The Value of Just Showing Up: Part 1

December 3, 2007

This afternoon at 4:34 pm, M died. I was called at noon to attend her death. Emails flew back and forth as I tried to get coverage at my job site and sort out family stuff. She had been a very long time parishioner of the parish that I served.

I arrived at the ICU a little before 2:00 pm. Good medical staff. Sensitive people. Two of M's friends from their women's spirituality group were there. I learned a lot about M's story that I didn't know from these women and from talking with M's sister on the phone.

Things were very calm, quiet and clean. This lady was much loved by friends and spiritual communities. She was a powerful and colorful force to be reckoned with.

But she was not in that room. She had already crossed over. Only the shell that had she existed in remained marginally alive. Fleeing from a body that had suffered from polio, a traumatic accident, breast cancer and the results of all these assaults, she was now sailing free. While we waited.

When we were alone, I sang to her. That's all I knew how to do. "Peace is flowing like a river, flowing out of you and me." Flow M.

It can sometimes flow easy. It did tonight as I waited for M's last breath.

In my family we didn't do death. We were a very small family. That's what happens when your relatives don't want much to do with you. Or visa versa. Death was always premature. And sanitized. It happened in a solitary fashion. Then you heard about it. None of the prolonged messy stuff.

So it was a challenge for me when I became a student chaplain in a hospital in San Francisco's Mission district. It was a required internship. Despite the fact that I grew up with a grandfather that spoke only Spanish until he was 7 years old, I was monolingual; English only (mostly). I was terrified. Some days I felt useless walking those hospital corridors. I couldn't always communicate well and I was uncomfortable with old age and sickness (true confessions here). But the elderly Hispanic aunties and grandmas loved me. They loved my eyes and my very long hair (how did I keep up that hair?). They were happy to see me and hold my hand.

I would tell my supervisor that I could do nothing skillful or brilliant. I was just Chaplain Barbie.

Just showing up.