Dear Judy,
I belong to a book club full of interesting women: a divorce lawyer, a judge, a hospice nurse are among our members. Our problem is the hospice nurse.
Whatever the book — and it isn’t only modern books, we’ve just read “Anna Karenina” for instance — the subject always turns somehow to death. And to her hospice. And her patients. And her.
Above all, her. Her emotion, her reactions, her advice, her family.
Maybe her job with its stresses is taking its toll. I don’t know. We call her — behind her back of course — Nurse Death, because that’s all we hear about. We try to turn the conversations back to the books at hand, or to some other subject, but invariably it’s back to her and her issues.
It’s gotten so one of our members often doesn’t come. She finds the subject of the nurse boring, she says, she’d like to concentrate on books.
I agree with her. So is it up to me, as the group’s founder, to take Nurse Death aside and let her have it? Or should I put it more delicately?
I don’t want to be impolite. But I also don’t want to have a lot of no-shows just because she hogs all the discussions.
Joanne
Dear Joanne,
Yes, I’ll bet anything your hospice nurse is under a lot of stress. Working day in/ day out among the dying can do that to a person.
Obviously your book club is not the place for her to work on all that stress, and just as obviously you, as the founder, have to take matters in hand.
I’d take the nurse aside and explain that other members, while appreciating her discussions, would like to talk mainly about the books themselves. She may bridle at this. She may even threaten to quit. If this occurs, by all means don’t try to dissuade her.
Another tactic: when she launches into one of her long anecdotes, politely but firmly, and explain that time is short, and it’s essential now to revert to a discussion of whatever book has been assigned to the group.
I think that should do it.
Thank you for writing
Judy
