Hi everyone, welcome to thanks for being here, a short weekly pad to remind us of the many essential

and beautiful ways we affect one another. Every Sunday I'll read a submission from a listener

of Kelly Corrigan Wonders, could be wedding vows or about

mitzvah toast, a eulogy or retirement speech.

We believe this is probably the loveliest way to tap into our better selves and remember our highest values.

We encourage you to share this podcast each week with one person you love, maybe someone

you miss and need to bring closer,

someone you want to feel your appreciation or admiration or both.

This is thanks for being here.

This week's thanks for being here is from me to some nurses I have known in my life.

The word which derives from nourish means attend or minister.

Attending is a fitting image, though for me minister has the right ring to it.

Whichever works for you there are things to be said about nurses.

I studied a team of them, Jenna, Michelle, Meg, over several weeks one spring in and out of my

dad's room as he set his heart right, pointed his soul upward, and listened to the prayer of his own breathing, as my friend Billy Collins put it.

These nurse girls, so young or young seeming, until they cracked me open with a bit of intuition, rotated my father, swept

his hair off his forehead, deconstructed his glorious smile to clean and reset the bold rack of acrylic teeth that took center stage on his face.

These girls are angels, lovey, he whispered to me before he died.

We'd seen Nurse Magic before.

He with his radiation gal Joan, who shared his birthday,

me with my oncology nurse Catherine, whose job it was to fill me with a cherry red chemotherapy so toxic

You can only ever take one course and I knew nurses at Children's Hospital in Oakland.

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