Angels of Mercy

er name was Faye Harder, I still remember her name 37 years later. She was my mother’s nurse from 1983 through my mother’s death from ovarian cancer in 1987. She was at the LDS Hospital in the Avenues in Salt Lake City. Each day she wore her traditional white uniform. Each day she took the time to talk to us about my mother’s condition. But most importantly, my mother talked to Faye without having to check her thoughts, without feeling she had to weigh her words as she did with us. Faye Harder mentored my mother in how to die with dignity. She was our family’s “Angel of Mercy.”

The Urban Diction defines an “Angel of Mercy” as one who is caring, compassionate, full of kindness, gives hope to others, love radiates from them, and love is given without an agenda of their own. A healer, of soul and body. Also known as the grim reaper of life, as the angel of mercy is the last spirit that is seen on passing. As it is the angel to end the pain and suffering on one’s life and returns them home.

I am certain each of us remembers the name of a nurse who saved us, calmed us, humored us or became our friend after the medical context of the relationship lifted.

Faye Harder was special. She was the one who told me my mother was going to die. She was the one who told me not to worry if my mother was withdrawing from us. “You are losing one person, don’t forget that your mother is losing everyone she loves.” I still remember her words, and these words that followed: “Give her time to face what she is facing. Your mother is grieving now. Your grief will come later.”

I don’t know where Faye is now. I have tried to find her whereabouts or if she is still alive. There are no obituary records. She must be in her 80’s now. Bless her. What I wouldn’t give to tell her thank you one more time for showing me what honest compassion looks like. She never lied to us. It couldn't have been easy being an oncology nurse. She also told me death is part of life. To a young woman in her twenties, that was an important fact to carry.

I have a friend Ida Yellowman, who is a nurse in the Navajo Nation. She is Diné. She works with patients in Utah and New Mexico, many who are ill from working in the uranium mines or were children playing on the exposed uranium tailings, or who continue to drink the contaminated water in San Juan County from a toxic groundwater or a contaminated aquifer. Her days are long and the distances she drives are even longer.

She, like Faye Harder, knows death and it’s never easy to see it coming and when it does, comfort the families left behind.

Recently, we talked by phone. Now, she is making house calls in this era of COVID-19. She tries to protect herself. But she thinks of her patients first, not just the medical care they need, but if they have enough food and water. She is not only meeting their physical needs, but their emotional needs. “Many of the people I check up on are older, living alone. They are happy to see me.” She said. And when Ida returns home, she takes off her clothes at the door so she won’t risk exposing her son to the possibility of the coronavirus.

At the last full moon, Ida invited me to join her in a moment of collective prayer in Navajo Country. It was an honor to join her in this collective ceremony, each from the sanctity of our own homes. I felt the power of that sacred moment shared across the mesas and canyons and miles of red rock desert that bind us together. The sweet smell of sage wafting on the wind reminds me of her greatness of spirit and how fearless she is as she continues to serve her people.

Last night after dinner, I was alone in the kitchen washing dishes listening to the radio. Lynne Hewitt, an emergency room nurse living in southern Utah flew to New York to volunteer. She also volunteered to help during 9/11 and in Haiti. When asked why, she said, “I volunteered because…I definitely knew that New York was going to be hit hard. I wanted to come back. I’d been here for 20 years working as a nurse…knew my crew, my buds, my nursing friends who were really going to have a hard time and I knew I wanted to come.” When she was asked by the interviewer, “Tell us what you see?” Hewitt paused “Sadness,” she said. “What saddens me more than anything is that these patients who are dying or passing on, their families aren’t there – and we can’t comfort the patients, we just don’t have time. It’s sad.” I don’t remember what followed, I only remember crying as the sink filled with water. And then she ended the interview speaking about her fellow nurses. “They are strong, really strong.”

Over 90,000 medical workers came to help in New York City. Men and women from all over the country are volunteering their nursing skills during this COVID-19 moment. People want to help each in our own way, with the gifts and skills that are ours.

Jennifer Steinberg, an ICU nurse from Memorial Herman Hospital in Houston, Texas, told a story of having to tell the best friend of one of her patients that he could see not see him. The friend cried, then asked the nurse to please tell his friend in the hospital how much he loved him. When she delivered the message to the patient, he raised his hand which she held, and then, with his own tears, he asked her to stay with him. The patient asked Jennifer if she thought he was going to be okay. She said she thought vital signs looked good, that he was not on a respirator, that he was young and able to speak which was promising. “I think things look good,” she said. “He cried more tears of joy,” she told Rachel, “because I had given him that hope. Later that day, he was intubated and in her words, she was “crushed for telling him he was going to be okay.” Nine days later, he was extubated, and Jennifer Steinberg visited him in the ICU in her isolation mask and protective gown and gloves. He recognized her “right away” and raised his hand again. She held it again.

These are the stories of tenderness and compassion in a living anthology of thousands, tens of thousands, held in the hearts of an army of nurses who are largely anonymous, battling this pandemic armed with fearless love and the fierce knowledge of what it takes to care – to serve those who are sick and dying of the coronavirus, alone, without their families.

I lay awake at night wondering who is taking care of them?

But the image of the lone nurse standing in her scrubs with her arms folded, wearing her own N95 mask, as a male protester aggressively waved a large American flag in front of her face gripped me. The nurse is Lauren Leander. She had been working 12-hour shifts as a volunteer inside the COVID-19 unit at the Banner University Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona. In an interview with The Arizona Republic, Leander said “she went to the protest because she was inspired by similar silent protests by other medical workers at other rallies to reopen cities’ economies. She said she was accused at the rally of being an actor posing as nurse….” Staff photographer, Michael Chow, captured the now iconic shot.

Terry Tempest Williams

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