I was surprised and honored to read this in The Dallas Morning News. Thank you to Robert F. Darden for writing about nurses with words that moved me and thoughts that made me nod in agreement. One of the best pieces of writing I have read all year. Read it here.
"I have spent my professional career researching and writing about the spirituals, gospel songs and freedom songs of the African American experience. They also provide much of the soundtrack of my life.
But two weeks ago, when I found myself in a crowded Waco hospital undergoing knee replacement surgery, it wasn’t a classic spiritual that sustained me. It was Mary Gauthier’s “Mercy Now.” “Mercy Now” was hailed as an instant classic upon its release in 2005, a simple, haunting plea that sounds older than the oldest spirituals, like it was somehow summoned from divine ether rather than composed in the vulgar present...
If you don’t believe politicians, believe nurses. If you don’t believe scientists, believe nurses. If you don’t believe the media, teachers, doctors and medical associations, or even folk wisdom, then believe nurses. Nurses need a little mercy now.
The nurse has nothing to gain by misleading you. Our nurses have been at the front lines from day one. They’ve seen us at our worst, puking, screaming, defecating, whining, threatening, bullying, bleeding and they still accept us unconditionally into their care.
God bless our physicians, but it is the nurse who dresses the wound, cleans the catheter, administers the pill, holds the frightened hand of the child in surgery. The nurse whose sacred duty is to place flesh on flesh to heal. Nurses need a little mercy now.
Nikki, Makala, Tyler, Tamie and a million million more need a little mercy now.
In the year 2020, mercy is a mask.
If you won’t wear one for them, then for whom?"