Midnight in the hospital

So.... 5 months on and my second blog. Oops. Seriously, I've been meaning to write but life gets in the way. However, right now, it's just before midnight, and I'm working at the hospital doing some research so I have a bit of spare time! What has spurred me on is a patient that I have seen here.
Yesterday I noticed a Vietnamese patient was in the ward I was monitoring, and thought it was sweet that her daughter (I assume) was sitting next to her. I assumed that it was so that she would have a translator on standby. When I walked up this evening though, I saw a whole family of Vietnamese people. I would estimate about 10 loving family members :) I got worried because usually family only appear at the end. But she was still in the normal ward- phew! I thought. Until I went to do my next round and watched them push a very sick looking woman into a single room. Oops.

But it got me thinking, how WONDERFUL that at the end of a no doubt long life, her family members would surround her to honor her and the life she led. These people did not need to be here by law (although I guess you could call it family law!) but because they are family! We don't choose our family, and sometimes we don't even like our family, but we put them ahead of our peers, and the people we choose to have in our lives, because we have an unexplainable bond (which could perhaps be explained by past lives if you believed in them). Western society in general seems to have lost this. Not mine- as most people who know me realise, even if we just yell and argue over Christmas dinner, at least we are all together.

I see all the patients her, and think of all. The ones I met in mackay, and recall how many of them died with no one but the nurse and the patient next to them when they took their last breath. How terrible that this is acceptable :( if, life forbid, my end is drawn out and painful, I hope that the people most important to me will want to send me off with a good get together. As long as they bring balloons saying "Bon voyage" and party crackers for when I go! Or do you think that is too morbid? ;)