Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person – someone who is well-known, successful, and/or influential, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
It was soon after high school when mom got sick.
“I remember her being in pain and suffering. I remember her not being able to breathe because she was on (oxygen) all the time.”
First lung cancer, then Leukemia.
“I didn’t know what to do. She was sick for a long time, and I didn’t understand what was going on. But I knew she wasn’t going to get any better.”
Having already lost her father, all the daughter could do was observe, as people tried to help her mother best they could.
“I watched them come in and take her blood pressure. The aid gave her a bath . . . . I watched how compassionate they were with her, and trying to reason with her to take a bath.”
After 14 months, the pain and suffering were gone. So was her mother. But what the daughter saw during that time changed her life, both personally and professionally.
“Working as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) helped me want to be able to take care of the sick. Plus, after my mom got sick, I saw the nurses and the aids who came to the house to take care of her. So, I decided to do that, too.”
Shreveport’s Earnestine Moses, 60 years old and in her 20th year as a hospice nurse, told me that story – and her story – during lunch at a place she chose, Newk’s Eatery in Bossier City. Earnestine had the Salmon Caesar Salad and water. I had the Spicy Jalapeno Ranch Salad, and water with lemon.
“I’ve been on both sides. I’ve been on the side of someone’s loved one who’s dying, as well as taking care of a loved one that’s dying. Both of them are about the same.”
Heartbreaking.
Earnestine grew up in Belcher, Louisiana, one of three children whose mother was a maid and father a farmer. In junior high, Earnestine had to take something for an extracurricular class. She didn’t (and still doesn’t) like sports, so she tried out for the school band. Earnestine ended up playing second chair clarinet. In high school, Earnestine participated in ROTC.
“They taught us how to read a map, count a cadence, and fire a gun. They also told us you can travel and see the world.”
Earnestine was tempted to join the military, but instead, went to work taking care of the sick. She spent five years at a nursing home, until she wanted to do more. That “more” was providing hospice care.
“There’s something about taking care of someone in their last days,” Earnestine told me as she began to cry. “It’s just so rewarding, because they depend on you.”
The mother of two girls, Earnestine has been around death much more than most of us, both professionally and personally. She watched her father die instantly from a brain aneurysm.
“He had come home to eat lunch. He told me he was going out to burn the trash. On his way out, I heard the dogs barking. But it wasn’t regular barking. You know how dogs moan and groan? I looked out the bathroom window and he was lying in the fire. I ran outside to pull him out of the fire, but he was real heavy, so I couldn’t move him. I reached down a second time to pull him out of the fire, and he was real light – light as a feather. My mom told me it was God giving me the strength to pull him out of the fire.”
More recent, Earnestine’s husband of 10 years, a tree climber, also died suddenly.
“He had taken down a tree as far as they take them down. He was on the ground and cutting a little notch out of the tree to help it land safely. One of the limbs had come dislodged. The tree was old. One of the limbs fell and hit him in the neck and killed him. Broke his vertebrae and all that.”
My goodness.
While most of us lose someone to death occasionally, Earnestine – because of her line of work – loses someone much more frequently. But that hasn’t scared her away from doing what she calls “God’s ministry.”
“I never thought about the dying part of it. I just thought about taking care of another one’s loved one. After I got in it, that’s when I found out they had to have a diagnosis of six months to a year to live, and I just stayed there. I just stayed right there.”
And even though Earnestine has been told not to get too close to her patients, that’s just not Earnestine’s nature.
“When you take care of someone two, three, four days a week, it’s very hard not to get attached to them. We grieve just as hard as the family when the patient passes away.”
Like recently. For two years, Earnestine cared for a woman in her late 80’s with congestive heart failure. The woman could not speak, yet the two formed at least a one-sided, and probably a two-sided bond.
“It felt like my heart had stopped,” Earnestine told me, describing the day she learned the woman had died. I couldn’t get out of my car. My legs were weak. They were shaking. They sent someone to check on me to make sure I was okay . . . . She was like part of my family. She was like my grandmother.”
Earnestine can’t come close to counting how many people she has seen take their last breath. But it never gets easier.
“It’s indescribable. A lot of them realize that they’re leaving the world and going to the other side. You’re helping them transition from this world to the next. So, I sit there and hold their hands. I read to them. I try to reassure them, as well as their family members, that it’s okay to let go. Go ahead and be with Jesus, because there’s so much pain in this world, going over to the next world is much more rewarding than being here.”
Could you do what Earnestine does? I couldn’t.
“You have to be able to put your feelings aside and focus on the person you’re taking care of. You can’t go in there mad and angry. If you had a problem at home, you have to leave whatever you have going on in your life when you get to that door – that room. You have to drop it right there and not take it in with you.”
And what about when Earnestine’s time comes?
“I would like someone to take care of me in my final days the same way I took care of another person.”
Imagine two decades of seeing death up close and often. You’re darn right the job has taken its toll.
“I decompress by reading a book, or I listen to my church music, or I cut my grass. I mow my own grass since my husband passed away. It can be stressful. This job can be really stressful.”
In awe of Earnestine’s commitment to make a dying person’s remaining time on earth as pleasant as possible, I asked my final question. As always, what is it about her life that might inspire others?
Somehow, I knew what Earnestine’s answer would be.
“Life is short. Tomorrow is not promised. Live every day like it’s your last. Put God first. Treat others the way you would want them to treat you.”
God bless you, Earnestine. God bless you.
Do you know someone with a story? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com.
The Journal’s weekly “What’s Your Story?” series is sponsored by Morris & Dewett Injury Lawyers.