Pandemic Parables: The Right Thing

Pandemic Parables: The Right Thing
Monday June 29, 2020

Yet another change, a scaling back, happened today in the hospital in Frederick, MD where I am working as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August. The friendly faces that for the past few weeks took your temperature as you entered the building have all gone.

They were the ones who cheerily greeted both staff, same day surgery patients, and the few visitors that are allowed. They asked about any possible Covid-19 symptoms, and gave out colored bands that went around wrists or badges to prove you had passed under their vigilant gaze.

They are no longer.

They have been replaced by a machine.

Ah, the way of the world!

From today staff have to take their temperature at home and stay there if it is 100 degrees or more. Before starting to work they must swipe their badge against a newly installed reader to attest that they have indeed taken their temperature that day and are free from Coronavirus symptoms. Anyone who is not staff will have temperatures checked by the security officers at the main foyer, which is the only entrance that is open, besides the Emergency Department.

So first thing this morning I took my temperature. It was normal.

There was a nurse sitting by the new check in device to guide people through the change.

“What happens if people swipe without having taking their temperature?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “they will have lied.”

“Do you think they will?” I said.

“Oh yes, people do.” She responded matter-of-factly. “Of course that is not the right thing to do.”

Later I was in Same Day Surgery responding to a Code Blue – called when someone is in danger of dying. The teamwork of the medical staff, their intense dedication, never ceases to amaze me.

I prayed. They worked. The patent lived. Glory!

Afterwards, when the adrenaline had dispersed I overheard a conversation between a couple of nursing assistants who had been observing this medical miracle.

“Did you take your temperature this morning? Really?”

“Yes, I did,” responded the other nurse just behind a curtain and out of my sight. There was a long pause. And then she added, “I really did take it, but after I did, it broke. I managed to break the thermometer!”

I have a feeling that this taking your temperature at home development might not go as smoothly as first envisioned.

In the meantime, the front foyer seems peculiarly empty without the lovely rotating teams who used to sit beside the white, ginormous space divider, greeting people on their way in and out from work.

Let me tell you about that divider.

Several weeks ago, a long, tall, white, narrow, temporary construction structure – a Goliath-sized divider - with a tent like ceiling, sprung up in the hospital’s airy main foyer. It appeared almost overnight like a giant field mushroom and snaked from the covered car park entrance to the main front door. It is still there.

At the time I thought it would have something to do with providing a private space for temperature testing. This was a couple of days before the procedure began. But no, as I was to discover, the screening happened at a station in the shadow of the behemoth.

The screening that is now no more.

For ages I had no idea what that divider was dividing or why.

Then I discovered that a shoulder height, decorative wall that will be topped with plants is being built. Thus ensuring that all visitors and staff with have to pass by the main security desk on their way into the hospital. No more taking a short cut through the Same Day Surgery waiting area.

The project is shrouded in a construction shell to keep debris contained. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop the intense building noise that seems to happen sporadically.

A few days ago one of the wonderful hospice nurses, that I admire so much, grabbed me.

“I need you,” she said. “Come with me to the foyer.”

It turned out that an older patient had died, and his fairly young offspring wanted to sign the necessary papers without entering a clinical area.

Not everyone likes hospitals.

These young people were shaken. They had seen their father the day before. They knew he was near the end. Everything that needed to be said, was said. He let them know he loved them. Was interested in them and what they were doing.

That’s how they wanted to remember him.

Still, they were grateful when I suggested praying for them, and also committing their father’s spirit to the Lord. We settled in to pray. A hush came over the group. I was about to open my mouth and let out the first word when ferocious drilling and clattering started up from the white edifice directly behind us.

“Wait one moment,” declared the nurse, her face above her mask displaying grim determination.

The noise was so loud we could hardly hear her.

“I’ll get that to stop.”

Much to the amazement of the security guards, the temperature testers, and all in the foyer, she succeeded. This nurse is a tall, elegant, willowy figure, with beautifully coiffed hair, white before its time. She swept across the space, found a door into the construction shell, and swung it open. Then with a finger slash across the throat and a palm raised with five fingers displayed, conveyed to the astonished workmen to lay off the noise for a little.

They took one look at the determination on her face and obeyed.

They definitely did the right thing.

Don’t mess with a hospice nurse when she is looking after the welfare of her patients and their families!

This is the same nurse who told me a couple of weeks ago that she was astonished and perturbed, when going into public places beyond the hospital, to see that people weren’t wearing masks.

People in the hospital are used to wearing masks. It was always normal for the medical staff – but now everyone has to wear a cloth mask to enter the building, and walk through its halls. (However the rules have been relaxed, which means chaplains no longer have to be double masked when seeing patients. My N95 is gathering dust in a shelf in in our office – and I am grateful for that grace.)

Back to the intrepid Hospice nurse.

“I felt unsafe when I was outside and saw people milling around without masks,” she said. And I felt afraid for them. Maybe it is because we have insider knowledge. We know what Covid-19 will do even to a healthy body.”

The same thought was expressed to me recently by a charge nurse on 3B, the section of my floor that now has Coronavirus patients.

“We wear masks everywhere we go outside the hospital because we know the suffering the virus can cause,” she said. “It’s the right thing to do. And besides, if other people saw what we see daily they’d all be wearing masks. Truly”

This section of the hospital has only had the virus patients for the last few weeks. They were originally housed in a sealed off section on the same floor. That has now reverted back to orthopedics, and the Covid-19 patients have all moved to one corridor of this unit.

I asked one of the nurses on 3B what it was like to come late to the party. So much focus was given to the medical staff in the isolation wings at the beginning of the pandemic. Food and gifts poured in, given by grateful hospital staff, and the local community. As we have all become adapted to the pandemic in our midst, that is no longer happening.

It always amazes me how the human psyche adapts.

The nurse smiled. “One of my floor supervisors said that we got the Covid patients when Covid wasn’t cool.” We both laughed.

“But seriously,” she said. “The medical staff in the isolation wings were the ones who took on all the risks – when we didn’t know anything. They paved the way for us. We are learning new things every day. We were frightened at first, but now we have got into a routine and just get on with the work.”

Another nurse joined in. “We have to put on all the PPE when we go into the rooms. It can get very hot and uncomfortable, so we try to get everything done at one time and really space our visits. The patients are really, really sick when they come in. But once they start to get better they are lonely. We organize face time for them with their family, but still, when we enter their rooms they don’t want us to leave. It breaks my heart.”

The way these nurses adapt to different situations always showing grace, care, and love continually impresses and inspires me.

Talking about adapting.

During these last few Coronavirus months we have all had to adapt enormously. We have been hit with a barrage of information – some of which seems to contradict itself.

These are exhausting times.

We have had to give up so much that was familiar, reassuring. Things that we never thought would be taken from our lives. Hugs, church services, toilet paper.

There have been so many sacrifices.

Not seeing vulnerable family members when everything in us ached to see them.

Endlessly using our talents so that we can share with others – baking, making masks, gowns, face shields.

Cancelling plans for festivities, festivals, rights of passages and vacations that have sometimes been years in the making.

Sheltering in place with too many people, or no one, and the frustration or loneliness that come with those scenarios.

Incomes slashed.

Loss upon loss upon loss.

And it seems like just when it was safe to go out, in some areas of the nation the virus is starting up all over again.

Many of us are asking how long? How much more can we endure?

There is a huge desire to have it all behind us. Burst out of confinement. Shake off oppression of all kinds. But, as I keep reminding myself - Geraldine, you’ve come so far. Don’t give up now.

May none of us stumble at the last fence.

I believe this is a time of reaping and sowing. Some people might call it karma.

All the sacrifices, the tears, the determination to carry on amidst emotional pain, have not been for nothing. We are being changed. Prepared for our futures – the futures that have always been ordained for us - in a boot camp that we didn’t see coming.

I want to sow good things. Because I want to reap good things. I don’t want to lie or steal someone else’s health. I’d hate to reap those consequences.

So I’ll take my temperature every morning to make sure I don’t infect anyone at work.

And wear a mask in public for the same reason. Let us all do so.

Although it’s a pain, a hassle. It is the right thing to do. Who would willingly send anyone to be under the care of the wonderful nurses in the Covid-19 wing of any hospital? Or be a patient there themselves.

The Good Book says in Galatians 6:9 – “… let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up.”

The Lord’s promises are yes and amen. He loves us with a love that is more than we can possible comprehend.

Let us all hang on in there. The future is close.

And it will be good.

Pandemic Parables: Hidden

Pandemic Parable: Hidden
Thursday, June 25, 2020

I am unearthing things that are hidden, or at least not obvious on the surface, in the hospital in Frederick, Maryland, where I am working as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August.

For example, I knew that there was a medical library that was located somewhere within the main campus. It was mentioned in the vast amount of literature I was given on starting at the hospital. Recently I wanted to track down a magazine article I had heard of.  But no one I asked seemed to know where the library was, or if it even existed.  Finally, one of the other chaplains said:

“I think I heard that it is on the second floor.  But I have no idea whereabouts.  And I don’t know anyone who has ever been.”

And he is assigned to that floor…

My curiosity was aroused.

I sensed a mystery.

In my head I had visions of a Harry Potter scenario.  One where you needed to summon up faith and walk through a brick wall to find the platform, and the train, that would take you to Hogwarts…

Wanting to get my 10,000 steps in daily, I regularly walk along the long corridors of the second floor before taking the stairs to the third, one of my allotted areas.  These hallways are social worker and administrative assistant land.  Many of the doors have remained shut, the offices behind them empty, during the height of the pandemic. However, a couple of weeks ago one of the assistants returned.  I’ve been seeing her through her open door when I pass by.

I had a feeling she would be the keeper of the secret.

She was.

“Come with me,” she said and led me to a blank white wall tucked around a corner, away from the main flow of foot traffic. 

Inset was a door I’d never noticed before.  It had a sign on it that said:

“Medical Staff Suite. Physicians Entrance.”

“See if your badge works the key pad,” she said.

It didn’t.

“Well, mine does,” she said swiping her badge, and opening the door.  She stood back. “The library is at the end of the hall on the right,” she declared, then left.

Behind that door was a whole different world. A bubble of peaceful comfort.

Suddenly I remembered being twelve and attending a girl’s convent boarding school in England. I had an accident involving a glass window pane being accidentally broken by my wrist. I was pouring blood, and the cookery teacher, a mother of six children - thank goodness - who happened to be passing, went into action. She threw the casserole she was carrying up in the air, grabbed my arm, flung it above my head, and ran me through the nuns' part of the building to get immediate help.

The nuns' section was a secret space much speculated about by my school mates. It was an area shrouded in mystery.

I wasn’t worried about the blood. I wanted to absorb every detail of my surroundings so that I could report back.

Too many decades later I felt exactly the same way.

Beyond the door in the blank wall on the second floor was a full kitchen, a lounge with comfortable chairs, an office section with work stations.

Doctors lounged, worked, ate.

I tried to look confidently medical, and invisible at the same time as I headed down the open corridor towards the back of the space. My ploy worked.  No one seemed to notice me.

A shut door had an attached sign that said it was the library.  A free standing notice barred entry saying a meeting was taking place within.

No!

So I didn’t get in to see the inner, inner sanctum. I didn’t find the magazine article.

But in an odd way I felt that the hospital was giving up its secrets.

I began to wonder why I was so excited to find a hidden section of the hospital.

Perhaps because it mirrors what has been happening in my life. While doing this residency I have become aware of previously unseen old patterns and current triggers. This revelation, and the resulting healing has brought me to a new level of awareness and freedom, which will help me enormously as I go forward.

Also, I have penetrated what was for me the mysterious veil of hospital life. I have become more familiar with grief, death, dedication, and love in action.

We have all learned so much through this harrowing Coronavirus time. True character has been on display. Insecurities and fears have risen to the surface on a wave of exhaustion. But we are still standing. We have endured more than we ever thought we would have to.

Maybe in some mysterious way we are all slipping behind a Harry Potter wall in our lives.

Doors will be opened for us. And if they are not the walls will melt away.

I keep knowing, saying, and believing deep within me that the Lord will make a way for us, even when there seems to be no way.

The lessons we have learned during this pandemic, and the insights we have gleaned are not for nothing.

We are on our way to a new destination. A new chapter in our lives.

And though things aren’t clear yet – the library has not yet been entered – we know what direction to go in.

And we know the space behind the wall, like our futures, is good. 

Pandemic Parables: The Bunny

Pandemic Parables: The Bunny
Saturday June 20th 2020

I felt such a surge of elation on Friday a few minutes after noon when passing the gift shop in the hospital where I am working as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August.

It was open!

I charged in.

We’ve missed you! We’ve really missed you!” I exclaimed, my hands clutched to my chest in excited glee.

“What a wonderful surprise! It is so good to have you back!”

The gift shop closed a couple of weeks before Resurrection Sunday.

I have written before of the frozen Easter display including the grey fuzzy bunny who slumped further and further towards the bright orange carrot in his paws as the reality of the Coronavirus bore down upon the hospital.

One dreadful day I realized the bunny had disappeared from the window. At the same moment I spied stealthy bunny napping shadows moving in the back of the shop.

The wonderful volunteers from the Hospital Auxiliary who run the place had not been allowed in for months. At the time I presumed a couple had been granted a few hours access, perhaps to dust.

That was several weeks ago.

I’d never had any intention of buying the bunny. It was fairly expensive. On the whole I’m sensible. I didn’t need a stuffed rabbit.

But I kept staring at him every time I passed by.

A Facebook friend was incredibly kind. She read my post about the missing bunny and sent me one, a carbon copy of the bunny that had brought her comfort during a recent trauma added to the ongoing stress of the virus. He was soft, pink and squishy, with very long ears that were perfect for wiping away tears. I was very grateful. This was an act of generosity and love.

But, although I felt a tad guilty because of my new stuffed friend, I kept on thinking about the gray fuzzy bunny.

After Easter I’d had a brief conversation with two female staff members who were walking together.  I had never met them before.

We were passing the shop in different directions.

“Don’t you think that bunny looks like all of us who are left in the hospital, slumping further and further down because of the tension and stress that’s swirling in here,” I said.

They both laughed. Then one of the women pointed to the other.

“She really wants to buy that bunny. She really, really likes that bunny.”

“I do,” said the other, and she pressed her face against the window like a child in an old-fashioned sweet shop.

“But it’s closed so I can’t.”

We passed on and I didn’t think any more about the conversation.

Weeks elapsed. Then the bunny disappeared leaving a cavernous space on the shelf where his furry posterior had perched. It wasn’t part of a purging of Easter decorations. Other china and chocolate bunnies were still sadly standing sentinel. But the grey, carrot-clutching bunny was definitely AWOL, even though the shop was closed.

I pass that shop at least six times a day. I missed that bunny more and more every time I peered in the darkened window. I realized I really, really liked that bunny. I mourned his absence. I wanted that bunny.

I would go without to get that bunny.

I had to have that furry bunny!

One day I suddenly spotted that all the other stuffed animals were also missing. A whole three tiered carousel of them was empty.

Why hadn’t I noticed this before?

“I bet when those volunteers were in they took all the stuffed toys into the back so they wouldn’t become dust traps,” said a Facebook friend who’d read my post.

“The bunny could well be in with the others in the storage area.”

Like the Emily Dickinson poem, hope like a feathered thing started to flutter in my soul.

“Perhaps the bunny hasn’t really gone,” I thought.

“Perhaps he is wrapped up snuggly in the back room waiting to emerge before Easter next year.”

I wrote a note to the volunteers, although I hadn’t seen any in the shop since the bunny heist.

It started: “To the wonderful volunteers who man the gift shop”

I explained what had happened regarding the bunny, and then went on to say:

“If by chance he is still available, I would really like to buy him. Really, really like to buy him. I realize that I miss him! I have watched him constantly throughout the pandemic as I went off to do rounds and now I would love to adopt him and take him home.

“I am crossing all my fingers and toes, and sending up a couple of prayers that the bunny is safe and in your back room. Do let me know.

“My money is jangling in my pocket. Well really on my credit card. I am so hoping he is still for sale...

Thank you!”

Praying that whoever opened it would have a sense of humor, I signed it:

“A bunny love-sick chaplain.” 

After adding my name and contact details I put the missive in a white envelope and shoved it under the gift shop’s glass doors.

There it stayed.

For an eternity I saw that blob of white on the floor untouched. Day in and day out, it remained exactly where it was.

Then I saw some things had been shifted around in the gift shop.  Volunteers must have been in and left.

But the letter was unmoved.

Finally, eons later, the letter was gone. But no one was in the store. Later in the afternoon though, I saw the manager - the loveliest of women - behind the windows of the still closed shop.

I pressed my face to the locked glass door.

The manager shook her head. Weeks before she had told me she would find out what had happened to the bunny.

“It’s gone.” She said. “Sold.”

I thanked her then walked away sadly. Drooping.

Some things are not meant to be.

That was about three weeks ago.

Oh fickle chaplain that I am, I realized in the intervening time that I really could live without the bunny. But still, I hoped it had gone to a good home.

I watched as the shop windows were slowly and beautifully transformed from Easter to summer. Decorative buckets with recipes for crab boils on them, and July 4th regalia, replaced bonnets and rabbits.

Then, all of a sudden, this past Friday, the shop was open.

I discovered that they are letting that wonderful volunteer shop manager come in, and she will be helped by a staff member, the director of volunteers - an equally marvelous woman.

Six people will be allowed in at a time, and the store will be open from twelve noon until four pm Monday through Friday. Hallelluia!

It was a thrill to see those doors open!

It was such a sign that things are on their way back to normal.

(Although we still have a way to go. On Friday we had ten Covid-19 patients in the hospital and two in isolation, a slight uptick from earlier in the week. However one hundred and eighty one virus patients have been released.)

I went in exclaiming my delight that they were finally open.

“We’ve missed you” I said. We’ve really, really missed you!”

The manager smiled at me and her kind eyes crinkled.

“I’m sorry about the bunny,” she said.

“There was a meeting with one of the hospital’s compliance officers when I wasn’t here. They were discussing how best to open the store. Apparently the CO had a real thing for that bunny. She had even posted pictures of it on Facebook saying she wanted it. So an executive decision was made, and they sold her the bunny before the store was officially opened.

I suddenly realized I had seen the compliance officer.  It had to have been one of the two women that I’d met by chance months before when passing the store. The one who had pressed her face against the glass.

There was no question, the right woman got that bunny.

I felt relief.

He couldn’t be more loved or in a better home.

Clearly that grey carrot clutching rabbit was never meant to be mine.

That was confirmed when I went into the finally open gift store on Friday. There, on the shelf where the bunny had been sitting, was a placard. I started to laugh. It was a scripture from John 8:35:

“So if the Son sets you free you are free indeed.”

What a perfect end to the saga.

The bunny had been liberated.

And so had I!

I thought about the times that I knew in my heart that a person, a thing, a direction wasn’t for me, wasn’t my best option. Only to later convince myself that it was.

And I am very persuasive.

In this Coronavirus time of constant change it is easy to want the uncertainties to end, for the ever shifting ground to stop moving beneath our feet. How easy it would be to go in the wrong direction, to settle for a less than ideal solution, to make the wrong choice because of a craving for stability.

Like a mollusk searching for a rock.

Then settling for a pebble.

May we, during this oddest and most difficult of seasons, take time to go deep within ourselves and rediscover again who we are.

Why we are here.

And may we pursue that, and only that.

May we have the courage to shed all else.

May we take to heart once again the promise in the Good Book, where it says in Jeremiah that the Lord has promised to prosper us, and not to harm us, to give us a hope and a future.

 May we trust that the Lord will make a way where there seems to be no way.

May we let go of things we think we want, so that they can go to where they are meant to be.

Indeed, may all the bunnies in our lives end up in their right homes, no matter how we might try to manipulate a different outcome.

May we trust the small voice within us that guides us with truth and love, and not talk ourselves into some other version of what we tell ourselves is truth.

And may we trust at a deep level that we will have everything we need to make it through this season and the next.

Because the Lord is on our side. His promises are yes and amen. There is no shadow of turning in him.

 And that means our futures will be good.

Amen.

Pandemic Parables: Vision

Pandemic Parables: Vision
Thursday June 18, 2020

On Tuesday I achieved an incredibly beautiful balletic feat on my way into the hospital, where I am working as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August. I flew through the air in a perfect parabola gracefully landing like a softly alighting swan. 

At least that is what happened in my mind. 

Unfortunately not in reality. 

I was running late. Had to park in a more distant spot than usual in the employee parking garage. Raced to get to the foyer entrance so that I could have my temperature taken and still clock in on time. Took a short cut through some stationary cars. Didn’t see a low concrete parking divider. Tripped and went airborne. 

Seriously. 

It wasn’t one of those, “oh, I’m falling let me grab on to something” moments. No. It was more like a, “I am spreadeagled in the air with no time to think and landing with an inelegant thud” moments. 

My mask flew in one direction. My glasses hit the tarmac and went off in another. The travel mug of coffee that I was clutching emptied its contents mid air soaking one side of my body. If I had been wearing a white shirt, I’d have looked like a ragged-around-the-edges sugar cookie with symmetrical brown and white icing. 

Thanking heaven that I had on navy blue no-crumple material that hid the enormous stain, I raced, dripping, for the entrance and logged in with a couple of minutes to spare. 

Incredibly, nothing was broken. No bones, teeth, nor my grandmother’s amber colored beads that by some wonderful foresight I’d tucked into my purse so they didn’t get snagged on the bags I wear inelegantly slung around my neck in the morning. 

The only thing that was damaged, besides my pride, was my glasses that suffered a few deep scratches down one lens. (Although the next day I ached in places I didn’t realize I had hit, and felt as though I had a bad case of “old”.)

It is very interesting when you have scratches on your glasses. You see the world in a whole new way. Depending on which way you tilt your head people and objects are either behind bars or a little fuzzy. 

But then I realize that I have been seeing the world through a different lens since starting at the hospital.

Certainly since the beginning of the pandemic. 

(We now are down to eight virus patients and one person under investigation.)

Take nurses for example. I have always had the greatest of respect for nurses. Never more than in these last few Coronavirus months when I have seen their bravery. 

But in new ways their kindness is coming into focus. 

And their humor. 

One of my assigned areas is the third floor. I was describing my dramatic fall from grace to a couple of the senior nurses. 

“We’ll give you a pair of yellow socks,” said one, referring to the footwear worn by patients to stop them from slipping. 

“We can make you a belt from two of the “Fall Risk” signs, said another, the nurse manager. 

These are the long narrow signs that are attached to a door frame that alert nurses to the faulty balance of the patient within. 

“That should do the trick.”

We laughed at the silliness of it all, and I was grateful for the love and care that I felt coming through their words. 

I had felt the same care a few days earlier. I had been told very firmly by a patient in no uncertain words that they didn’t want to see a chaplain now. 

Or ever. 

Naturally I left their bedside immediately. 

On my way back to the Chaplain’s office I met this same nurse manager. 

“I’ve just been slung out of a patient’s room,” I said. 

“Oh,” she said. “It happens to all of us regularly. It was just your turn today. Don’t worry. We all love you.”

Her words followed me down the corridor melting my heart.

On the day of my fall, while still on the third floor, there was a Code Blue in the Emergency Department - someone who was near death was being brought in. The ED is one of my areas. I was headed down stairs when a social worker called saying to get there as fast as possible as prayer had been requested. 

I arrived. Behind the curtain was the patient, a team of medical staff, and the patient’s elderly husband. A nurse had already prayed, God bless her. The husband said he’d like me to pray as well, which I did. I prayed fervently for healing. 

It turned out his wife had just passed. 

And I hadn’t noticed. 

It’s moments like these when I realize how incredibly un-medical I am. 

The team stepped outside for a moment so that her husband of fifty seven years could have a moment alone with his wife. 

I joined them to recover from my mistake. 

When I came back in a few moments later I saw a young nurse had slipped into the room. She was kneeling by the side of the grieving man, who was holding his late wife’s hand. 

“You made a life together,” I heard her say. “A wonderful life.”

The elderly gentleman, in deep shock, nodded. 

It was a beautiful tableau that could have been a granddaughter comforting her grandfather. Love, kindness, and compassion shone from her. 

She left the room as soon as she saw me. I comforted the new widower, encouraged him to express his feelings, and at his request committed his wife’s spirit to the Lord. 

But the real work had already been done by that nurse on her knees.

Every day I see the compassionate side of these ED nurses, and the social workers that serve along side them. I’ve seen their tears when a young father lost his wife during a routine operation. They grieved for him. And they grieved deeply for his young children who were still sleeping when their parents left home, realizing that they didn’t get to say a last goodbye to their mother. 

I’ve seen intense sorrow in nurses’ eyes as a young mother keened out her grief after her two month old baby died. I saw the soft blue blanket they brought to wrap the lifeless body in so that the child would not be in a cold, white, hospital sheet. 

I have seen kindness in action as a doctor took off his compulsory face mask to explain a death to a grieving relative. 

A hug being given to a sorrowing wife in a time when we are not allowed to hug. 

A cart full of refreshments wheeled into a room where a death has happened so that the people in there saying a long goodbye would have sustenance. 

A hospital is full of sadness. And kindness. And compassion. And grace. 

This week relief has also been flooding its healing corridors. Some of the restrictions put in place at the beginning of the Covid-19 surge are now being eased. Some are small changes, some larger. 

Previously, the few categories of visitors that have been allowed in could only go from the front desk to the patients’ rooms, and they had to be accompanied by a staff person on that journey. 

Now visitors can go to the coffee shop and the cafeteria. 

The salad bar in the cafeteria is open again, but with someone serving you the healthy goodies instead of self serve. These are baby steps. 

A bigger ruling is that from yesterday, Wednesday 17th, one visitor can accompany patients when they are being discharged from the hospital so that they can review information and care instructions. 

I saw a husband on Wednesday afternoon, able to visit because of this new leniency, asking the charge nurse on my floor when the doctor was going to arrive. 

The husband was anxious. He hadn’t been able to see his wife of forty five years for the duration of her lengthy hospital stay. 

The doctor was delayed. 

The husband felt helpless. He told me later that he had been feeling helpless for weeks. 

Unable to help the wife he loved. 

Shocked to see how much her terminal condition had advanced during her stay. 

He had visited the charge nurse’s desk several times asking the same questions. 

I overheard his latest enquiry. 

The charge nurse was gracious, as always. She explained that his wife’s nurse would be along to the room shortly and would answer his questions. Then asked him gently but firmly to return there. 

At that moment the wife’s nurse arrived, and assessed the situation. She said to me later that she could see her father, whom she loved, in that older gentleman’s concerned face. At the time I saw her pour out assurance, and compassion, as she led the husband back to his wife’s side, answering all his questions, soothing his fears. Assuring him that the doctor would be there shortly, which she was. 

Once again I saw practical love in action through my scratched lens. 

No wonder I admire these nurses. 

These social workers. 

My fellow chaplains. 

At some point soon I will have my lens repaired or replaced. But I realized that in a way it symbolized what so many of us have been through in these past, traumatic, virus months. 

With the advent of Coronavirus we have leapt into the unknown and suffered a huge shock to our universal systems as we have landed into a reality so different from anything we have known. 

Like with my scratched lens, we have come to see our worlds in a different way. Things are not as clearly defined as they were before. 

Our views on relationships, recreation, entrenched racism have been challenged, changed. 

Past certainties are no longer as certain. Things we thought were essential have turned out not to be so, and that which is truly important has come into clearer focus. 

May we keep all that is good from these times, and discard all that has been shown to be unfair, unjust, unwarranted. 

May we know deep within ourselves that love, grace, kindness, justice, is the answer to so many questions, so many ills. And may we have the courage to walk out that truth in everyday ways, so that our lives make a difference. 

The author LR Knost sums up what I believe in this quote that I read for the first time recently. 

“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go love extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”

This is God’s work. He will give us the strength to go forward. He will give us the vision. His vision. And the grit, and the heart to forge a new future. 

A future that is good. 

Amen!

Pandemic Parables: Small Disappointments

Pandemic Parables: Small Disappointments

Sunday June 14 2020

Despite the rejoicing that the number of virus patients continues to slowly decrease in the hospital in Frederick, Maryland, where I am working as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August, it was also a week of small disappointments. 

But first the numbers. Although there have been thirty seven deaths from Covid-19 in the hospital, one hundred and sixty eight Coronavirus patients have been released so far. Hallelluia!

The victory walks are still taking place, but with much less frequency. That’s because we have far fewer virus patients in the hospital than at the height of the curve. Therefore fewer are being released (and some prefer to skip out of the hospital quietly, celebration-free.)

As of Friday night we had twelve Covid-19 patients who were confirmed and four under investigation.  That’s one less than last week - better than one more. Especially as social distancing provisos in the county have eased.  Indeed at times, and in certain situations, they seem to have been abandoned. 

Despite that development, may the number of cases  continue to decrease and soon disappear into oblivion. Amen!

The disappointments seem petty in comparison with such good news. 

So, in advance, forgive me for all the small mindedness I am about to display. 

It’s the office. 

If you remember from past parables, in the middle of the pandemic the hospital embarked on an already planned building project. This meant that the chaplains, and our boss - the head of Pastoral Care - lost our offices and were in temporary accommodation. Our boss perched in her assistant’s office. Her assistant worked from home. 

We chaplains moved into what is effectively part of the wide corridor that goes from one of the now closed hospital entrances to the Birthing Center - a short distance. Our area is separated off with tall padded dividers that are high, but not nearly ceiling height. 

This gives the illusion of privacy but you can hear every word that goes on inside and outside that barrier. 

Between the entrance doors and the start of these dividers are comfortable chairs including a couple of rockers. 

This is the waiting room for the Birthing Center. It is void of people now, but when visitors are allowed to return this is where family members and young siblings gather to await the newest member of their families. 

It is a joyous, noisy place full of loud conversations and fretful, over-excited children crying. 

When the wind is right in the morning you can smell frying bacon from the industrial kitchens below us. On some afternoons you hear an increasingly loud whirring and smell a sudden burst of jet fuel. It’s a helicopter landing on the roof above our heads, usually to whisk away a seriously ill patient to another hospital. 

As part of the course that Resident Chaplains take we have to bare our hearts in a group meeting three times a week, and solo with the head of the department once a week. During these sessions our lives and feelings are probed. 

Because of Covid-19 we now do these sessions on line. 

In our office. 

(Although I have managed to find a more private place for the solo supervision session until the end of June.)

We have been eagerly looking forward to moving. Especially when the workmen were there with their everpresent charm and mechanical noise. 

Some weeks ago the man in charge of the renovations said to me. 

“Do you know where the new chaplains' office will be?”

“No,” I said. But we are all longing to find out.”

“Come,” he said. 

I happily trotted after him. 

If I’d had a tail it would have been wagging. 

He led me to the small corridor between our old office and the rest rooms and said:- 

“All of this is being sealed off and your office is being created in this space.” 

I thanked him and rushed back to tell the other chaplains. 

It made the inconveniences easier to bear. 

However not all plans go as we think they will. The office next to our future home was expanded. Our presumed home shrank. And shrank. 

It was clear it would only fit one small desk. 

We waited, breath bated to see what the new plan was. 

And when it was revealed we sulked. 

Or at least I did.  But the others did look crestfallen. 

We were staying where we were with more suitable work stations being brought in. 

Staying in the corridor with no sound privacy, despite needing to discuss patients’ details and our own personal issues. 

We have a massage ball in the shape of a construction hat that we put in the floor and stamp on when we are frustrated. 

A lot of stomping went on in the chaplain’s office that day. 

We were even to lose our Summer cottage. 

Let me explain. 

Taking up a huge amount of space behind the partition was an ancient, enormous conference table. One end of it, near the window was my work station. I always bring in a packed lunch. I wanted a different view from the one I regularly saw from behind my computer. 

“I’m going to the Summer cottage for lunch today” I announced to the chaplains on one of our first days in this space. 

“Would anyone like to join me. There is enough room here for social distancing.”

I shoved my lunch bag across the table and walked around to join it. One of the other chaplains brought her cafeteria tray and joined me, sitting on the opposite side. 

We enjoyed a quiet companiable lunch. 

Although it seems ridiculous, our Summer cottage became a refuge of safety in the midst of sometimes turbulent, always exhausting days. 

The tension that flooded the hospital throughout this crisis seeped into our bone’s marrow leaving us constantly exhausted. 

By settling at the Summer cottage during lunch we somehow stepped into a peaceful other world. 

On Thursday we lost the cottage. 

That was moving day and men came, dismantled the behemoth and carted it away. 

There were only two of us there the next day., Friday. The two who had most enjoyed the Summer cottage. We had been given a temporary home for two days in an unused office in the volunteer’s section of the hospital. 

It had walls that went up to the ceiling. 

We tried hard not to be jealous. 

The Volunteer Director is an absolutely lovely woman. “Come and see my office she said to me,” on the second day we were there. “It is one of the grandest  in the building.” 

And it was beautiful. It was large, with two windows, a big desk and a small round conference table and chairs. I was delighted that she had such a space. 

“It was the same size and exact layout of the CEOs office,” she said with a smile. “He has a different one now but at the time his was directly above this one.”

She went over to the wall and stroked it. 

“You see this has wall paper.”

I did, it was a very lovely, elegant, neutral print. 

Her grin got bigger. 

“The workers made a mistake. They wallpapered my office instead of his. And he didn’t get his done for a couple of years after that. “

We both laughed at the ridiculousness of the mistake - and what must have been the CEOs surprise and disappointment. 

It somehow made the loss of our office space and furnishings easier to bear. 

Things clicked back in to perspective today. 

It is Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body of Christ, and so a perfect day for our church to be open and celebrating the Eucharistic publicly for the first time since the beginning of the virus. 

Free tickets were required to enter so that social distancing would be strictly adhered to. Masks had to be worn except for receiving communion, and only the cantor at the front could sing. The priests would not process to the altar, nor greet parishioners in front of the church. 

I knew this would be the case as I drove to the beautiful old building with the tallest bell tower in Frederick. A place that I have missed enormously. 

But there. Right inside the doors of the church were the priests! 

I stopped and laughed out loud. 

There were two larger than life cut outs of the priests fully robed, with enormous grins on their faces welcoming in the faithful. 

They would have been outside the doors but it was a windy day. 

It would have been terrible to see these two do a Mary Poppins - or perhaps more fittingly an Enoch - (the saint who left earth to walk with God) and ascend heavenwards. 

It made me realize once again that there is humor in every situation if we look hard enough. My Irish ancestors honed that gift of laughter during the famines and wars that have regularly swept through the Emerald Isle. 

The mass itself was really different- and yet wonderful. And comforting. 

it made me realize that our office situation will work itself out. 

Especially if I start to remember it’s benefits. 

It is spacious, has a window, and I like bacon. 

The helicopter gives me a shiver every time I hear it. As I pray for the patient being whisked away I am deeply aware that it is a vehicle of mercy, hopefully a transportation to healing. 

In this most uncertain time it is easy to cling to the way we think things should be. To people and possessions that give us comfort. Our own equivalent of office locations and enormous ancient tables. 

To wallow in the unfairness of small disappointments. 

Perhaps we are meant to let go. To allow people and situations to leave our lives trusting that ones that are right for a new season will appear when they are meant to. 

Lord help us to do so. To know when to hold on. When to let go. 

When to push. When to rest. 

When to wait. And wait. And wait. 

Knowing that You are our Provider. You have never let us down. And you never will. 

Let us know that truth with great certainty deep within our bones 

Grant us your peace Lord. 

Your shalom.

Let us experience in new ways Your goodness in the land of the living. 

And in the meantime let us rest, comforted in the knowledge that whatever the future holds. 

It will be good. 

Amen.