Teresa Yarbrough

How many remember pulling into a tiny, 2-pump gas station where a courteous and helpful attendant eagerly filled the gas tank and checked the fluids in the engine and washed every one of the car windows? Are there any who recall the orange and blue and white round emblem that stood sentinel at the entrance to a Gulf gas station where the attendant wore that same emblem on a starched blue button-down shirt with starched navy blue pants? Both of these images coalesce in my memory into the person of my Grandpa.

My grandparents lived the majority of their lives in the small town of Van Buren, Arkansas, just across the river from Fort Smith. I spent at least one week of each summer of my childhood and into young adulthood with my three brothers and parents in my grandparents’ home. Grandpa got up, dressed, and was out of the house by 5 o’clock each morning to open the gas station that he ran for as long as I remember. He came back home mid-morning to an enormous Southern breakfast Grandma prepared for him and the rest of the visiting Hurst clan. Grandpa left for work smelling clean, fresh, and of Old Spice. He returned from work dirty and greasy and smelling of oil and gasoline – and always smiling. To this day, there are times when the smell in a mechanic shop brings the sense of my Grandpa into clear focus. I adored the hard-working, kind, and honest man.

In my senior year of college, Grandpa became progressively ill after years of battling emphysema. He was frequently hospitalized and seemed to worsen with each hospital stay instead of improving. I spent a long spring weekend in Van Buren that year to be near my grandparents. I claimed the night shift at my Grandpa’s hospital bedside. Grandpa was barely responsive. I got a smile when I first arrived and he saw me. The remainder of the night he slept peacefully and I stayed awake holding his hands and remembering out loud with him our many years’ worth of shared experiences, laughter shared, love expressed. I sang his favorite hymns and read parts of the Gideon Bible aloud. I cried and told him how much I would miss him. That overnight together was one of my favorite times with him. He died not long after that night, on my 22nd birthday. I considered that timing a gift to me.

Over twenty years later, I met a woman who was a hospice nurse. I curiously asked her to tell me what she did exactly. What did her work look like? She began to describe to me how she cared for patients during their tender transition time of dying. As I listened, I was instantaneously transported back to my Grandpa’s bedside the night I stayed with him very near the time of his death. The sacredness of that time had left an indelible imprint on my life. Just as quickly as that memory came flooding into my heart and mind, an intense desire to pursue hospice nursing as a career was birthed in me.

In my case, the gestation period for that particular birth lasted longer than I had anticipated or hoped for.  After completing a Master of Arts in Counseling, working in a psychiatric unit for a year; working in an Alzheimer’s unit for two years; and moving from the foothills of the Colorado Rockies to the lovely rolling hills of Middle Tennessee, I was finally able to enter the world of hospice nursing with Alive Hospice. I have been loving providing care for hospice patients and their families for the past nine years at the Residence.

Teresa Yarbrough is a registered nurse at Alive Hospice Residence Nashville.