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A Chaplain’s Cathartic Collage
Editorial Note: The word ‘collage’ in the title of this article is very important. It is important in order to appreciate not only the tapestry of images, conversations and experiences of people who are undergoing the despair of loneliness and suffering, but also how the author has responded to these people in his collage. The author describes his experiences in very vivid terms. In his own words, it is an “effort to capture the ‘guts’ if you will of hospital chaplaincy as I have experienced it. It is meant to honour each of these experiences as being a part of a whole series of experiences that have deepened my appreciation for the human struggle and for my own humanity.” The reader may find these descriptions startling and maybe even offensive. I would suggest that it is quite possible that the streets of Bethlehem were filled with such scenarios during the census when the Son of God came to join the human race.
Tell me the colour of your sputum. Show me that blood-blistered ravine running to the bone. Draw me into your marital wound. Drone on, drone on and let the emptiness out. If you have to, whine and whimper, bitch and flail, kick and scream. Come Mr. 3-piece, pompous-asked, maverick man, let your right-winged clamped off anus spew forth. You’ve mentioned that your wife is a ‘Eucharistic minister’ and no one has come to see her but continue, please. And ‘you’, let the words trickle out, push up the dredge, wait on your tears, soak in the dying embers, be alarmed, cling to my leg in the hallway, fight for your sanity, hold tight to the absurd rationale, show me your chains. Rail against Dr. Hierarchy, teem down on nurse make-believe, rage out at the innocent and well-intentioned. I too am beginning to question who the real sick one’s are here. Control the time when I come - tell me when to leave - point that nicotine stained finger at me and tell me God is a joke.
Tell me you need me and I’m the best friend you’ve ever had. Tell the next person the same thing. Throw your arms around me. Tell me that my coming has ignited your addiction. Don’t look at your problems. Don’t face the blackness -- let’s talk about fishing. Speak of what it’s like to die, to suffer, to live with chronic pain, to lose your husband of 50 years, to lose your daughter of 17, to not be sure about God anymore, to give the middle finger to your cystic fibrosis. Suck me deeper into your hellish existence and tell me again how you’re gonna take your own life with a mickey and a sharp blade down at the beach. Yes, I’ll go up and console your Mom now that you’ve told her your suicidal plan. Ease out what he did to you, what it’s like to have a husband who is your pimp. Slowly come around to telling me how it feels to be unsuccessful…at suicide. Or, yes, rejoice that it was an accident and not intentional. Gradually discover what it’s like to lose your limbs and skin to a mattress fire. Tell again excitedly about your intimate relations with the Queen and Wayne Gretzky. It doesn’t startle me, anymore, to hear you say you want to shoot God. Complain about your boss. Speak cautiously and softly reveal a family secret, tell me about the troubles at home. It’s O.K. to tell me about the wrongful conception of your first child. If you’re able to access your feelings toward your uncle…go ahead. Yes, I’ll stumble through helping explain to your young kids that your alcoholic Mom is going to die.
Pull me aside, drop a bomb on me, confess your guilt, and take off before I can find my senses again. Call me at home about the suspicious findings of the autopsy. Wail out the pinching, searing pains of guilt and loss. Look at me stone-faced with boiling rage - tell me how healthy your boy seemed just yesterday. I’ll meet you at the morgue. Fall to the ground, faint at the front entrance under the demon-dark fury of death. Ask for a blessing, a prayer, a reading, an exorcism, to hold your hand, to join your team in the world sex games and urge me to consider as I would be a valuable member. Let me see again, on your face of tears, the meaning and the fruit of forgiveness. You don’t have to explain why you’re not religious, or apologize for swearing, or feel shame at wanting life to end. Feel sorry for yourself.
Show me the bulging embolism in your private parts, throw up in front of me, urinate in a cup while we talk, hack up that mucous mass, ask me again at the top of your lungs if I’m a woman and keep calling me Janet. Tell me what it’s like to be a 6’6, 260 lb, Mennonite man who wears women’s clothing, has a personal relationship with each finger, and is sensitive about being called by his/her female name. It’s O.K. I will climatize to the smell of your bodily fluids. Sorry about the interruption can you continue now about the government’s conspiracy, the torture tactics of medical staff, and your fear of Hell’s Angels. It makes sense to me when you say that for you it is a choice between drugs and a bullet. You’ve got a lot of work experience -- you’ve been a drug dealer, panhandler, dumpster diver, prostitute, addict, you know the in’s and out’s of Corrections Canada, and have even thought about being a preacher. If you don’t mind I don’t think it would look too good for me to be around when you smoke that sucker right here on the terrace. Did it hurt when you used a razor to inscribe onto your chest the words: “All Fucked Up”?
Forgive me, of course it’s not good to show up at the Eating Disorder Clinic at 12:OO noon. Did you say you get up at 3:00 in the morning and exercise till 7:00? I can’t say I understand it but when you describe it as an addiction - a monster living inside you - it helps me sort through these mind games we’re playing. I too think that that church member of yours, “outta go back to deacon school”. Wheel your chair across the cities’ main bridge en route to score. Ask me if they’re serving your toes for lunch today. Keep railing against the Kitchen staff. Can you explain more of what you mean when you say, “you don’t go from being rotten to being good.” And I don’t question for a second that you have indeed done those things you said you have. Come at me down the hallway, weird me out, show that you’re attracted to me, tell me about your homosexual relations with a certain priest, catch me again at the end of shift.
Call me Preacher, Pastor, Padre, or Priest, Father, Reverend, Minister, Chaplain, or Religious Guy. Make it clear that all you need is your Bible. Ask me in front of your family members in ICU if I know the LORD? Then after hearing my background let it be known that it is just ‘you’ and ‘I’ who apparently ‘know’ the LORD. Insult me, tell me I’m not good for much but then don’t let me leave. Tell me you’re fine and that you won’t be needing a visit and then proceed to uncover an hour’s worth of heartache and desolation. Bounce between being stern-faced and breaking down under the crushing sorrow of your Mom’s imminent passing. Teach me about living with cancer and bring my jumbled up life into clearer focus. If I hadn’t actually witnessed your 680 lbs. frame I would not have believed that you ate $120.00’s worth of Chinese food per day. Reveal your shattered soul, speak of your worthlessness, go on with your story of how the police found you curled up on the street and ready to die. Show me your abdominal stab wound, your stump, your scars, your burns, your swelling, and the marks of war. Watch me to see how I’ll react. Slip me a $20.00 after my prayer. Be so generous to me despite the recent loss of your son…I’ll always remember you when I go through the Interior. Beam like the sun at the slow but sure rebirth of your husband. Walk through the valley of the shadow of death…fear no evil…wail and cling and pound on the one who you love, who is now a corpse. Hold up your young children to tell their Daddy to “get better soon” when you’ve been told a dozen times that there is no chance of survival. Cast daggers at whoever believes what the medical people are saying. Or, be relieved at the passing of your spouse. Or, urge him to “wake up!”, “wake up!” and then cry and cry and cry.
Note that we are wearing similar shirts today. Look for another one that is even more similar so we can “look like brothers”. Blast out of the blue, out of your neatly combed white hair, out of your well kept outward appearance, the desire for wild sex. Warn me that you’re not about to be converted to believing that Jesus is the only way. Remark to the nurse as we leave for our walk that you’d rather be going with her. Then, after I bring the conversation from the global and the apocalyptic to the personal realm, be awestruck by this pastoral transition stretch out your hand in congratulations and tell me I did a great job at shifting the focus. Be mesmerized by this the rest of the visit. Always have me put my hand on your head when I pray for you.
Dance your cocaine dance on top of your bed…lie there skin and bone in a four point restraint, with oxygen mask feeding you and tattoos covering you and let me know that if I ever get into trouble you’ve got people who could hook me up. Last time I saw you we joked in the smoking area…you were always so pleasant…now I look up from talking to your sister in ICU to discover it’s you that I’ve been sent here for, you that requires some final prayers, it’s you. Look now like you’ll crack right down the middle, terror stricken, like a deer in headlights after news of the aneurysm and say, “he’s my whole life…all I have is him…we do everything together and its been that way for 40 years…so what do I do now?”
Shock me after Christmas with bruises on your face and one more failed attempt at your own life. First being found before asphyxiation was complete and then finding that the rope wouldn’t hold you. You, young man, just like me. Let’s continue to talk about this black snake that comes over you. Let’s be confused together about the smorgasbord of diagnoses that you’ve been sentenced with and then released from. Ask again for the 23rd Psalm. Threaten to end your Mom’s suffering early and then to end your own. Meanwhile, I’ll panic along with the head of security and the other staff. Only agree to go get checked out in Emerg if I stay with you the whole time. Turn this night into a long one. Get weary, become enraged, fall apart at the seams, let tears come.
Tell me about the years it took to forgive the doctor who wrecked your spine. Praise the pain doctor for his kindness. Be miffed at how they could overdose you down in the O.R. so that you woke up delirious. Be enraged at what you were told in ICU, and then in the PCU, and with this present mess with the feeding tube. Wake up after they said you wouldn’t, talk after the findings showed that you couldn’t, make jokes, ask for music and ice cream. I too find it remarkable and disturbing that the palliative folks are now saying that your husband could very well walk outta here. We peer into the backyard of each other’s religion and culture. At this border we share deeply in common prayer for your husband’s heart to start, again.
Actually, I don’t see the men you say are walking on top of those buildings over there. Page me, and yes you owe me for this, to come in to debrief the kitchen staff after the alarming and near violent altercation between the two cooks. You dreamed of Jesus last night and you say you made a lot of money in the male sex trade while you went to your Ivy League school. Your hypermania glows. I don’t know what to believe but I do know that you were an olympic athlete who defaulted. Have a priestly temper tantrum over your little cards. Be miffed and expect me to explain how Robert Scheuller’s ‘Hour of Power’ hypnotizes your little dog every Sunday morning. Show me the evidence on your body of having fought for the Sudanese Liberation Movement, reveal what it’s like to survive on your own urine, and to lie here now with HIV. Bad dreams, insidious guilt, corroding secret, beautiful smile.
What I have offered in these most sacred moments I am not good at measuring but what you have offered me has been sheer gift. The wisdom of those who have suffered. Walking me to the borders of human experience. A collage of clinging on and letting go. It brings us back to our common humanity…getting at what is real…stripping the soul of all its tricks and appearances…in brokenness we share communion together. In beauty and in truth. God help us.
by Glenn Pascoe
Posted by editor on September 30, 2003 10:55 AM