Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Sister Mary Roch Rocklage bounced into the Religious Sisters of Mercy at age 19 with a breezy warning: “I’m only here to try it.”
That was in 1954. Rocklage stayed, became a nurse, earned a master’s in healthcare, and rose to become the administrator of St. John’s Mercy Hospital. Along the way, she always reminded young nurses—both male and female—that the word “nurse” came from nursing at the breast, an act that “gave life, gave comfort, gave strength. You are safe and wholly accepted in the arms of a nurse.”
“Today, we are very much focused on procedures,” she remarks. “That’s all very necessary. But it’s the hands-on nursing, getting in there and getting messy, spending time, that treats the whole person.”
And time’s become a precious commodity—for nurses and patients alike.
“Be very honest and very clear with every caregiver,” Rocklage urges. “If they ask, ‘How do you feel?’ say how you feel, so you are not bottling it up. And write down your fears; then they are outside you. Share them with someone who can assist you—not control you, assist you. Whoever is your God or your higher power, rest it there, because that’s from where your strength will come. And then, if whatever you were afraid of happens to you, say, ‘Yep, this is what I was afraid of. I’ve already addressed it.’”
While you recuperate, take it easy—stop multitasking and turn your brain off so your body can fully relax. “The body needs to heal from the bottom up,” Rocklage says, “not just where the sutures are.”
Once you’re back in the swim of things? Stay slow. “This, this, this—we tick things off. Don’t let society’s pace dictate. Be who you are.”
Let someone know you, she adds: “Our whole society—the pace of it! We’re just yakking away, and yet everybody’s lonely. We are not present to each other. That’s what you remember about your mother or your best friend or your husband—that they know who you really are.”
Relax. Yoga classes and other alternative practices strike Rocklage as “kind of elitist. Can’t we just sit on the floor and listen to music? We all need the discipline to take time—and it is a discipline. Be quiet, even if it’s only for five minutes a day. Take some deep breaths; let the air flow through you. Nothing fancy. You don’t have to get yourself a pad. Everything becomes something we are selling to you, rather than, ‘If I had my deepest desire, what would I do?’”
