Who's An Angel?

At church the other day a man came up to our choir area after Mass and said to me, “You sing like an angel.”

That reminded me of another man who called me his angel. I first met “Bob” when his wife was in the hospital, just diagnosed with cancer, and he was terrified. In her room, he kept a running patter of positive comments and encouraging words, but later he came down to the Pastoral Services office and shared his deepest fears. I was humbled that he trusted me enough to be that open.

Bob and “Sherrry” weren’t strong religious people – I seemed to attract a lot of those kinds in my work, which was interesting. But they were deeply spiritual and very open to prayer. They just didn’t always do that in a church.

Over a period of several months, Sherry was in and out of the hospital for treatments and setbacks, but then they finally got the word that she was in remission. I was delighted. As much as I enjoyed ministering to and with them, I always hated it when patients came back.

Then one day I got a call in the office from a room upstairs. It was Bob. He had heard me say the Morning Prayer – I worked in a Lutheran Hospital where prayer was an important part of the treatment program. Bob said, “I heard that prayer and recognized the voice of our angel.”

I asked if Sherry was back in, but he said no. This time he was the patient, but it was nothing serious.

Over the next year, they would come by the Pastoral Services office when they were in for routine checkups, and when I resigned to move back to Texas, they came to my going-away party. I still have the plaque they gave me that says, “You are an Angel.” It is hanging here on my office wall and reminds me daily of the blessing they were in my life.

I do believe in angels, but I’m not so sure who was the angel here.

A Time to Die

During my years of working in the hospital, I found it odd that some people seemed to be able choose the day they were going to die, and it happened, while others kept choosing to no avail. It made me wonder why people desperate to leave the misery of their illnesses often hung on for months, sometimes even years, unlike a few who seemed able to bypass the waiting by sheer determination.

Such was the case of one woman who was diagnosed with liver cancer. Her cancer was stage three – certainly worth a bit of a fight for some people – but she opted not to have treatment.

Her family was distressed at this decision, and I was called in during one particularly emotional moment when her son was begging her to reconsider. I have to admit that I didn’t agree with the woman’s decision. She was only in her early 70’s, healthy, and had a large, loving family. Given her circumstances, and the prognosis of several more good years, I thought she should give it a shot.

But that wasn’t my call. Nor was it her son’s. It was hers. So I had to help the family accept the decision.

Once they came to terms with that, she threw them another curve ball. She did not want to go home to die. She didn’t want to put them through the experience of having to care for her 24/7.

Again, I didn’t agree with that decision. Some beautiful things happen in families when they share a death journey, and I thought she was being thoughtless in denying her children something they obviously wanted. Besides all that, her cancer was not that far advanced. The oncologist thought she could live 6 months to a year.

But again, this was not my call. It was her decision, and as long as her insurance would pay for long-term care in our nursing home facility, she could go there. Our medical social worker arranged for her transfer, but indicated the woman only had coverage for 60 days.

Over the next two months, I visited the woman two or three times a week, and she continued to pray for a swift death. As the end of those 60 days drew near, she seemed unconcerned about possibly having to go home and finally told me that she was confident God would take her before that. The fact that medically she was no where near that moment didn’t deter her from that belief.

On the 61st day we had our discharge rounds in the Oncology Department and were informed that the woman had died shortly before midnight the night before.

We were shocked. No way should that woman have died. But once we recovered from the initial surprise, we realized it would be fruitless to try to figure out how that could have happened. We had all simply experienced too many mysteries to worry about one more.

And obviously she had some kind of pull somewhere.