Let me tell you a tale about how comforting a chaplain can be in the setting of death warming over
I'm in a story-tellin' mood, so I'm gonna tell a story.
The patient I speak of is real, but I am purposefully mixing gender pronouns as to make this patient as unidentifiable as possible, but I assure you this is a true event that I personally witnessed that has affected me ever since.
----
I'm currently a nurse in an Emergency Room but I used to work in a different setting--ICU, progressive care, cardiac/telemetry..that kind of thing.
When I was in those floor-settings, I would often have the same patients on a frequent basis, and for long periods of time.
There was one patient...Mary, or Frank...and they were a frequent visitor of the ward I worked on. They were in their late 60's to mid 70's, and their health had caught up with their life of poor health choices and hard living, poverty and bad luck in the genetic department.
I saw this person, over the course of about 2 years, more and more frequently as their health problems got more and more severe, more and more chronic. I saw this person go from coming in for the occasional short of breath, or chest pain, to needing home oxygen, to soon needing dialysis. Their diabetes started causing kidney problems (hence the dialysis), and soon their feet lost feeling from neuropathy, and maybe even an amputation was down the road.
Over the course of these 2 years, Mary and I became pretty good friends...as far as a nurse and patient can be friends. I used to joke that if she wanted to hang out at the hospital she didn't have to have Chest Pain or Shortness of Breath to do so, she could just come by and say hi! She got a kick out of that. When she got neuropathy, she was tickeled pink that she was able to get one of those little scooters to get around in. She had a flag, and a bicycle horn on it that went Ah-Ooo-Gah, and she'd zoom around the ward and honk at RN's and make us jump and squeal (even though we could hear that blasted scooter coming from a mile away!)
The years went on and she got older and sicker. SO much so that she couldn't scoot around the department and pretend to scare us anymore. She was tired, and she was sick, and she was dying.
----
I've always been a night shift worker. I just have that mentality. I crave night shifts. My circadian rhythm has always been off. 7am is a time for sleeping, not working!
----
well Frank was a day sleeper too. HATED being in the hospital because "Why can't they just make a man sleep when he wants to sleep? Why do i have to eat breakfast at 8 in the morning? I'm dying" (Remember...frank and mary are the same person).
Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, when Frank was a patient and things were slow, I knew I could count on Frank for some decent late-night conversation. So I'd go in---we always gave bath's at night---give a bath, brush teeth, and talk.
Frank talked about Sally...wife? girlfriend? I didn't know. But she was gone. Dead? who knows. Not here anymore, I know that.
Frank talked about his church, too. Invited me to come many times over the years. Always politely declined. I am not one to talk about religion or politics or anything like that at work, but I think he got the gist of my refusal, that I was refusing because I just didn't believe in that stuff "I sometimes don't believe in a lot of it m'self" he said "but some of it I do". I would nod my head and say it's good to believe in things if they make you feel better. He agreed, and asked me what I believed in. "I believe I am going to have a beer when I get home and sleep the day away!" i'd say. He'd laugh and say that sounds like a great things to believe in, too.
---
One thing Mary and I had in common were our cats. She had two, and I had two. When she'd go to the hospital she'd bring with her a really big bag of stuff....curlers (who has a hair-do in the hospital??), and a robe, slippers, denture cream, and abig photo album. For a while I thought it was family...nope, cats. Well, yes, family. Catfamily.
She had no kids, no family except for a distant niece from what she told me.
When she'd go to the hospital, her neighbor would watch the cats---Snickers and Snickers 2. They were cute, and she loved telling me stories about how Snickers 2 would cause mischief and blame it on Snickers 1. I know! I said. My cats do the SAME DANG THING!!!
She showed me pics of her family and I showed her pics of mine.
---
There came a time when Frank got really ill. He was in longer than his normal 3-4 day stya, and reallly started missing his cats. He told me about how the cats loved going for drives in the country "They aint' afraid of a dang thing, not a thing!". Against my better judgement, I suggested that his neighbor bring the cats in one night when I was working. I thought that would make him feel better. It looked like the end was near, and all he could talk about was Snick and Snick.
I could have lost my job for this. The cats could have bitten someone, or gotten out, or someone would have seen it and wanted their dog or gerbil or pet monkey to come in.
But I didn't care. No one ever asked, and I would ahve probably said yes if they did even for a monkey or a dog. But I knew it would make Frank feel better, so i did it, job be damned.
So the next night I worked, around 11pm, the neighbor came in carrying a large, conspicuous box that made odd sounds every now and again. Went into the room (Frank was in a private room, which is a nice amenity to going to a private hospital) and opened the box. One of the Snickers promptly shit in the corner and then jumped up on the bed and went to sleep at Frank's feet. The other Snicker crawled under his blanket and purred both of them to sleep. It was beautiful ,and Frank couldn't say Thank you enough. They stayed there for about an hour, his mood vastly improved, and then the neighbor took them back home.
---
A few days after the Snicker visit, Mary was able to go back home, but not for long. Soon she was back, and worse. She spent a great deal of time in the ICU, in and out of consciousness. She finally came back to her regular room and I knew she probably wouldn't leave. She was given Comfort Care orders. Minimize pain and anxiety and prepare for death.
We kept her comfortable. It was hard to believe the end was near...I had known her as a nursing student, then as an RN, and now, here, she's dying? She was still full of energy, talking about the cats, talking to them on the phone via her neighbor "Snickers said she cough a mouse today, but Snickers 2 said it was really him that caught it, he just gave it to Snick to make her feel better since Mama's gone".
As the days wore on, though, she got weaker, less talking, more sleeping. I wanted the cats to come in but she was too sleepy to remember to tell the neighbor.
Finally, one night, she asked for a chaplain to come in. I paged the on-call number for after-hours Chaplain and thought "Please don't let it be Father Prick"...
----
Father Prick was not his real name....it was the name the staff had given him years ago. Why he was allowed to console was beyond me because he was the least consoling person I had ever encountered in my life on this planet. I heard him tell the family of a dying patient, who happened to be morbidly obese, that god frowned on gluttony. He refused to chaplain to patients who were Gay, and he never really had anything kind to say to people who were dying of AIDS.
I really disliked him. he just had that way of adding a biting, inappropriate comment to everything. The bully's way. He'd say it with a shit-eating grin, as if to say "oh, when I called you a dirty gluttonous sinner I was only joking, can't you take a joke, you fat fuck?"
----
Sure as shit, Fr Prick was the one on call. He walked in, grumpy that he had been awoken at 10pm to deliver final rites to a dying patient. He asked one of the nursing assitant if she brushed her hair with a rake before she came into work, and when she looked hurt and offended, he smiled and said it was only a joke, she looks ravishing, keep up the hair-style, it compliments your personality.
----
I was in the room when Mary was speaking with him. She had been moved into a double room a few days earlier, along with another patient who was on comfort measures. I was actually charting and passing meds to the other patient while Mary and Fr Prick spoke behind the curtain.
Mary told him that she was dying, and asked for last rites. Fr asked her if she was Catholic, and she said that she had gone to Mass as a young woman, but hadn't really been to Catholic chuch in a while, rather prefering the local presbyterian chapel closer to her house "God does not look kindly on bedside conversions" he said, and I knew he had that shitty grin on his face when he said it.
He asked about family, was she married? "Common Law" she said. "Me and Dave lived together for about 20 years, but he died a few years back". He reminded her about the sin of co-habitation, and that God did not recognize common law marriage.
They talked about a few other things, mostly her asking for comfort and him shooting her down, ridiculing her beliefs and countering everything she said with a reminder of its sinfulness.
After about 10 minutes he gave her rites and asked impatiently if there was anything else she wanted, (heaven forbid he spend more than a quarter hour with a lonely dying woman. He probably had some flies at home he needed to pull the wings off of) she said "No, father, I guess I don't. I'm pretty scared, but at least I know I'll see the Snickers when I get up to heaven"
"Who are "the snickers?" he asked
"oh they're my babies. My kitties. One day they'll join me up there. They're my only family"
As he stood at the half-opened door, walkng out of the room, he said "Mary, animals don't have souls. Only those with souls are allowed in the Kingdom of Heaven. Don't worry, though, your family will be there, and He will be there, waiting for you with open arms" "I don't have any family, just them" she whispered. "I'm afraid your cats won't be in heaven, but the Glory of God will be waiting for you, and He is your family". And he walked out and shut the door and she never spoke another word again.
---
She was despondent. I went to her side, aghast at what I had heard, but she was UNCONSOLABLE.
I had nothing to say to counter that. I was so angry, I cried at her bedside. I said "oh Mary you know that's not true, you know you'll see the cats there! Heaven can't be heaven if your babies aren't there, I just don't believe it! He's wrong". She just curled up on her side, faced the wall, and stared at the wall for the rest of the night.
I tried in vain to reach the neighbor that had the cats, to bring them in, but I couldn't. I didn't know her name, and she wasn't on the next of kin phone list. I had the most horrible feeling inside of me.
Although she had been declining in health, she rapidily deteriorated after the meeting with the Priest. She stopped eating. Stopped drinking. Her vital signs were erratic. She never spoke again after his visit. When she was awake (which was less and less frequently), she'd just stare at the wall, curled up on her side.
I tried talking to her, but she didn't respond. Just stared at the wall.
She died during the daytime when I was at home sleeping. I fear that she probably died alone...daytimes are busy times. She never saw her cats again and I believe she went to her death with sadness and fear, instead of having a bit of hope of something to look forward to in the afterlife. That man took away every bit of hope she had and yanked from her the single bit of comfort in death--that she'd be rejoined with her Babies, her kitties, when she died. The only family she had, and that man didn't give a flying fuck about her needs. Just his need to be "right".
Who fucking CARES if the bible says "no animals in heaven" or "people who prefer red to green won't be in heaven" or "people named Frank and Mary won't be allowed in heaven". IF THEY ARE DYING, SAY WHAT YOU NEED TO SAY TO CONSOLE THEM.
That man crushed the one thing that mattered to her. He didn't care .He got his last jibe in, his shit eating grin, his God Hates Everyone Especially You attitude.
If there is a hell, I hope he burns in it.
If there is a Heaven, I know Mary/Frank and The Snickers are there, causing mischief and wreaking havoc on a bright red scooter with an Aah-oo-gah horn
----
So yeah, I guess a chaplain CAN console differently than a non-believer can. Because I know of no-one with a thinking brain that would be that heartless towards the dying, and every Atheist/Agnostic RN I know of, despite their own lack of belief of heaven/hell/afterlife would have absolutely Validated Frank/Mary's desire to know that they'd see their loved ones (furry or human) again. Anything to give someone hope when they're at the end.
:cries:
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Heddi.
You are a human of mercy....keep fighting the good fight, Heddi!
Great post, I hope it was at least somewhat cathartic. As an atheist I cannot imagine doing anything but assuring this poor soul that what they wish for at their end will be what awaits. And I would secretly wish it were true.
Julie
