My ministry has recently expanded to include working two days a week as a chaplain-intern at Hospice by the Bay. It is holy work: accompanying people (and their whole families as well) at the end of their lives. This work wakes me up and blesses me the same way performing weddings and being someone’s spiritual director does! It’s the same work, really. Being there. Attending to what is.
It’s easier in Hospice work, though, to take my self out of it than it is when creating and then “performing” a wedding or baby blessing. In those rituals, and even in the spiritual direction relationship, there is a strong pull (at least for this minister!) to feel I am somehow central to this event. And the people involved—the bride and groom, or the directee—tend to reinforce this idea by giving me praise or gratitude, as if I were the one doing the work. But the wonderful thing about hospice chaplaincy is that the focus is clearly on the patient, and on the awareness of divine presence. I am able to detach from my giant ego and just be one of a whole team of people caring for people who are on this mysterious and sacred journey. It’s a perfect example of “It takes a village…!”
Last week I sat with a woman who has dementia, while someone entertained the residents at her facility by playing his guitar and singing great old songs from the 30’s and 40’s and 50’s. She was more tired and absent than usual, but she held on tightly to my hand the whole time we were together. She broke out in a radiant smile when I said “Toot, toot!” while everybody sang "She’ll be comin round the mountain when she comes." Then she dozed off.
Another patient, a Christian Scientist, also has dementia as part of her diagnosis. Several times she had seemed completely absent or turned inward when I visited her, so I read to her from Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health, as well as some passages from the Bible referred to in the book. On my last visit, she was a little more present, and her caregiver told me she had been speaking that morning. So I asked her if she wanted me to read from Science and Health again.
When she turned her face away to the wall, instead, I just sat next to her, breathing with her, letting her be. When it was time to leave, I said a little prayer, and her caregiver wept, and said she knew that helped the patient…and her.
No place to go, nothing to do. Just this person, in this moment, being exactly the way she is. That is the blessed work. That is where God is present. What a gift!