A day of honor and a day of loss: What we owe those who heal | Opinion

Last week, I stood in quiet reverence as part of my first Centre County Nursing Honor Guard tribute — honoring a nurse who devoted 48 years of her life to caring for children.

We moved with intention.

We spoke words of gratitude.

We honored a life defined by service, steadiness, and compassion.

It was an honor.

And it was heavy — in the way only sacred moments are.

To participate in a Nursing Honor Guard tribute is to be reminded that nursing is not simply a profession, but a lifelong calling. It is a public acknowledgment of years spent showing up — often quietly, often without recognition — for the sake of others. It is a moment of collective gratitude for a life spent healing.

Only hours later, I learned that Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, lost his life in Minneapolis during an encounter involving U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

A nurse.

A caregiver.

A life taken violently.

The dichotomy of this day is not lost on me.

That morning, I honored the fullness of a life spent healing — one that reached its natural conclusion after decades of service. Later, I found myself grieving the violent loss of another who chose the same calling, a life cut tragically short.

As nurses, we stand at the intersection of humanity. We are present at birth and at death, in moments of crisis and calm, hope and despair. We enter rooms not as combatants, but as caregivers. Our work is grounded in trust— the trust that those who are suffering place in us when they are at their most vulnerable.

That trust matters.

When a nurse is honored for decades of service, it reflects what is possible when care is allowed to unfold fully over a lifetime. When a nurse’s life is taken violently, it demands something different of us — not speculation, but reflection; not silence, but accountability.

This is not about assigning blame before facts are fully known. It is about acknowledging that when a life devoted to healing is lost, questions are not only appropriate — they are necessary. Transparency matters. Accountability matters. Human life matters.

Too often, we are encouraged to move past loss quickly, to quiet our discomfort, to accept tragedy as inevitable. But silence is not neutrality. Silence is abdication. When caregivers are harmed, our response — or lack of one —says something about who we are as a community.

This moment calls for reflection. Especially for those of us in health care, it asks us to consider what it means to serve in an increasingly fractured world. It asks us to reflect on how often nurses are present in moments of tension and conflict, and what it says about us when the sacred trust placed in healers is broken by violence.

It also calls for action.

Let us speak names.

Let us demand accountability and transparency when lives are lost.

Let us protect those whose work is to preserve life.

Let us show up for one another — nurses, caregivers and communities — by advocating for safety, dignity and humanity in every space we serve.

Honor guards exist because remembrance matters. We pause because service deserves recognition. We gather because lives are not interchangeable.

I was reminded why we must hold space for both reverence and grief — for gratitude and heartbreak — for the nurses who came before us and for those who should still be here.

How we respond to moments like this — how we honor service, how we confront loss, how we insist on dignity— reveals who we are.

How we respond in moments like this reveals who we are as a community and as a nation.

We are living in a state of national emergency — one defined not only by policy or enforcement, but by fractured trust and escalating harm. In such a moment, accountability is not optional; it is civic responsibility. When lives are lost, especially the lives of those who dedicate themselves to healing others, we must demand transparency, independent review and clear answers. Silence is not stability. Silence is failure.

If we cannot protect those whose calling is to preserve life, then we must at least have the courage to demand accountability when that life is taken.

Anything less is an abdication of our shared responsibility.

Nicole Feaster, RN-C, is a registered nurse in Centre County and a member of the Centre County Nursing Honor Guard.