re-entry

One of the most difficult transitions for me is when I must come home after working at the hospital. It is my job to go quickly to the bedside of dying patients when the pager goes off. Sometimes the person in the room is unconscious, intubated and surrounded by machines and staff carefully keeping them patient as the inevitable takes them away. Other times the call is because a person has just gotten bad news, or they have decided it is time to quit fighting. I am called for the families, to help them through the crisis of losing their beloved. I am called to the bedside of the elderly man who is sinking slowly into oblivion, alone and afraid. Sometimes there is a crowd of bereaved. Sometimes there is no one.

I never know exactly what I am walking into when that beeper goes off. We are there in pastoral care for any patient, no matter how ill or hardy, to provide spiritual support during their stay in the hospital. Unfortunately we are spread very thin and often only have time to see the most critically ill. I am there to accompany, as far as any living person can, people as they die. Most of the patients in the hospital get better and leave. I don't usually get to see them.

Everyone eventually dies. It is what happens. Sometimes people come to the hospital to get better and sometimes it becomes clear that health is not in their future. They have come to the hospital to die and that is when someone will page the chaplain. We come to sadness, shock, grief bringing whatever god they have to focus, sometimes by just introducing ourselves. I am awed by my job. I encounter that amazing mystery of life and death intimately almost every time I go to work there. I worry that my job can make me seem rather creepy. I can't talk about individuals or details about what I do during the day so I am forced to rely on generalities. When someone asks "how was work today?" I can say it was good or fine. But really, what does that mean? I find myself hiding behind euphemisms to maintain courteous conversation.

I work differently as the hospital chaplain. When I am doing that holy work I am totally there. I can and do shut out everything but what is happening right here and now. These are also the days I work the most hours in one place. I cannot be constantly checking my phone for messages from home. I found early on that breaking the day up so I could run home and feed mom Lunch was making it impossible for me to really function at work. The jarring of center, of identity, was spiritual whiplash. It was for those days I was working the hospital that I first hired someone for mom. It has helped.

Today's chaplain work was pretty easy, almost all my patients were in one unit, folks were very ill but my case load included mostly folks who are going to recover and go home soon, something that I don't ever remember happening before and in fact no one died on my watch, which is also quite rare. Usually I come home with adrenaline pumping, jumping out of my skin at the beeper on my hip, and my heart weary from holding so much grief.

Mom had said to me yesterday during one of our long talks that she really hated when I came home from the hospital because I was mean. Apparently my "chaplain" persona is not bubbly and welcoming. When I think of it now, I am not surprised. But for mom, all she sees is that I left before breakfast, left her with a stranger she likes but doesn't want to need, and I come home tired and short tempered, whining about having to cook dinner. She had expressed that when I am like that she feels like I resent her and want her to leave.

Well, D..n.

I don't transition well from that intensity to the jocularity of pizza and "American Idol". I need more time, more downtime to move from point a- to point z. I tried today to express that need by telling mom I needed fifteen minutes before I could start "home". It started out OK. I fell asleep during the TV show. When I woke up, now able to be at home, she scolded me and sent me to bed. When I didn't go, she did. I guess there is no way yet for me to not be mean.

Well, when there is no hope of fixing it, you call on the chaplain to bring god. I am paging the Great Spirit. Hold us through these transitions, comfort our pain and bring us ever closer to your peace.

Amen