![]() After last offices, I felt much better and no longer felt scared. Covering the face was the worst part for me: it seemed so final and that was the very last time I saw the patient. We covered the head last when wrapping the body, said our “rest in peace”s and called the porters. I’m not a religious person but this experience did make me reflect on the afterlife and whether there is one. ![]() Their eyes were unfocused and the body was so unnaturally still. They looked empty, just like a shell, as if the person inside had just disappeared and left behind what they no longer needed. Rigor mortis had not set in yet so the body was floppy and was difficult to move around when washing. The body was cold and their blood had started to sink. When I was preparing for the wash, I talked to the patient just like I would have if they were alive and this helped me to feel less scared. We had to wash the body, dress them in a shroud (a white gown that reminded me of what a traditional church boy would wear), wrap the body in a white bed sheet and leave identification tags for the porters. So, big deep breath, I went to help with last offices. Her description of a funeral was happy, festival-like, and made me think how morbid the approach to a funeral was in the UK. She was from Zimbabwe and really opened by eyes as to how different beliefs treat their dead. A newly qualified nurse took me to the staff room for a time-out and shared her experience of death in her culture with me. I could not stop thinking about the body. ![]() We’ve all heard the horror stories of the dead making sounds, twitching, leaking bodily fluids and I kept thinking that the patient was going to sit bolt upright in bed with their arms held out just like a classic zombie! My mentor kept telling me not to be scared – “they’re just sleeping” – but I had frozen and couldn’t take my eyes off them. This is what had happened and it scared me. I had learnt that when someone is dying, you should consider propping a pillow underneath the jaw to keep it closed as the jaw can drop open and lock like that in death. Only the face revealed that the patient wasn’t sleeping. The body was tucked in bed and looked perfect. ![]() It was so nerve-wracking waiting for that curtain to be pulled back and to step into this patient’s place of death. I felt tense and kept my arms tightly crossed the whole time. My mentor knew I was nervous so came with me for support.Īs we walked down the ward to bay 1, bed 3, my heart was racing. “It was so nerve-wracking waiting for that curtain to be pulled back” I thought: “just get it over with -reflect on the experience”. I wasn’t working in that bay but I plucked up the courage to ask the nurse in charge if I could go and see the body. On a recent shift I overheard the nurses saying that bay 1, bed 3 had died. ![]() I’d been fortunate enough to have never experienced a close death but while I felt apprehensive, I was also intrigued about what the process entailed. Moreover, the 'Britishness' of the slogan, advocating a stiff upper lip in times of terror, reflects the courage with which Londoners faced the Blitz during the war.I started my nurse training in September 2013 and performing last offices was not an aspect of the career I was looking forward to. The simplicity of the design, with the words emblazoned in white against a fire engine red background, coupled with a simplified crown at the top, perhaps accounts for the recent popularity of the poster. The Australian War Memorial is in possession of original copies of this poster, as well as those that were issued alongside it ('Freedom in in Peril' and 'Your Courage, your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution will Bring Us Victory') because they were directly donated by the British government to the museum. Some posters survived in the collection of the Imperial War Museum, and the British archives. The majority of posters are believed to have been pulped at the end of the war in 1945. It was never released by the Ministry of Information, as it was designed to be displayed only if Germany invaded Britain. This iconic poster now familiar to many viewers, was originally nearly lost. ![]()
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