More About Maggie

The dynamics of Maggie’s family were most unusual. There were four adult children, two men and two women, who all had problems of one sort or another, and Maggie freely admitted that her lifestyle and lack of skills as a mother contributed in large part to the dysfunction. That and an alcoholic ex-husband who was the father of the four.

But in these later years, Maggie had tried to make peace with her family, and with God, after finally finding a second husband who was life-giving instead of life-destroying. She was particularly close to one daughter, “Katie,” who had forgiven Maggie for past mistakes and accepted the new husband. This particular daughter was more emotionally stable than the others, and had gone through some counseling to come to terms with her past and how it affected her. The other three seemed immersed in their dysfunction, and were not open to forgiving Maggie or accepting her new husband, “Hal.”

That made visiting times at the hospital a bit of a challenge when more than one showed up at a time, and it wasn’t a huge surprise to me that the people most willing to step aside for the demands of the others were Katie and Hal.

In an attempt to find some reason for “God not taking me,” Maggie wondered if she needed to stay to bring some peace to her family. Since that seemed to be important to her, I told her it was quite possible, and every time we prayed, she prayed that God would open the hearts of her children so they could all accept “Hal” and make peace with each other.

Hal, who was a professed atheist, would leave the room when we prayed. At first, I wondered if he was offended by the prayer, but one day he told me that he wasn’t offended at all. He knew that was important to Maggie, and respected her for her faith, and he felt like it was somehow disrespectful for an atheist to remain in the room during a prayer.

Even today I still find that most interesting and profound.

Maggie lived for three more years, but was in and out of the hospital several times for complications of diabetes and respiratory problems. Each time she was admitted, I would visit her and ask how the “family peace plan” was going. She would just shake her head, so we would pray some more.

Finally, the last time she was in the hospital, she told me that maybe the reason she was still hanging in had nothing to do with helping her children, as they all seemed to have the same problems they always had. I told her that these questions of “why” often have elusive answers, and if she has had any joys in the past few years, perhaps that was reason enough to be alive.

A few months later, Maggie died suddenly at home. Then she got her answer, but more about that next time.

The Gift That Was Bob

When I was working in the hospital, there were many instances when I felt like I was benefiting more from visits than the patients were, and my visits with “Bob” were definitely in that category.

In addition to the beautiful music that he so freely shared, I was also privy to his strong faith and unwavering trust. He never asked why God did this to him. The only “why” question Bob asked was why God didn’t just take him. Why was he lingering for so long?

As I have said before, I don’t think God is that actively involved in our dying. I know that many people believe that our day and time of death is preordained, but it is not a concept I have ever been able to embrace. Not that there is anything wrong with it. It’s just not part of my theology.

So I couldn’t answer Bob on that level. But I could help him see all the ways his life continued to be a blessing to many people. He was at the hospital so many times in a two year period; I think every employee there knew him or his family. And everyone was touched in some way.

His life “graced” our hospital in so many ways, and the God part in all of this is the grace.

Hear The Music

I am not a poet, but occasionally some lines will pop into my head, so I write them down. That happened now and then when I was working at the hospital, and one day I realized I was writing one for a patient, “Bob”

He was an elderly black man with a large, loving family and his illness dragged over a number of years, the last two keeping him almost completely bedridden. He had congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and diabetes.

One of the great joys in Bob’s life, besides his family, was music. He sang in his church choir, and one daughter said he sang around the house all the time. She could remember having song fests when she was young, and they would sing all the popular songs as well as church songs.

During Bob’s hospital stays we would sing whenever he felt up to it, and often our singing would draw other folks in the room for a chorus or two, including nurses.
To hear Bob sing “Precious Lord” was a tremendous blessing.

One time when I brought the young man from Rehab Day Services to sing with Bob, he cried. I can still see the smile that lit up Bob’s face, despite the tears, and he said, “That boy sings like an angel.”

Bob's delight in music touched my heart in a special way, and I finally realized one day that the snatches of poetry in my journal had been inspired by him. And I knew this poem was for him.



Sing the song of life,
Take it,
Embrace it,
Carry it deep in your heart
Where the melody reaches out
And plays to the rhythm of your soul.

Dance the song of life.
Feel it,
Rejoice in it,
Let it carry your soul
To the far reaches of the heavens
Where God dwells.

When the song is ending,
Don't despair.
As the final note draws near,
Take it,
Embrace it,
Rejoice in it,
For the song never really dies.

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.

Gone Fishin'

Sometimes ministry takes strange turns. One wouldn’t necessarily consider fishing a ministry, but in the case of Mr. Charles it was.

Mr. Charles, a retired Presbyterian minister, was our neighbor in Omaha and about a year after his wife died, he was diagnosed with leukemia. It was not the virulent leukemia that kills so many young people, He had Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia, which is a slow progressing form of the blood cancer and is very treatable for several years.

I first met Mr. Charles when I was out walking my dogs and would go by his yard. He was one of the few neighbors who would be outside no matter what the weather was like, and we would often chat for a few minutes. He was thrilled to find out that my husband is a minister and that I am a chaplain, finding a common bond in shared ministry.

When I would stop to visit, some of our other conversations revolved around fishing and the great walleyes that could be found in lakes north of us, although Mr. Charles preferred the trout at a lake much closer. One day he told me how much he missed fishing, and I was surprised to find out he was no longer going out. He explained that his children, both of whom lived some distance away, were afraid for him to go out alone now that he was sick, and the friend he used to fish with was no longer able to.

He talked about this a couple more times when I stopped on my daily walk, and finally it hit me that maybe he was really grieving for this loss in his life. I asked if he would like to go fishing with me sometime.

“Oh, I thought you would never ask,” he said.

“But why didn’t you just ask me?”

“Because a black man cannot invite a white woman to go fishing,” he said. “That is the way I was raised. I could never be that forward. But there is nothing in that code of conduct that says I cannot accept your invitation.”

So, for the next year, Mr. Charles and I went fishing about once a week in prime fishing times, stopping only when winter snowed us in.

Sometimes we would talk about the beauty and bounty of God, and other time we would talk about social issues, or books, or whatever topic struck our fancy. That would always be on the drive to and from the lake, however. The time at the lake was spent in quiet contemplation of the warmth of the sun, the gentle splash of water against the dock, the screech of a gull, or the drone of a curious bee circling our can of soda.

Actually catching a fish was never a criterion for measuring the success of a fishing trip.

The Magic of Music

One of the patients at Day Services was a young man who had been in an automobile accident and had a severe closed-head injury. He had been in a coma for weeks, followed by weeks of inpatient rehab. Since I can’t use his real name, I’ll call him Dave.

Prior to his accident, Dave had been in a band with some other high school buddies, and he wrote much of the music. According to friends, the band was quite good and had actually played a few gigs, with hopes of more to come. Unfortunately, the accident had dashed those hopes, but Dave still liked to sing and would occasionally attempt to play my guitar.

One day while I was playing the usual warm-up exercise I do right after I tune my guitar, Dave focused on the music. When I stopped, he asked me to keep playing the song. “It’s not a song,” I told him. “It’s just a little riff I do.”

“But it’s a song,” he said.

“Okay, sing it.”

He did, filling in with a melody and lyrics as if he was reading them off a piece of sheet music.

He sang that song every day for a week, with only slight variations in the music, but wide disparity in the words due to his short-term memory difficulties. So I got the idea to tape him singing and send the tape to my son who writes music. I asked my son if he could write out the music for Dave, smoothing the rough edges of the melody and filling in missing lyrics.

A few weeks later I was able to gift Dave with a tape of his song, as well as sheet music. He was thrilled. He still couldn't remember the song from day to day, but his father told me Dave listened to the tape every day on the way home from the hospital.

Others in Day Services had certain songs they wanted me to play week after week, and I thought that all I was doing was making them happy for a little while. I had no idea that the music was actually helping them physically.

I knew of music therapy programs in healing, but had always thought of them as good for the soul, more than the body. But the director of the Day Services said that the music was helping, especially in Dave’s case, the patients’ brains to make new synaptic connections to compensate for those broken in the accidents that caused their brain injuries.

Even today, over ten years later, it still thrills me to know that this meager musical talent was able to have such a positive impact.

Shall We Sing?

One of the areas I served when I was taking my CPE classes was Rehab Day Services, housed in a large room furnished like a home with comfy chairs, a dining table, flowers and artwork. Patients who had suffered head trauma from accidents or strokes and had completed the in-hospital rehabilitation would come for outpatient rehab and spend their down time in Day Services.

During lunch, there could be as many as ten patients gathered around the large table sharing a meal, and Jean, the Director would always encourage them to share their joys and frustrations with their rehab efforts.

Bob, my supervisor, thought it would be good for me to go to Day Services at noon to bring some spirituality to the gathering. Ha. There was so much spirituality already there, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. They didn’t need me to lead them in prayer. They already did that. They didn’t need someone to listen to their fears and frustrations; they were already “chaplain” to each other.

So I sat and ate with them and visited. Then one day someone started to sing. Several others joined in on a sweet version of “Amazing Grace” When I saw how the music brightened the faces of those who were down that day and calmed the nervous jitter of others, I realized what I could do for them.

I could bring my guitar and we could sing.

So I did, and we did, to some amazing results. I thought it was all about brightening their day, making them feel better, but we accomplished so much more.

I’ll tell you about that next time.

Learning the Hard Way

When I moved to Omaha, Nebraska from the Dallas area, I wanted to continue my hospital ministry, so I called the closest hospital to see if I could volunteer there. They had a much larger Pastoral Care Department than the hospital I had been volunteering at, and it was also a training center for chaplains.

The very nice man, Bob, who took my call, told me that in order to work in any pastoral care capacity at the hospital, I would have to complete at least one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). My informal training through the hospital ministry organization at my previous church didn’t count. Nor did my years of experience. Both of those, and the fact that my husband is an ordained Permanent Deacon in the Catholic church, would qualify me to enter the CPE program, but weren’t enough to let me volunteer.

I’ll admit it. I had a bit of an attitude about that. Who was he to discount what I had done? I was trained by a woman who had years of experience with Hospice. And didn’t he know I was a good person and only wanted to help people?

Actually, I think he did. And when I was able to let go of my attitude and sign up for that first unit of CPE, I started to understand. To be a chaplain, it takes more than being a good person, and we are not there to help people in the way most people think.

When I think about the first few months of that first unit, I cringe remembering all the poor people I tried to “help.” Bob was the CPE supervisor, so I met with him weekly to debrief and go over Verbatims. I would feel so smug because of things I did to help people, and Bob was quick to point out that wasn’t my role. “You aren’t here to ‘fix’ things,” became his typical response to me, until I finally started to get it.

I went on to take three more units, which then qualified me to work first as an on-call chaplain, then part-time and finally full-time for several years. That was an incredible experience, and I am so glad that Bob stood his ground.