People often ask me how I could have worked at a hospice surrounded by the “shroud of death.” What often comes to my mind is a vision of all the countless thousands of people who work in cubicles in large corporations. I wonder how they can work surrounded by the “shroud of walls.”
One day one of the Hospice chaplains approached me with a request to visit with a patient in the In-Patient Unit. She had recently arrived the day before. This patient, apparently, was terrified of death and what that might look like and feel like, etc. For most of her life, this particular woman had been timid. She didn’t like going places alone and was often fearful about making new acquaintances. Now, she had to face the unknown experience of death … alone. The chaplain hoped that the Eucharist might give her some comfort and peace.
Later that same day, while making my visits to patients in the In-Patient Unit, I stopped by to see Loretta. I asked her if she would like to receive the Eucharist.
She invited me in the room and held out her hand to me. I took her hand in mine as she looked up at me. I guessed that Loretta was in her early seventies. Her face, while thin, was not gaunt. Her silver hair lay in curls around her face. She focused her brown eyes clearly on mine. In an enthusiastic voice, she replied, “Yes, I’d love to receive the Communion … but … do you have a minute?”
It always tickles me when patients ask me that. Compared to them, I have all the time in the world! I smiled and responded to Loretta that I had plenty of time to sit and listen.
Loretta started right in. It seemed as if she just had to tell someone … anyone … what had happened to her. “I saw God last night!” She paused for just a second and asked, “Do you believe that?” I smiled and said I had no reason not to believe her. She told me how scared she had been about dying. “I just didn’t know what was going to happen to me; and I’d been praying … and last night, God came to me in a dream and took my hand. He told me that I was doing just fine and that I didn’t need to be afraid.”
Loretta kept looking at me … I think to make sure I was taking it all in and not just accommodating her. She continued, “Then God held me in His arms all night long. And He kept whispering to me that I shouldn’t be afraid.” She smiled a gentle, peaceful smile and said, “When I woke up this morning, I felt so different. My fear is gone and I feel such a wonderful peace inside.”
I looked at this gentle woman and said, very quietly, “Thank you!” We then said a prayer and I gave her the food for her spiritual journey. That was the first and last time I saw Loretta. She lapsed into a coma and died two days later.
So, now, when people ask me how I could have worked in such an environment? I just smile and remember Loretta and the gift she shared with me … a vision of God.