I don’t remember the exact moment I
met Darla. I can tell you I was 18 and greener than Ireland. I arrived at Leoni
Meadows Summer Camp to work from mid June to mid August as a girls counselor. I
didn’t really know anyone. I was insecure and shy. I was and am a true
introvert. I had done a lot of babysitting in my teen years, but never had a
“real job”. This was the first time living away from home too. I was
overwhelmed and in need of some real friends.
Darla and I
became real friends about 3 weeks in. It was during what Leoni calls “family
camp”, and I was assigned to work at the craft building. Families would paint
various pieces, and my job was to stand outside and spray sealing over said
art. Summer heat and strong fumes are not a great combination. Being 18 and
stupid, I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep, food or fluids that week. By Friday I
became dizzy, flushed, nauseous, and had a few moments of near fainting. Oops.
The camp nurse was called in. Long story short, I was sent to lie down and
drink fluids, etc.
Darla was going to be a nurse, and
she truly had the nurse’s heart. Many in nursing, unfortunately, get in it for
the money. Not Darla. She and I were sleeping on opposite sides of the dorm
that week. I had a bunk bed all to myself and slept on the top to oversee
everything around me. Guess who dragged over her sleeping bag and made camp on
the lower bunk that night to “make sure I would be ok”. Darla. She even woke up
at various times that night to check my pulse. Literally. She would grab my wrist
and check it. The next day I was still feeling sick, so I got sent to a rapid
care. Guess who invited herself to come along? Yep. Darla. We became true
friends. We also shared that bunk the rest of the summer.
Summer camp
memories tend to blur. I can tell you that summer we bonded. Darla was a brat.
Not in a mean or bully sort of way. A brat in a mischievous and sarcastic way.
Being young and silly teen girls, we had various dramas that seemed far more
important than they were. We decided our dramas mirrored the TV show “Grey’s
Anatomy”. She was like Meredith, and I was like Izzy. Thus our nicknames for
each other. We spent many late nights in deep conversation...or mischief. One
night towards the end of the summer, we sat outside between our 2 cabins that
were full of girls we were counseling, and talked about our dreams,
aspirations, and concerns about life in general. She told me that night “You
can’t worry about making other people happy. You have to make yourself happy
and the rest will come”.
Further
summers ensued, and I stayed a counselor while she became a camp nurse/archery
director. I was known to try and drag my campers up to archery every chance I
got so Darla and I could hang out while the kids killed hay bales. She carried
around this annoying whistle, and took special joy in blowing that whistle at
random times to make the kids jump.
I have
many random memories of her. Darla had an addiction to caramel apple lollipops,
and wore a camel back constantly. She was short in stature (barely 5 feet tall),
but could be described as a firecracker. She specialized in snarky comments.
Sometimes you wanted to hug her and slap her at the same time. Darla was
honest. Anything she said behind your back she would also say to your face. She
tended to call you a “pansy” if she thought you were being cowardly. Darla
liked to fill up pitchers full of water, run up to the deck above the cafeteria
at Leoni Meadows, and dump water on people’s heads as they exited. Darla called
me “Lubecki” when she wasn’t calling me “Izzy”. I honestly can’t recall her
saying my first name. I am sure she did, but it was rare.
Camp
friends either stay in your life, or they fade away. Darla stayed. We didn’t
talk everyday, but we never lost touch. During nursing school, she would
encourage me and laugh at my rookie mistakes. (She loved the fact that she
could prime IV tubing better then me). A few days before I took the board exam,
Darla assured me I shouldn’t worry. That she didn’t study at all and she passed
just fine. When I became an RN, she said she was proud of me. Darla was a
pediatric cardiac critical care nurse when I got hired on an adult cardiac
unit, so she started quizzing me on cardiac meds. When I failed miserably she
laughed and said, “You better learn them, Lubecki”! Right up until the end,
Darla encouraged me to get into expand my nursing career. We both loved being
nurses, and planned to go back to school to get our BSN’s together online. The
plan was to hold each other accountable.
Darla had a
heart for pediatrics. She loved kids and couldn’t imagine taking care of “big
people”. I would tease her that it was because she was so short that she was
kid size. I said the reason kids loved her was because she was small like them.
Darla usually gave some snarky response, but I think she honestly thought I was
onto something. We wanted to ultimately become pediatric nurse practitioners,
and Darla wanted to attend the prestigious UCSF. She wanted to be roommates in
San Francisco while we went to school there and we talked about all the
adventures we would have in the Bay.
Darla
was an amazing human. She had a sense of adventure that most people do not
have. Not only did she love nursing, she loved travel nursing. She had a
restless soul and didn’t seem to ever be content in one place. She had no
problem just picking up and moving anywhere. Darla didn’t own very much
according to her, but she loved expensive things. One time I was shocked that
she dropped hundreds of dollars on sunglasses. Darla thought it was ridiculous
that I wouldn’t spend more than $20 on mine. She tried to tell me it was about
quality, and I argued that I would rather have many pairs of sunglasses that I
don’t have to worry about. We never did agree.
Her body
betrayed her. For some reason, her body continued to randomly go into
anaphylactic shock. Respiratory distress seemed to be her specialty. She was
intubated so many times she lost track. I remember the number 17 rolling
around, but she admitted she wasn’t sure. Darla was thankful she still had her
front teeth and a voice, though she lamented that she couldn’t sing the same.
We
had a weird pattern when it came to her illnesses. She was tired of pity and
concern, so I instead would chastise her. “Silly Darla. Why do you keep getting
sick? You just want more drugs huh? Or is it the Foley catheter cause you are
too lazy to get up and pee?” She would laugh and blow it off, and we would then
speak of other things. Anything else but her sudden and unexplained illness.
The few times we talked about what was happening with her, we would talk in
medical jargon. Unattached. Like 2 nurses talking about a patient. She went to
hospitals up and down the west coast and no one knew why her body would attack
itself.
Recently,
Darla was hospitalized in the same hospital I work. Before my shift started she
was to be discharged. I even offered to help her pack. I told her to let me
know before she left. On my short break I went to her room to find she was
wheezing so bad she couldn’t speak and that the rapid response team had been
called. By my lunch break she was sedated, restrained, and on a ventilator in
the ICU. I tucked a pamphlet about the school we were to attend for our BSN’s
in her backpack, wrote smiley faces on the dry erase board in her room, and
kissed her on the forehead before returning to work.
I got
accustomed to her always surviving. I shouldn’t have. I regret that I took her
for granted. One time I thought she had stroked out and was brain dead. In a
panic, I called her cell phone to hear her voicemail message one last time. She
answered. I got used to her always answering and hearing “Hey, Lubecki” on the
other end. When I found out she passed, it didn't seem real. It still doesn't.
Darla
was exhausted. The last time I saw her, she looked weary. She was spending more
time in the hospital as a patient than as a nurse. She wasn’t able to live her
life anymore. I didn’t tease her that time. I didn’t know what to say.
Time does not heal all wounds. You
just grow familiar with the wounds. I am trying to adjust.
My writers
heart fails me when I look to the future without her. I don’t know how I am
going to go on without her, but I will. I do truly believe I will see her again
someday, and when I do I don’t want her calling me a pansy.
Love you Darla. See you soon.
