Easter has come and gone.
My parents are finally vaccinated.
And I've started to hug friends again.
But the first embrace of 2021 came before the world began opening up, and before our hospital allowed visitors back onto the floors. Except in the case of patients who were nearing end of life.
On March 14, I was called into the Critical Care unit where I had served for 6 months, on the evening of my last on-call shift of my second level of chaplaincy training.
A patient was actively dying, and her husband had come in to say goodbye, was at bedside, and could use some spiritual support. She was Sicilian Catholic, and had already received Last Rites.
He was a thin man, perhaps approaching 70. I have gotten used to the wide-eyed look of shock and sadness in family members' eyes, when they come to say goodbye.
I encouraged him to speak to his beloved, because hearing is the last sense to go, and because I believe that the human Spirit can receive all messages of love, no matter the physical state.
At one point, he stepped out of the room to tell me that, after seeing how much she was suffering, he was ready to make a decision to withdraw care. This was a shift from his initial statement, when I arrived, that he needed more time. Sometimes, seeing is believing. Part of the grief is accepting that the patient will not make it, even if the actual letting go takes time.
The nurses put in the order to have a compassionate extubation. I waited with the husband outside of the room as they did the work of taking the patient off her breathing tube. He showed me pictures of her, looking healthy and happy. He fielded texts from others--her sister in Big Bear, for example--giving them updates in real time.
After the extubation, we let the husband sit by the patient's bedside. One never knows how quickly they will pass after an extubation. Many of our nurses are Catholic, and they often feel helpless in times like this. Often, they will want to do something to ease their own sense of helplessness, even if the family has not requested it.
The nurse initiated a group of us singing "Ave Maria" at the patient's bedside, with the husband's permission. The music therapist part of me squirmed as it was done improperly, based on what I'd learned in my training. But in sacred moments at the end of life, there is enough Grace for good intentions to transcend technique.
The husband left right after I offered a prayer of blessing. I always end prayers for Catholics with the sign of the cross. I escorted him out of the hospital, and at the lobby, he said, "I'm going to be a basket case when I get home" (to their two beloved cats--whose pictures I'd also seen) and suddenly wrapped me in a brief hug.
Ecclesiastes 3 reads:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
Her fight for life was coming to an end. His process of grief had just begun.
After the husband walked out of the hospital, the security guard at the front lobby asked, "Did she die?"
"She's about to, I think," I said.
"Fuck!" he exhaled.
Yes, in professions like ours, sometimes, there is a time to curse.
I quickly got back into the elevator, and stepped back onto the Critical Care unit. I rejoined the nurses in the patient's room, where they were still singing. Within about 2 minutes, the monitor indicated that she had passed away. There was a 0 by the line that measured her heart rate. More embracing, and both nurses broke town in tears.
The pandemic had taken its toll on all of us. There had been so much death, and so many goodbyes. I did not shed tears--I tend not to, and have always been that way in such times--but I felt their sadness. I remembered the image of the husband taking off his mask for a brief moment, when he kissed his wife's forehead one last time.
When I got home, I told my parents (who were visiting) that, even though I started my career as a helping professional in hospice music therapy, I had never actually seen someone pass away, been there at the moment of death. Even in my first summer of chaplaincy, I had been with patients right after or before their last breath.
This was the Universe's gift to me, on the eve of my last on-call shift in a season of COVID chaplaincy.
9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
15 Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.[b]
16 And I saw something else under the sun:
In the place of judgment—wickedness was there,
in the place of justice—wickedness was there.
17 I said to myself,
“God will bring into judgment
both the righteous and the wicked,
for there will be a time for every activity,
a time to judge every deed.”
18 I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. 19 Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath[c]; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”
22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?
Amen.
