A woman remembers the nurse who showed uncommon tenderness toward her dying mother

Transcript

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at Hidden Brain. "My Unsung Hero" tells the stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. And today's story comes from Rasha Kowalewski. In 2016, Kowalewski's mother was dying of kidney cancer and was admitted to the hospital. Kowalewski was scared and in disbelief. As far back as she could remember, their relationship had been close.

CHANG: Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at Hidden Brain. "My Unsung Hero" tells the stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. And today's story comes from Rasha Kowalewski. In 2016, Kowalewski's mother was dying of kidney cancer and was admitted to the hospital. Kowalewski was scared and in disbelief. As far back as she could remember, their relationship had been close.

RASHA KOWALEWSKI: I remember writing down a bunch of memories and reading them to her in the hospital room. And I told her that I would pretend to be sick when I was in elementary school because I just wanted to be with her, that if I pretended to be sick, the nurse would send me home with Mom, and I would be able to be by myself with Mom all day. And I remember her laughing and smiling and shaking her head at that story. She started to express some pain, so we asked the doctors if there was anything we could give her. And they gave her an opioid, which made it so that she was unconscious. So her last night in the hospital, I had left to go get some food, and when I came back, a Latina nurse was changing her sheets and adjusting her pillow. And she's the unsung hero of this story.

And she kept calling my mother amor over and over again. I'm just going to move your sheets, mi amor. Here, let me put your pillow in the right place, mi amor. And it touched me, and it still touches me. I'm grateful that I got a chance to say thank you to her for how gentle she was with my mother, even though she was unconscious. Mom was transferred to the hospice facility. I think it was maybe the same day, and a couple of days later, she was gone.

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KOWALEWSKI: I can't imagine doing the job that that nurse did or working in a hospice center. I think it would be too heartbreaking. People who work in those areas are really unsung heroes. And that particular nurse, she did something very important for me.

CHANG: Rasha Kowalewski lives in Saint Paul, Minn. You can find more stories like this on the "My Unsung Hero" podcast.

CHANG: Rasha Kowalewski lives in Saint Paul, Minn. You can find more stories like this on the "My Unsung Hero" podcast.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.