Remembering Through Art: A Memorial to What We Lost

By Kanaka Sathasivan, MPH

While many parts of the state have returned to business as usual, the toll of COVID-19 on nurses has not been forgotten. In hospitals, clinics, offices and colleges, nurses are still treating COVID patients, managing patients with long COVID, providing emotional support to their peers and student, and trying to handle the trauma of the past year with self-care, resilience and reflection.

To honor all that nurses have been through over the past year and a half, staff at Texas Nurses Association and Texas Peer Assistance Program for Nurses came together to develop a small memorial of painted rocks.

Driven by TPAPN Program Director Dawn Webb, MSN, RN, PMH-BC, the event brought staff together to share in acknowledging the deep costs of the pandemic by collaborating on a symbolic tribute. Webb said, “We had a couple memorials a year at my old job, and we did different activities, including painting rocks. Unfortunately we had clients die fairly often, and this was a way to honor them and process our loss.”

The idea was also prompted by TPAPN case manager Michele Wieckowski, MSN, RN-BC, who recently became a psychiatric nurse practitioner. July 1 was Wieckowski’s last week at TPAPN, and she had started rock painting to honor her own participants, friends and colleagues who passed over the last year.

“At the start of COVID, I lost a nurse participant to suicide,” Wieckowski said. “This event made it clear to me that nurses in Texas and across the nation were scared and suffering and had no one to turn to. I felt this tragedy profoundly and wanted a way to memorialize nurses lost to addiction, isolation, and fear. COVID magnified the losses but these nurses need to be remembered by those of us left behind.”

At TPAPN and TNA, staff work very closely with thousands of nurses across the state, either as participants in the program or as members of the association. The loss of so many nurses this past year sent ripples through the staff every time news of another death reached them. “In most cases the death of a participant is unexpected and very shocking to the case manager and our team,” said Webb. “I want to honor the nurses we work with and make sure our staff have the opportunity to process and have some closure.”

“TNA and TPAPN staff support nurses and that role intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said TNA Chief Executive Officer Cindy Zolnierek, PhD, RN, CAE. “Painting rocks offered an opportunity for reflection and healing. Let us not forget the unspoken toll this pandemic has had on nurses.”

Although staff are not on the frontlines, they have experienced both moral distress from feeling helpless and secondary trauma from supporting nurses through their experiences. Webb described it as a complex issue for the nurses in TPAPN, who talk to nurses daily. In TNA, which advocated statewide on behalf of nurses, staff helped nurses share their stories and published a memorial, both of which involved listening to traumatic experiences.

With the urgency of the response to COVID, taking time to reflect and breathe became secondary.

As staff painted their rocks, they shared stories of the last year. Being back in the office with coworkers