Chandra Berger (by her family and friends)
Chandra Noelle Berger of West Bloomfield, Michigan was born on December 15, 1973. She attended Our Lady of Refuge Grade School, Mercy High School, and Grand Valley State University graduating in 1996 with a BS degree. Chandra spent her summers in college working for the State of Michigan at Mackinac Island. She began working for a chemical company, Henkel Corporation, after graduation, starting as a Customer Service Representation and later working on the SAP Project Team giving her an opportunity traveling to places like Germany, Puerto Rico, Montreal, Toronto, even relocating for a time to Oakland, California and lastly to Rocky Hill, Connecticut.
In 2010 while living in Connecticut, she decided she needed to do more with her life than sit behind a computer screen, so she packed-up, came back to Michigan and enrolled at OCC to complete the necessary courses she would need to apply to the School of Nursing. In 2012, deciding to pursue her passion for serving others, she was accepted into the Oakland Community College-School of Nursing. She was 39 years old and ready for the challenge. Chandra graduated from OCC School of Nursing in 2014, summa cum laude. She began her Nursing career at St Joseph Mercy Hospital Oakland, was a dedicated nurse with a love of caring for her patients, as well as a beloved colleague. From 2011 to 2014 Chandra was a student instructor at OCC in Anatomy & Physiology as well as a nursing tutor to first year nursing students.
She served as a COVID nurse in 2020. In those months of extreme isolation Chandra was a beacon of light for patients that couldn’t have their loved ones by their side in their final hours. She held their hands, called their families, and showed extreme compassion in a season of her career that was most challenging. She was awarded six Daisy Awards in recognition of her clinical skills and compassion demonstrated at the bedside of patients. In 2019 she enrolled in the Master’s Program at Grand Canyon University, graduating in 2021, summa cum laude, with a Master of Science in Nursing with an emphasis in Nursing Education.
Chandra lived her life to the fullest – she was a bright light with an ever present, beautiful smile. She always had a twinkle in her eye and a huge, generous heart. She found joy in everything she did and deeply loved her faith, her family and her dog. Nursing was her passion but teaching was her joy! She blossomed as a Clinical Instructor at St Joe’s evidenced by the love and respect her students had for her. Her recent promotion was to Nurse Recruiter, a position she absolutely loved, giving her the opportunity to encourage new nurses with her ever-exuberant love of being a nurse!
Chandra passed away in her sleep, a sudden unexpected death, on April 16, 2024. I have established the Chandra Berger Nursing Scholarship in her name to honor her dedication in forming the minds and hearts of men and women looking to nursing as an honorable profession. She loved teaching and coaching nursing students and would be thrilled to know her legacy will live on. l am extremely proud of this Scholarship; Chandra would have been simply delighted to know she would be helping any deserving student with the funds needed to complete their nursing degrees.
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The Heart
by Chandra Noelle Berger, March 10, 2024
It’s a curious and oftentimes wondrous thing, the heart. The physical one with its chambers requires at least two types of doctors to deal with the mechanical and electrical components, its structure in the center-left of our chests, beats to the tune of our daily routine-quick, slow, racing, erratic, constant. Take care of the physical heart and you’ live well for many years.
The Heart I speak of contains depths broad and deep. It carries the burden of our sorrows and the wealth of our joys together. It explains why we can laugh despite tremendous loss and suffering.
The callous spots cover hurts, the hardened areas are hopefully few, and the love we’ve been given expands as we give love in return. It is important to remember that sorrow doesn’t leave, and to guard against dwelling too long in those jagged caverns lest I forget the others painted with love and memories.
New experiences will always be coated with tender heartache and that’s the wonderous part of our heart – that we can contain both and live.
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GRIEF
by Chandra Noelle Berger, May 2022
Time heals all wounds?
Anyone touched by the reaper’s scythe will tell you how deep the cut is, and once the whole heart is forever scarred.
Does it heal?
It’s reformed: every beat aches, and when truly examined, the layers are a patchwork to staunch the flow. New joys are painted with a different color, beautiful but missing a deeper hue. Or is it a new vibrancy that we become accustomed to? Memories are the balm and the catalyst, building safe harbors and ranging storms. Living after death, more importantly living well after devastation, is an act of will, choosing life beyond that moment when your world ended while time ticked on.
Does time heal?
Time is just time. A volcano that erupted can never go back to how it was. The landscape is forever changed. You learn to adapt and evolve to the new and eventually become acclimated to the topography. New memories forge through it, and while the pain is still ever present, joy does make a foothold. You are their heartbeat now wishing they were beside you rather than within the confined of your innermost self, but they are still with you, and wishing you whole because, despite the scars, your heart beats still.
For the love I have for you never goes to waste.
Time makes sure of that.