The title of this blog is much wordier than I normally aspire to, but those are exactly the topics in my head. Reminds me about a Mark Twain quote. Something like, "I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn't have time." Sounds about right. And for the moment, I'm just trying to get a few thoughts out with little to no editing.
First off, I've been hearing the phrase, "I know you're busy..." a lot. A lot, a lot. In context, it's usually said with love and understanding. For example, "I know you're busy, so you just let me know when we can meet." Or: "I know you're busy, so don't worry about the committee, we'll handle things." And while I'm grateful for this level of understanding, I feel both guilty to have rendered these phrases necessary and worried that "busy" is the word most associated with me at present.
I attended a funeral for a patient yesterday during which I learned much about the person before she got sick. It was enlightening to hear her described as "a perfectionist, with never a hair out of place. She was a loving Christian woman. She was a lady." In the midst of these accolades, I had a flash to my own funeral (not uncommon while working in hospice) and wondered, What are they going to say about me?! "Kelley...was busy."
When I was younger, I somehow associated "busy" with "important." When I came to the point of being a teenager, driving myself around, I had new freedom to go where I wanted and be involved in various activities. The thing is, I'm interested in so much, that if I have ANY desire to pursue any of them then I'm pulled in numerous directions. Even a skeletal look at my life is full.
At minimum, here is what my life consists of: Work, family, friends. (Not listed in order of importance. But actually listed in amount of time spent with each)
Added to that are many things I still believe are necessary: Church, reading, singing in 1-2 groups, making art, traveling.
But here's the thing. I love being involved in so many different things, that I never feel like I have enough energy or time to give of myself 100% to any particular task. This is even true for my job where I wear two hats. The result is that I feel like one or the other of my job is not getting everything it could or should out of me. In any given day, I have to change mental gears so many times that I often get internally dizzy trying to keep up. It's why I like lists. It streamlines things.
When I recently auditioned for a role in The Sound of Music, I was worried about adding so much extra via rehearsals. But one thing that it's done for me is narrow down my life a bit. For example, I've had to take a brief reprieve from one of my committees for the rest of the year. I discovered I was more relieved than sorry.
However, I still feel as though I'm running on fumes. I've never been someone who could just hone in on 1 or 2 things. It's seems to be in my nature to flit from one thing to another. For a time, I'll feel alive bounding back and forth between activities. But over time, it begins to wear me down. Not just physically, but emotionally as I worry incessantly that I'm not doing or being enough in any given situation. And then comes a spiral of worry, guilt, and fear of further consequences. Knowing this pattern, I'm trying to press on the brakes and either slow it down or divert it altogether.
Not only am I going back and forth between many events, people, and places, but within my one job I'm particularly stretched thin at the moment. Juggling between being a Chaplain and Bereavement Coordinator is beginning to resemble an impressive circus act of Barnem and Bailey caliber. Each week, I have to balance between making Chaplain visits, making Bereavement phone calls, and documenting all of these contacts. In addition, next week I'm starting a 6wk Holiday Support Group and have to have the 2nd draft of two mailings completed. We also have our occasional "lock down" days where all staff is on deck and we audit charts in office for 9 hrs. This is called QRR. And as it so happens, QRR, my first support group, and an out of town meeting all fell in the same week. Not only that, but our census (i.e., number of patients) is higher than it has been in a year.
And on top of that, several of our patients have passed away in just over a week. Many of them, I didn't even have the opportunity to get to know before they left this world. I have a deep sense of missing them even though we didn't know each other. And now my journey will begin with their families, through grief and mourning. Here's a moment of painful honesty: I feel like a good and qualified Chaplain. But I don't feel as qualified for bereavement care. It scares me and makes me feel like a fraud.
Another result of having so many people pass away all of a sudden, is that the lives of these people get jumbled in my mind. I didn't have the opportunity to meet some of them. Many were on our care for too short a time. And now, in their deaths, I feel sad that their stories are left unknown to me and that their names and faces blur together. They were individual people with their own life stories and self-worth. I believe they deserve to be remembered in their death and I hope to learn something about them through bereavement care with their families.
As a hospital Chaplain, this was a normal feeling. People would come in for somewhere between 2 and 4 days before they were discharged. When I made Chaplaincy visits, I may only have the first visit, because, even if I returned the very next day, many of them were gone. In a vocational sense, I had a difficult time narrowing down my purpose. I knew my role in the trauma room and with families awaiting news on their loved one. I knew my role in an ICU and with families trying to weigh options in literal life and death situations. But in typical, day-to-day Chaplain visits, my role was less clear to me, although I didn't have language for it at the time. If I had, this would have been a good topic to discuss with my CPE group.
As a hospice Chaplain, I feel a clearer sense of purpose. Here's what I imagine my role to be: I bring individualized components of faith and spirituality to hospice patients who no longer can attend a faith community. On the whole, my "interventions" as their called include reading from the Bible, singing sacred music, offering prayers, listening to stories from a person's life, watching TV with people so they're not alone, providing companionship, reading from other texts like poems or novels, holding a person's hand, having theological conversations, having silly conversations, laughing, and always trying to be kind and compassionate. And each of these interventions will look different depending on the recipient. I pray differently for a patient whose Southern Baptist than I do for a patient whose a Progressive Christian or doesn't associate with any particular faith group. My personal experience coupled with my education and training help me to discern what's most helpful and appropriate in various situations.
Lately though, facing so many deaths in a short amount of time, I've only had the opportunity to meet some of our patients once before their gone. When people find out I work for hospice, the responses usually include some version of the question, "Isn't it hard to be around death so much?" Normally, it's not. Because death, or Death, is not an extremely frequent visitor, only occasionally swooping in for a visit. But right now? Yes. It is hard. I want the opportunity to sit still and consider each deceased person individually and learn about them while caring for their loved ones throughout the next year.
This past Sunday at my church, in one of the homilies was this phrase: "We have traveled far and we have traveled fast. Now we must allow time for our souls to catch up with our bodies." Yes. That is what I need. All my running around seems to have left my spirit and soul behind. In my mind, I imagine a ragged-looking me gazing wistfully at my soul, dancing around, smelling flowers, twirling and giggling...she's just waiting for me to sit still long enough so we can reconnect properly. I can hardly imagine having entire days to work toward this enterprise. However, I will be more intentional in having many moments on a daily basis that let her, my soul, catch up with my body.
Blessed be.
