A fresh start after 60: I retrained as a palliative care nurse - and lost my fear of death

Laura Horn has found what she calls her end-of-life career, "a calling to last the rest of my life." In her 60s, she decided to train as a registered nurse, specializing in palliative care. "I'm a brand new nurse, but that's not what matters," she says. "I had a life experience." After Margaret, his wife of 20 years, "suddenly and unexpectedly" passed away, Horn realized she had to make a change. She had thought about volunteering at a hospice, after her mother and two in-laws received hospice care. After Margaret's death in January 2017, Horn applied to the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, which trained volunteers to sit with the dying. They told him, “Wait a year. You can't do it right away. ”

In hindsight, she said, they were right. "You can't embark on something new until you've grieved appropriately." She had "good therapy" and did what she calls "walking mourning - I mean, I walked everywhere". A year later, she reapplied. "They said, 'Why do you want to do this?' and my first sentence was, 'I know the loss.'"

In addition to Margaret, she had outlived him. parents, in-laws and brothers. They “both died of drug addiction, one from a heroin overdose and the other from long-term drug addiction. That, I'm sure, was part of my motivation,” she says. "This kind of pain can also lead to openness and joy, and that's what I've discovered."

Volunteering has been "an experience really transformative" for her and Horn realized she wanted more. "I thought I wanted to do the nursing part as well." As an undergraduate, she had studied biology and her early work was in public health before moving into educational research. Most of his career has been spent “trying to figure out what helped students succeed in college and beyond. But I always felt like I would come back to the healthcare world,” she says.

At 63, she enrolled in one community colleges whose impact she had. had done research, to take the prerequisite courses – anatomy, physiology, microbiology, pharmacology. From there, she applied to nursing school at age 65, in a one-year accelerated graduate program.

The Intensity was astounding. “I devoted every waking hour to my studies and my clinical work,” she says. Friends who had supported her after Margaret's death and lived nearby in Berkeley, California, cooked for her three nights a week. Horn would visit for an hour, then leave to study. "We called it 'catch and release,'" she says. His two children with Margaret had left home but were supportive. When she graduated, a friend of hers made a little sign out of brightly colored paper - "It's never too late" - and stuck it to the back of her mortarboard.

< p class="dcr-kpil6a">In To some degree, Horn has recovered in the heart of the storm, in a place of death and loss, which she works three shifts a week at the hospice where she works in Oakland. How emotionally draining is her new career?

"We're not family, so there's this distance," she says . “We are here with you at this important time. We are here to normalize the experience and teach family members what to look for and not be afraid. It's emotionally taxing but not overwhelming.

Now 68, Horn has noticed that her own attitude towards death is changing. "I think I relaxed around that," she says. "After seeing all I have about death, I'm not so scared of dying anymore. I have little time left on this Earth and I'll try to make the most of it. And don't be too terrified."

Most importantly, she understood that hospice palliative care is "a reciprocal relationship with patients and families. She hopes to "find a real balance in that. , learn from them as they learn from me. If I haven't learned anything else, we can't live full and meaningful lives without deep relationships. And that's what I hope."

Tell us: Has your life taken a new direction after 60?