Putting bereavement into perspective

I went to my local hospital this morning for a pre assessment. Nothing serious. I have a meniscal tear that needs clipping. Day surgery, should be in and out, the nurse said cheerily, even though we both knew that was not true - in practice day surgery works like this: 1. Too many people turn up at 7am to check into the outpatients ward. 2. There is a massive scrum as the crowd surges forward to check in early so they get a decent seat in the waiting room, preferably one opposite the telly. 3. The nurses beat back the increasingly pissed off patients. 4. One by one, we are processed, a bit like a herd of cows going to market. 5. We find ourselves seated in a really, really depressing room with light green floors, taupe walls, old people chairs and occasionally, even blood stains on the ceiling. I kid you not. 6. Five hours later, at least two thirds of us are still sitting there. If you are lucky your procedure will take place before 2pm in which case you have a chance of leaving the hospital in the same day. It would be in the administrative staffs' interest for this to happen of course - we know about road rage but let me tell you that road rage has nothing, but nothing, on daypatient rage. After all, a day patient has been instructed not to eat or drink and is therefore sitting on their backside getting steadily ravenous, parched, tired and very, very cross as the blood sugar dips. A day patient has had to swab themselves, no skimping on the intimate areas, with anti-MRSA wipes which leave your skin feeling like cardboard. A day patient has read their back copy of Grazia or Now! at least fifty times and is having serious withdrawal symptoms because they have left their IPad at home. It was that or run the risk of getting it nicked. So you see. Nobody at pre assessment is fooled. My pre assessment nurse may be an accomplished liar, but she is cheery with it and that is a rare commodity in the Hampstead NHS trust. So I go with it. I find out her name, ask her how she is, we chat merrily, until she comes to do my blood pressure. It'll be high, I warn her. It's been high for a couple of months now. She asks why. Because my sister died, I say, holding my breath in a weird reaction to a message from my brain that says, please don't mess things up by weeping. If you weep you won't get out of this place for hours. She stops writing and looks up at me. Tell me about it, she says. I lost two of my brothers and I still think about them. If I'm not thinking about one, I'm thinking about the other. But most days I think about both of them. It still makes me weep. Were they ill, I ask, my own self absorbing grief momentarily suspended by her openness. Yes, she says. HIV. Both caught it from their girlfriends who had picked it up from former boyfriends. I can't tell you, she said, how frustrating it was as a nurse to have two brothers pick up HIV. Which country are you from, I ask. Congo, she replies. It's a big taboo there. One died there, the other went overseas for treatment but it was too late. She stops for a moment and her eyes fill. Then she takes a breath, picks up the pen, and continues with the health check. I look at her, my mind processing what I have heard. Nope, doesn't make it easier to bear the death of my sister. But, anyone who is bereaved may recognise the self absorbing nature of grief. And after all, I only lost her a few months ago. But you do find yourself screaming why me? why us? continually in your head, feeling as if you have been singled out personally for tragedy by whoever controls Fate. Five minutes in the company of a nurse who lost two brothers in the space of a year and still weeps for them, puts my grief in context. A context that reminds me that plenty of other people are in pain. As I get up to leave at the end of the health check, in an impulse I give her a hug. She returns it.