Flying solo

I usually try to leave the interpersonal stuff I deal with out of this blog, but I can't help it today: our veteran nurse is retiring tomorrow, and it is giving me a most unsettling feeling. Ms. Retiring has been in the district for nearly 40 years, and, like myself, started when she was fresh out of nursing school. She knows her stuff, to say the least, and gets her stuff done. Everyone knows if you make ten women work together they won't all get along, and as I've discovered since I started working here, Ms. Retiring has been a source of controversy. Her and I, though, get along so well and think so alike that soon after meeting, people started referring to me as her long lost daughter (she doesn't actually have kids, which makes it that much funnier). For the past year, I've gone to her for too many times to count for a second opinion. The answer, if I get one, is always the same: backing me up and reminding me to be confident in myself, and to not let others make me second-guess myself. If I don't get an answer, I realize in the end it is because she knows I can figure out the answer on my own, and I do. Though we rarely work side by side in this job, I credit her presence in the district as saving my sanity more than once. We leave for Thanksgiving break tomorrow, and when the rest of us return, she won't be. I'm very close with another nurse who thinks along the same lines as Ms. Retiring and myself, but I really do not feel ready to be left alone, as it will feel without her. Gulp.