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I can really tell that you are experiencing this; I got very powerful feelings from what you just shared. God bless you Irisia. Being with a dying person and hearing their last words is profound.
The caregiver as a person, and not just a job title, is very important. Healthcare workers are going through this right now. I used to teach entry level counselors, and tell them if you are going to be working with other people’s stress, then you need to have a great stress program for yourself.
Quiet meditation was/is part of my personal stress program. I have often found silence to be a more than adequate companion, when face to face with someone who is dying, especially someone who is incapacitated as many are in an ICU. I have learned how to work with my own energy/presence, quiet my mnd, and in my career have felt the presence of others as their body died and they left. Staying firmly in the moment, and making time afterwards to cry, or grieve, is very important also.
What you shared, about people dying and making room for other patients, etc. I can relate to that. There is overlap between the medical field and the mental health field. The experience I gained in the medical field helped greatly when I switched over to the counseling and teaching professions. From a very young age my thrust was to learn about myself. “Know Thyself” summarizes my spiritual path. The healthcare profession not only gave me the opportunity to serve others, it also gave me a poignant opportunity to learn about my own self.
My medical, mental health, social work, teaching career, was preparatory for me to enter into a deeper spiritual path. One gave me some preparation for the other. It was definitely a very loud calling for me. I had a lot of growing to do, in ways that I did not even know existed. I did not know what my needs were, but fortunately I was allowing myself to be moved and guided by something deeper inside of me. I had to make my effort but things came together for me rather serendipitously.
Having been exposed to so much pain and suffering at a very young age I was sort of insulated. I have shared many times here on this forum how I lost my eyesight in Vietnam, was totally blind for about 5-years, and went through more than a dozen surgeries to regain my eyesight. Interesting how my optic nerve was good, but I could not see because of damage to my eyeball structure, which was repaired.
Going below the surface has always worked for me. I have seen terminally ill patients accept their death much more then their loved ones, or the staff that was caring for them. When I was in Vietnam and worked on someone who was shot up pretty bad, and they lived, I would not take credit for their survival. Because if I am working on a person and that person dies, I used to take credit for that as well. You do the best that you can at any given moment. Looking back on my career there was nothing else that I was drawn to like working in direct medical patient care.
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