Pandemic Parables: Notice Boards

Pandemic Parables: Notice Boards
Saturday July 18th 2020

As I walk around my assigned section of the hospital in Frederick, Maryland, where I am working as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August, I see many notice boards. Some are informative, some intentionally hilarious, and others make my heart sing.

Talking about walking around the hospital though, I do a lot of it. I regularly round. (Please note that I’m starting to use hospital jargon. This phrase for popping in to see patients makes me - incredibly un-medical me - feel like an insider. What a hoot!)

In an attempt to do 10,000 steps a day I usually take the long way round the hospital and climb stairs, rather than ride the elevator to get to my assigned third floor.

Yesterday I walked to the front foyer carrying the blue plastic jug that we use to fill the office kettle. I was standing by the filtered water dispenser when a staff member, possibly a social worker or a non-scrub wearing nurse, came along the corridor pushing a large, elderly man in a wheelchair. She was clearly taking him to the front exit after he had been discharged. I smiled and greeted both of them and went back to filling the jug.

On her return the staff member said in passing. “That gentleman told me.' I’ve often seen that lady walking along the hospital corridors.' I said, that’s because she is a Chaplain. 'Oh,' he said. 'I see. I thought she was lost!'”

On some days he’d be absolutely right. But not recently. At least not physically.

Back to the notice boards!

In some of the units there are boards, praising the bravery of the staff - notes that have come in from the community and messages from upper management. Some boards have pictures of all of the nursing staff on that unit with their first names. Next to the pictures on one board, there is a declaration that these nurses are the ones that run this joint.

That board is in the orthopedic unit and it makes me smile every time I pass by.

There is a board in Same Day Surgery with pictures of all the nursing staff’s dogs. I am a pooch lover. I always linger at that one.

Then there is one at the entrance to the ICU Department. This is not on my usual beat, but I often go there on Fridays when their assigned chaplain is away.

This notice board has a regularly changing quote that I look forward to seeing.

Some of them have been:

“Nursing is a work of the heart.”

“Love is in the air but so is Covid-19. Please wash your hands.”

But the one that stopped me in my tracks the other day and had me laughing was:

“Fate whispered to the warrior, “You cannot withstand the storm.” The warrior replied. “You aren’t six feet back.”

The nurses on that unit have withstood the Coronavirus storm over the last several months. But now virus patients are rarely on their floor. The ones that have come in haven’t been ill enough to need the level of care that this dedicated team give.

The six confirmed virus patients and two under investigation that we had in the hospital yesterday were all in the less intensive Covid areas on the third and fourth floor.

We are all so aware that the virus is surging in other parts of the nation and that other State’s ICU units are overwhelmed. The chaplains pray daily for those areas, and even more fervently that Maryland as a whole, and our hospital in particular, are spared a second surge.

Lord let it be so!

The Lord certainly answers fervent prayers. I was reminded of this yet again when I passed by a notice board in the Volunteer Office. On it was a sign that said:

“The world is hugged by the faithful arms of volunteers.”

Leaning against the board was a stuffed monkey with an adorable face. I’ve been in there a few times recently and each time I’d find myself stroking its nose.

Yesterday the Volunteer Director and her assistant were stuffing envelopes and saw me. The director said: “Do you know that there is a story attached to that monkey?”

I am a Storyteller. I love stories. She had my unwavering attention.

“It happened a couple of years ago,” she said.

I settled in to listen.

“There was a little boy, about three years of age who went with his parents to see the July the Fourth fireworks in Baker Park. He had with him his very favorite toy in all the world. A stuffed monkey. That monkey had been with him since birth. The little boy took him everywhere. That night, when the family got home, they realized that the monkey had somehow been left behind. The child was inconsolable.

“The family did everything they could to find that monkey. They searched the park. They even got the Park Police involved. They broadcast their plight widely on Social Media asking for help finding the monkey for the sake of a broken-hearted three year old.

“The hospital gift shop manager saw these posts,” the Volunteer Director continued.

“She said to me, ‘I know where he got that monkey. It was from our gift shop. I’ll bet he was born here. We used to stock the very same toy. I’ll get in touch with the manufacturers to see if they can ship me another one.’

“And they did,” she continued. “They sent a complimentary monkey.

The parents were thrilled. The Park Police were thrilled. We had a small ceremony here in the hospital where the little boy was given the new monkey.

He was thrilled.

He knew it wasn’t his old toy that had three years of dirt, love, and tears embedded within it. So he decided to call it by a different name. But he was thrilled nonetheless. And immediately rubbed his face against the monkey‘s soft belly to start making it his own”

“What a wonderful story!” I exclaimed. “But if you gave the little boy that monkey, how come you have one here?”

“Ah!” Said the director. “Well, so many people read about the monkey and decided they had to have one. So the shop manager started stocking them again.”

She pointed towards the monkey with the strokable nose. “That is the last one.”

I looked at that answer to prayer leaning up against the notice board and I was whisked back to another answer to prayer at a hospital twenty four years ago. It was the Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital in London, England, and my mother was dying.

She had been in the same hospital in a different room the month before for four weeks and we had filled every surface with flowers. My mother loved flowers. This visit, my father and I decided to do something different.

There was a large empty notice board in my mother’s new room. Every day when my father and I arrived we would come by South Kensington tube station where there was a kiosk selling postcards.

Amongst the ubiquitous pictures of London busses, Buckingham Palace Guards, and the Queen - God bless her - there were photographs by a fairly new-at-the-time photographer called Anne Geddes. She specialized in taking pictures of babies. Not in their Sunday best, oh no. In deliciously unusual ways.

Twins dressed in green in a huge fabric pea pod.

Triplets in enormous flowerpots with blossoms on their heads.

A single baby laughing on a floor covered in an abundance of pink roses.

Babies in flowers, and as flowers.

Glorious, glorious babies.

Incredibly, despite being so young, each infant’s tiny personality was captured by the enormous creativity and quirkiness of the settings.

My mother loved these postcards. Absolutely loved them! My father and I brought in a new one each day and I would put them up on the notice board. My mother spent hours staring at them.

One day, when the board was half full, my mother said.

“I’d really like to know more about the photographer. I want to know how she stages those babies.”

I said: “Why don’t we pray and ask the Lord to send you someone who can tell you more about the postcards.”

She agreed. We did. And my father and I left for the night.

This was pre- internet days. All the way home I prayed silently and fervently that the Lord would answer such a bold - oh let’s be real - crazy request.

Several days later, after we arrived clutching another postcard my mother said:

“Oh by the way! That prayer was answered. I forgot to tell you. A few nights ago as I was about to go to sleep a young orderly came in to clean. He saw the notice board and he said in a strong Australian accent. ‘Those are by Anne Geddes. I know her well. She lives down the road from my parents in Sydney. I used to be her photographic assistant. Would you like to know how she gets those babies to pose?’”

My mother’s face was alive with delight. She loved babies, was always full of curiosity and humor, and she loved stories.

That was the Irish in her.

She continued. “So he did. He sat by the side of this bed and explained how every one of those pictures was set up. It was fascinating. We had a wonderful time together. I haven’t seen him since.”

I don’t know if that young man was one of the many Australians who come to work in London for a couple of years before touring Europe then returning home, or whether he was an angel with an accent.

Either way he was sent by God as answer to prayer, and to give assurance to my mother, and to me, of His continued, unswerving, everlasting love and concern.

I thank God for that notice board.

And for answered prayers.

In this strange Coronavirus season, that seems to stretch on and on.

Then on some more.

May we see the answers to many prayers that we have been praying for a long time.

After all these months, when everything in us longs for normality, may we have the strength, wisdom, and grace to persist.

To withstand the storm.

To stand six feet back.

To wear the masks.

Even when we want to be done with restrictions.

When we want to stomp and cry with frustration like a three year old that has lost his beloved monkey.

Even then may we persist.

May the right people come into our lives at the perfect time, real or angelic, to assure us that we are not alone.

That we are loved.

Cared for.

Protected.

May we come to know the Healer, the Creator, in new ways. And - as the Good Book says - may we see His goodness and kindness move, encircle us, and change our hearts and circumstances in the land of the living.

May we see miracles and answered prayers all around us. May they be like neon signs on a divine notice board, pointing us towards the future.

A future filled with love and hope.

And as the sign-giving Lover of our Souls is already in our future, we can rest in this knowledge.

That the future will be good.