. I have learned not to question, it either. That is called FAITH.

For those who need an ending to this, the patient hugged me, thanked me, and passed away later that day with her daughter at her bedside. I will never forget her, or the look of certainty she gave me before I left her home that day. She knew exactly where she was headed when she left this world. I did, too.