How do nurses cope with a patient dying then moving on?

This morning you held someone's hand as they died. Twenty minutes later you smiled and started an IV like nothing happened. That whiplash is one of the strangest, hardest parts of your work, and almost no one outside it understands what you just carried into that next room. You switched gears because you had to. The next patient needed you whole. That is not coldness; it is discipline, and it kept someone else safe. But the grief you set aside does not vanish. It waits. If you never turn back to pick it up, it piles into that numbness so many nurses carry. So give it somewhere to go, even briefly. After a shift like this, take one real minute: name the person, let yourself feel it, then set it down on purpose instead of by force. Tell someone who understands. You are allowed to be moved by death and still do your job. In fact, that you still feel it is a good sign.