For World Hospice and Palliative Care Day: a nurse’s song for the nurses

Today is World Hospice and Palliative Care Day, and I wanted to share something with my neighbors.

I’m Alex, a registered nurse and a musician who releases music as Alex Augustus. I wrote my song “Among the Dead and the Living” after my time sitting with people in their last days, first in the ICU and then in inpatient hospice, and finding that the line between the dying and the living was never where I expected it to be.

This song is for nurses. It does not pretend the work is easy. Some of the lyrics come from the hardest days, the ones where you are running down the hall against the clock, carrying things no one else sees, and still showing up the next shift. The song is about what this work asks of the people who do it, and about how much we deserve to be seen for it.

The hospice part of my nursing career is the part I’m proudest of. Helping someone leave this world peacefully, and sitting with the people who love them, is the most meaningful thing I have ever done. The chorus, “keep on giving, I walk among the dead and the living,” comes from those rooms.

If today has you thinking about a nurse, a hospice team, or someone you cared for, I hope the song gives you a quiet moment with them.

Listen here: listen.alexaugustusmusic.com