Atrium Health Floyd Nurse Helps Cement Memory for Grieving Widow
Note: The following item was provided by Atrium Health Floyd, a sponsor of Polk Today content. -KtE
ROME — When you have been married for 68 years, the impression on your heart is deep and abiding. And when it comes to letting go of the hand you have held for all those decades, the thought of the emptiness is unfathomable. Mary Ann Canada understands those truths. She has lived them.
Lowell Canada met Mary Ann Littlejohn when both were invited to gather at a mutual friend’s house for an evening of music, dancing and refreshments. The wide front porch was a popular gathering spot for teenagers, but the two had not met until one fateful day. Lowell and Mary Ann found each other across the crowded porch, and it was love at first sight.
There was no turning back. Before departing, Lowell asked Mary Ann if she would meet him on the same front porch the following evening, but Mary Ann could not immediately oblige. She had already accepted a date for the next night.
Lowell later learned that Mary Ann went home that night and broke her date with her other admirer so she could return to the porch in hopes of dancing with him again. She later told her daughter she knew that very first night that Lowell was “the one.” From that moment on, they were a couple.
After high school, Mary Ann took a job at General Electric, and Lowell enlisted in the Air Force. They married on Sept. 10, 1954, before Lowell flew out on his first assignment. Other than those 13 months during the Korean War, their nephew, Kim Canada, said he can’t remember a time when they were apart.
They continued to travel in tandem, even when age robbed them of their driver’s licenses, and, increasingly, their memories. Their daughter, Donna, said she often drove her parents to medical appointments.
The office staff would gently remind them that only one person was allowed to go to the exam room with the patient, but Donna would intercede on their behalf. “You don’t understand,” she would explain. “They are one person.”
Earlier this year Lowell, who turned 86 on his last birthday, fell and broke his hip. He came to Atrium Health Floyd Medical Center for surgery, but his health quickly declined.
Recognizing that he likely would not recover, his family requested that he be placed on comfort care. On Jan. 16, with Mary Ann holding his hand and his family gathered around him, Lowell died, fulfilling his vow of “’til death do us part.” Even then Mary Ann would not release his hand. She told his nurse, Trisha Owens, that she didn’t want to let go.
“I wish we could keep his hand so I could hold on to it the rest of my life,” Mary Ann said quietly to those in the room.
It was in that moment that Trisha knew how she could help her patient and his family in one final and beautiful act. It has been said that empathy is understanding how another person feels and then acting on it. Trisha did just that.
She respectfully and quietly excused herself, asked a fellow nurse to cover for her and clocked out. She returned less than an hour later with a plaster of Paris kit and a plan.
There, in the quiet of his hospital room, Trisha placed Lowell’s hand into the plaster she had mixed, capturing forever the hand that Mary Ann had held for nearly seven decades. Now, anytime she misses him, she will be able to rest her hand on top of the hand that had held hers for seven decades.
“This act was way above and beyond anything that any of us expected,” said Holly Marks, a Floyd nurse leader and the Canadas’ great niece. “Trisha was determined to make a way for it to happen, and she did. My family is still talking about her act of thoughtfulness and kindness.”
The Canada family is effusive in their praise for the care their patriarch received, and they are quick to thank those who were involved, from the ambulance team that transported him to the hospital and the emergency room workers to the orthopedic and intensive care nurses and pastoral care staff who looked after him.
Lowell’s daughter summed up the thoughts of the Canada family.
“We could not have had a better goodbye for my daddy than the service we got from Floyd.”
About Atrium Health Floyd
The Atrium Health Floyd family of health care services is a leading medical provider and economic force in northwest Georgia and northeast Alabama. Atrium Health Floyd is part of Advocate Health, which is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is the fifth-largest nonprofit health system in the United States, created from the combination of Atrium Health and Advocate Aurora Health.
At the center of these services is Atrium Health Floyd Medical Center, a 304-bed full-service, acute care hospital and regional referral center. Atrium Health Floyd employs more than 3,500 employees who provide care in over 40 medical specialties at three hospitals: Atrium Health Floyd Medical Center in Rome, Georgia; Atrium Health Floyd Cherokee Medical Center in Centre, Alabama; Atrium Health Floyd Polk Medical Center in Cedartown, Georgia, as well as Atrium Health Floyd Medical Center Behavioral Health, a freestanding 53-bed behavioral health facility, also in Rome; and a primary care and urgent care network with locations throughout the service area of northwest Georgia and northeast Alabama.
