The memories of LHS seem so far in the rear-view mirror. Moving into Livingston in the eighth grade from New Hampshire wasn’t easy. It’s an awkward age and not knowing anyone made it more difficult. Not even sure how many actually remember me but it has been great to reacquaint/reconnect on Social Media.

I knew at the end of high school I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps and go on to being a Registered Nurse like her. LHS teacher Norman Shayer was also a huge help in motivating me as I had been his chem lab assistant. Immediately after graduation I started at East Orange General Hospital School of Nursing. Soon after graduation and passing my boards, I moved to Carlsbad in Southern California. It was there that I worked in a very busy Emergency Room and many hours of overtime in the ICU. I continued on with studies at UCSD and obtained my Certification in Emergency Nursing and also became a Mobile Intensive Care Nurse riding along with Paramedics and working the busy emergency radio calls in the ER.

I met my first husband while living there. He was a Marine so we did get transferred around quite a bit moving across the country several times. We had two children, Brian and Amy. After leaving the USMC, my husband went onto work for Dean Witter and was in the World Trade Center at the Windows of the World restaurant when the first bomb in 1993 went off. We had gone through several deployments including Desert Storm but this was on our soil and felt harder somehow. It took three hours for him to walk down smoke-filled stairs to get out of the building. After some time, our relationship took a turn and we decided to get a divorce but remained friends. We remained in close contact until cancer took him away few months back.

Dating in my forties was strange. I didn’t plan on remarrying but after a few years I felt ready for companionship again. After some time, I met my husband, Gunnar, on Match.com. We married a few years later. He was a civilian working for the Army. I was working as a Director of Surgical Services in Atlanta. Gunnar got transferred to Puerto Rico with the Army, I followed a year later. We ended up living there for close to seven years. I had retired the first time to move to Puerto Rico because the first year living apart was hard. He recently retired after 50 years of combined service. The Army had transferred us to Maryland which is where we currently have our home. Shortly after returning Stateside, I went on to get my license reactivated by taking a Nursing Refresher course. After completion, I worked for a company doing Pediatric and Adolescent Mental Health. These children were enrolled in a partial hospitalization outpatient daily to help prevent them from being admitted or helping them after discharge from the hospital. I will say that social media has such an impact on these children (ages 5-17) as well as video games in such a negative way. Suicidal ideation, cutting behavior, bulimia and anorexia were what we mostly saw in our program. After a series of personal hospitalizations and several surgeries, I decided to retire once again.

With both of us retired, we bought a Tiffin Bus (think RV) and travel once a month to vacation and then snowbird in the winter in Florida. In April through the end of October we stay for long weekends in a fifth wheel camper unit that we leave on our seasonal site in Pennsylvania just outside of Carlisle. My sewing machine travels with me most of the time (except on cruises) for quilt making. Currently I am making one that I will present to a Vietnam Veteran at a rally in April for the Quilt of Valor program. In addition to quilting, for the last nine years, I made Little Angel Infant Burial Gowns for hospitals as a charity for babies gone too soon. It allowed the parents to bathe and dress their baby for the first and last time. Covid had me making over a thousand masks. Initially making solid black masks for the Arlington Cemetery Military Honor Guard, and for several hospitals in my area. I even designed a mask with a vinyl window in it for our hearing-impaired population in Frederick, which is home to the Maryland School for the Deaf.

Together we have five adult children combined. My daughter Amy, graduates from Nursing school in May and is considering continuing on to get her Nurse Practitioner Degree. She’s been living in our home for the last seven years with Athena who will be seven in April. Having Athena living with us and traveling with us when able has made us so close to her.

My son Brian is a Corpsman in the Navy for the last 14 years and is a Mental Health Tech. He is married and they have a son named Finn, aged six next month. They will be transferred from San Diego to Maryland where Brian will attend George Washington University School Of Nursing in the Accelerated Program. Upon completion, he will go to Officer Candidate School and work down at Walter Reed in Bethesda, Maryland.

My husband, Gunnar, has three now adult children. His children live in Florida, North Carolina and Georgia. Traveling allows us to spend time with our other two grandchildren, Maxwell and Viktoria.

One of my travels in the early 1990’s took me to Ekaterinburg, Russia with the American Academy of Facial and Plastic Reconstructive Surgeons. We were a team of seven. For two remarkably busy weeks, we taught the Russian Doctors and Nurses how to perform various surgeries concentrating on sterile technique as well. Many of the children we operated on were born after the Chernobyl disaster and many had facial deformities. The patients came from miles around for the yearly Academy Team visit. It was a rewarding experience and one I will never forget.

My one unique story for me is that in 2019, I had a major abdominal surgery and two days post op, I became septic and died on my way back into the operating room. What I experienced and witnessed after going into cardiac arrest (looking down from the ceiling at the surgical team resuscitating me) will forever change my life. Heaven is for real. There are no words to explain the beauty of being there and seeing my grandparents that had died before me. They looked to be in about their 30’s, which would have been before I was born but somehow, I knew them and they knew me. I was at peace and had no pain. After that experience, with each surgery since then, I am no longer afraid of dying because I know what is waiting for me. However, I feel like I am not ready to die yet. I still have so much more to give.