“A Holding Place of Mercy”

         I was called to the intensive care unit because the patient’s condition was declining and the staff thought a chaplain might be of assistance to the family. When I arrived at the room, Rose, the patient’s sister immediately took me under her wing. “He has four brothers and sisters. They’re all here.” She began introducing me to everyone in the room. “And that’s his wife.” She lifted her chin in the direction of a young woman seated beside the bed, her upper body thrown across the patient.

         I thanked Rose, went to the wife and placed my hand on her shoulder. She did not move so I offered a brief prayer and when I stepped away Rose motioned for me to follow her outside the room. We moved into the hallway and that was when I heard the news that the patient had two daughters from a former marriage and that the young women were waiting downstairs in the lobby. They had driven all night and had not been allowed to visit their father. Their stepmother, his power of attorney, was denying them access and no one, not the nurse, not the doctor, not the patient’s family, not even her mother, could change her mind.

         I quickly made my way to meet the two young women. It was awful and awkward, and I had no solutions and no answers. The truth is I really thought their stepmother would change her mind. I really thought she would recognize their need and let them in to say their goodbyes. I don’t know why but I held onto the hope that she would allow them in the room. So we waited. And they wept. And when Rose came to tell us he was dying, he was taking his last breath and that the answer was still the same, all I could offer them was chapel space and a hollow promise that his spirit would see them before he left, that he would know they were there.

         We walked into the meditation space and sat down. I prayed for grace, although I had no idea what form it could take and not much hope it would appear. Still, grace arrived. Minutes before the patient died his siblings joined us in the chapel, all four of them kneeling in front of their brother’s children. “I’m so sorry,” one said. “I choose to be here,” another added. “I’d rather be with you.”

         I don’t know what comfort it gave these grieving daughters. I’m not sure it soothed away any of the sting of their loss; but for me, as the family joined them, the room became a holding place of mercy. Siblings of a dying man giving up their place at the vigil of the one they loved, to stand side by side with the rejected, to sit in a chapel and weep with the despised, the mistreated, the forgotten.

         It was not what we asked for; but for a brief, ragged moment, it seemed enough.

You are the light of the world.

Yours,

Lynne