"The death of my son was beautiful": the inspiring testimony of a nurse who could not resuscitate her son

It was 9:40 am when the screams of her ex-husband led Jessica Hanson to get up from bed.

Hanson, an emergency nurse working in a hospital in Arizona, United States, was at home recovering from a tonsillectomy. But the anguished voice of her ex-husband violently interrupted her sleep.

Hanson came down the stairs at high speed and found him with his 22-month-old son, Mason, on his lap, all covered in blood.

Her husband at the time accidentally crushed Mason with the car and the boy was now fighting for his life.

All Jessica's efforts to save him failed to keep him alive: Mason died shortly after the accident.

However, this tragic experience has helped her see death in another way, and Hanson is now working so that others can also experience what she calls. "a beautiful death".

Hanson believes that changing the way we live death can be very stimulating for the deceased's parents and therefore trains doctors and nurses to make it possible.

"The worst moment of my life"

"Mason loved dancing and going out, he was going into a room and everyone was looking at him for his energy," Hanson told the BBC's Outlook program.

"It was a child full of life, it was all I wanted in a human being."

"He never fell asleep, so I sang to him:" Go to sleep little baby "again and again."

Hanson carefully remembers the moments that occurred after the accident. How he did not stop giving his son the cardio-respiratory resuscitation until he arrived at the emergency room.

"If there is a way to save my son, I have to try to do it," he told himself.

They were going to the hospital in a police vehicle and the officer stopped the vehicle and told him that it would be better to wait for the arrival of the vehicle. ;ambulance.

"Then I got out of the car with Mason's body in my arms and the agent looked at me and looked at Mason and said:" We can not wait, get in the car . & # 39;

"From the look of the policeman, I realized that he knew that Mason was dead."

"At that moment, I felt an incredible fury and shouted with all my strength, insulted, hit the car window," he said. he.

"It was the worst moment of my life."

In the emergency room, Hanson and the medical team did everything to save him. But "about an hour after the failure of our attempts, the doctor told me we would do CPR for two more minutes and that we would consider him dead."

"It was two minutes unbearable, but I got back together, I went to the head of the bed and I sang to him in the ear.Go to sleep your little baby, for the last time."

The importance of actively participating in the death

It is precisely this situation, that of being in an emergency with him, that made Mason understand death in another way.

"Mason's death was beautiful," she says, recognizing that "beautiful" is a strange word for something as terrible as death.

"What I mean is that there are few moments in life where time stops. Think about when the love of your life tells you that you want to marry you, or when you have a child, but there is also that moment when someone dies, and it's incredibly beautiful if you allow yourself to see it, "he says.

"When you talk to other people about the experience of death, if they speak to you about an intimate and profound place about how they interpreted the death of their loved ones, you will often hear that it was amazing, that's all they imagined. "

"I even believe that even if a death is dramatic, we, as human beings, as health professionals, can make it beautiful," he said.

Hanson, who has been to many emergency rooms because of his work and has seen many people die, thinks he has learned to make a death look good.

"I did it by touching him (Mason), kissing him when they were doing CPR, taking a picture of his hand on my chest, and I actively participated in his death."

"I knew that I had to saturate myself with all these experiences, because I knew it was the last time I was going to be able to touch her body and kiss her."

"They almost always say that the family can not be in the room, that she can not be involved because it's too much for them, but I say no, it's not too much , what's needed, is to breathe deeply the next day. "

discussions

From his personal experience, Hanson reflected on how people in general and health professionals deal with death.

"Culture in the medical world teaches us that we do not need to feel, we try to block all the emotions that can hurt us," she says, recalling how she told the family of 39, a young man from a gang the possible to save him but without any sign of empathy and completely disconnected from the emotions caused by his message.

And that's what Hanson is now trying to change with the 660 organization he founded.

660 is the exact number of days that Mason has lived, he says.

And that is how Hanson wants to live, "as if I had only 660 days in front of me".

Today, full, happy and active like never before, Hanson travels the United States. give lectures on how to create a beautiful death for doctors, nurses and community members.