grief – This Chaplain's Journey

Gone Too Soon

Hello. How are you doing today?

Yes, I know. I don’t look familiar to you right now. Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve written. I’ve got a multitude of reasons that have kept me from writing. If you’re not in healthcare, you just won’t understand.

It’s been a long time since July 18th and so much has happened since then. The one thing that has been consistent is Covid. Numbers were going down but that certainly didn’t mean that Covid was gone. People still died. People still died without their families present at bedside. People still spent a lifetime in the hospital, weak enough to be scared; wondering if they would ever make it home. Gone too soon.

That’s not all that happened. Life continued on with other challenges that kept me away from my laptop.

Since the last time we sat together, I’ve had to officiate 2 funerals for young people, far too young to be buried. The promise of a baby girl that ended a few months too soon. Such a sweet family that had to deal with a loss familiar to millions of other parents. Losing a child before they had a chance to develop is difficult. Losing a child who you’ve wished and prayed for, the one you invested so much in, is gone. Not only that, but the emotional and financial savings accounts were depleted, along with the promises and hope of a new family. I stood in front of this family, witnessing the grief in their faces and her devastated parents. I saw the face of this precious angel. There have been so many gone before they should have been, including this sweet little girl. Gone too soon.

After the funeral, I made a promise to myself not to do any more. The work I do at the hospital is heavy. Sometimes, it weighs on me in ways I don’t see coming. When I officiated this sweet girl’s graveside service, that took some of my reserve. I needed time to recover. There is a reason I do weddings and not funerals.

Well, not three weeks later, I received a text message. It was September, which happens to be Suicide Prevention Month. I received a text about a young 16 year old teenager, a boy really, who died by suicide. He was the son of someone very dear to me. She asked that I do the funeral. Of course I said yes.

As a trauma chaplain, I see too much. I see a lot of young pain coming into the trauma center on a daily basis: young people who died from ATV or motocross collisions; young people that were killed out of revenge; and young people who thought they were invincible as they traveled in their cars.

I have learned to manage through the distress when it comes to these situations. They are hard and I feel for the families. Sadly, I’ve seen enough of them to know I can appropriately manage my emotions and strength (most of the time). I can’t say the same for other traumas. The situation that is most difficult for me to manage, is when a young person takes their own life. This happens all too often. ALL TOO OFTEN. I’ve seen children as young as 8 years old, come into the hospital after having shot themselves. There have been teens coming in with marks on their necks. Some of them overdosed on something they find at home. Rarely do they survive and even when they do, a part of their spirit died in the process. Gone too soon.

I did not see the young 16 year old. He never made it to the hospital. But I saw his younger siblings when I went to their house. I saw his family. On the day of his funeral, I stood behind the pulpit and saw his friends. I saw the faces of his teammates, classmates and the friends he grew up with.

What makes it hard for me is I get it. I understandably how things can get so terribly dark that the only thing they think will take away the pain is to hurt themselves. Those young minds aren’t mature enough to comprehend what will happen after attempting suicide. They can’t manage the darkness and how to find some sort of light to guide them through. The pain has to be so much, with a darkness that blinds any feeling of hope, that suicide is the only possible solution. I understand it all too well.

I’ve seen the results of suicide, too many times. They ranged from ages 8 to 93. It’s so hard. For several reasons, my heart hurts for young teens. The word “young” means everything. Even though this young boy was surrounded by abundant love, he felt alone. He felt a pain that he just couldn’t take any more. His darkness blocked out the love of his family and friends. The darkness masked his pain from being seen by his friends and family. HIs youthfulness didn’t know what to do and it couldn’t be healed. This resulted in a family and community in so much pain, only time will be able to help. Gone too soon.

This year has been a difficult year. After his funeral, I crashed. A part of my spirit died, after carrying so much during this year. His death and connecting circumstances were too much to carry and recover 100%. What helped is I did get to celebrate several weddings I officiated. I also get to work with phenomenal people but things are just not the same. Sadly, the young ones still get brought to the hospital. Infants are still dying before they are born and teens are still hurting themselves. Healthcare workers are leaving.

Trauma is real. Suicide is real. Infant loss is real. Covid is real. Please don’t forget that. Please do what you can to help and support one another, including the healthcare workers. We hear so much about Covid but as you can see, the virus is not the only thing going on within these walls. There is so much more than you can ever imagine and no matter the age, many spirits have been impacted. Healthcare workers have been severely hit. Our spirits have taken a beating. Several have died. Many have been hurt. Too many have left healthcare all together. They are gone too soon as well. Sometimes it’s all too much to sit down and write about and when you do, it still doesn’t make sense.

Let the Silence Speak

When I started in chaplaincy a long time ago, silence was awkward for me. Ironically, I am an extreme introvert and adore silence, when it’s outside of the hospital and in my control. When I am sitting with a patient’s family, who just received bad news, or anticipating bad news, silence can be deafening.

Last week, one of my patients coded and despite heroic efforts, the patient died. The spouse was present and it would be a while before other family arrived. The spouse and I sat in the family conference room while we waited.

I used to want to fix things for the families. I wanted to say something that made a difference for them; that would help them feel better. That’s why the silence was awkward for me. I thought I needed to say something to bring comfort to the family, or to ease the family’s anxiety and distress. If their distress was elevated, I knew what needed to be done to help settle them down. If they were simply in a quiet place, appropriately emotional and concerned, I thought I needed to make the silence go away and do what I could to make things right.

With experience and maturity, I learned that nothing I could say, will fix it. No matter what I said, I could not make them feel better or worry less. In fact, there were times I said “something” and made the situation even worse. Thankfully, I grew in my experience and learned that silence can be a comforting place to sit with someone in their pain and grief.

That’s what happened last week. The spouse said she was “fine’, however it was clear, she was not. She just witnessed the code event of her husband and he didn’t survive. I acknowledged and affirmed her strength and said I would “stick around, just in case”. I can tell when someone DOES wants me to leave and I will respect their wishes but she wasn’t sure what she needed. I did step away a few times, to give her some privacy. That’s important for a family member, especially knowing that the next days ahead, she is not going to have much privacy. When I returned, she didn’t need anything, so I simply stayed in the room. We sat in the comfort of silence and it was quite peaceful.

Clinicians say to me all they time, “Linda, I don’t know what to say or what to do”. I tell them to keep doing what they are trained to do and remember that they don’t have to say anything different, or anything at all. Silence is not a bad thing, especially in someone’s grief. They already know we can’t fix things and we won’t be able to make them feel better. What we can do is remind someone that they are not alone. We simply have to be present, sitting in the silence, together.

When the wife left, she hugged me and expressed her gratitude for the care i provided, saying that it helped. I didn’t do much. I simply sat in the same room with her and let the silence speak for herself.

When You Know What the Outcome is Going to Be

Have you ever been asked to pray for a family, to pray for a miracle because they are certain that everything is going to be ok? Have you ever prayed at the request of family, although you already know the outcome will not be what they want you to pray for?

It’s been a while since i’ve posted a chaplain blog entry. I have definitely been writing. Between my work computer and my personal laptop, there are about 6-8 unfinished entries. I’ve got a lot to say, just not really sure how to say it.

That brings me back to the original questions. Have you ever prayed for a family, as they ask you to pray for a miracle? They are certain that God will do the right thing and save their loved one. Once they’ve been admitted to the hospital, that prayer request comes a little easier to fulfill, carefully worded in comfort. When the family is the family of a trauma patient, who lies in the trauma bay, being resuscitated by the ED and Trauma Teams, it’s a little more difficult to pray what they are calling out for. It’s even more difficult, when you already know that the outcome will not be what they are praying for.

The other day, at work, I was tired. When I am tired, i tend to get punchy. Most of the time, it’s a silly kind of punchy; filled with laughter, goofy comments, and jokes. That’s how the morning started. I was feeling great, hanging out with one of my teams and having a good day of support and camaraderie. We had no idea that was about to change.

When you work in a level 1 trauma center, your day can change in a matter of seconds, when there are traumas headed in your direction. Our traumas can be any age, gender and mechanism. Gun shot wounds, car collisions, assaults, stabbings, suicides, water accidents, falls, head injuries, animal attacks and depending on where you are located, even shark attacks. The list is endless. We’ve had infants to the elderly and we’ve had multiple traumas at the same time. Each trauma will impact a team member differently. We’ve worked hard to not allow the impact to maneuver it’s way into our emotions, but every once in a while, one does get to you.

When traumas come in, the ED and Trauma teams are prepared for whatever is coming. Sometimes, the teams have no idea what they are about to face but they are prepared. They get the Trauma Bay stacked with appropriate supplies and medication. The operating rooms are ready to take on whatever trauma enters their facilities. Experienced doctors, surgeons, nurses, respiratory therapists, care partners, and other healthcare clinicians (including us chaplains) are present with the expertise to do all that can possibly be done.

The unique thing about traumas is the split second it takes for one to happen and that one second changes someone’s life forever. There is no discrimination of age, skin color, gender, wealth, or gene pool. The life of this particular trauma that we were about to receive, was changed in a split second, too. There were already fatalities at the scene and this one would become another one. Despite the heroic efforts that were attempted by all the teams this day, the life of this trauma patient ended all too soon.

I was with the families. They asked me to pray for their loved ones. They wanted me to pray that God will save them and to pray with the assurance that God already has. What they didn’t know, I already knew. The prayer they were requesting would not be answered in the way they had hoped.

In my role as a chaplain, there are two scenarios that are difficult to accept. One is, no matter how hard the clinical teams work to save a patient, their resuscitation efforts may not be enough to bring the patient back. The second scenario is this, no matter how hard I pray, the outcome may not be what the family had hoped for. Either scenario is painful to accept, and even more difficult to accept when you already know how it’s going to end.

I pray that never happens to you.