Pandemic Parables: Finished!

Pandemic Parables: Finished

Friday August 28th 2020

 

It is finished!

 

I am no longer working as a Resident Chaplain at the hospital in Frederick, Maryland. 

 

At 4.30 this afternoon I clocked out for the very last time after having been employed there for the last year, and volunteering as an intern for four months before that. During that time, I have completed five Clinical Pastoral Education units (CPEs,) the last three during a pandemic. (Forgive me for repeating this information but I am still slack-jawed, amazed that this is now on my resume…)

 

I have learned more, and experienced more than I ever expected.

It has been a wild, soul-searing, exhilarating, emotionally-painful, exhausting, life-changing ride!

 

This past week has been filled with final leave taking, and memories of things that have happened during my tenure. I have tried to take mental snapshots of everything going on around me, serious, serendipitous and silly, so that they will be seared into my mind.

 

One such snapshot was when my phone rang in the Emergency Department last Tuesday.

Let me explain.

 

I was issued a hospital mobile phone at the beginning of my residency that I have never quite mastered.  I like to think I have some strong points in my life. Technology is not one of them. For example, not long after I got my first IPhone – long after my peers – I was in church.  It was the holiest part of the service. A worshipful hush had fallen over the congregation. Suddenly a phone in the pew behind me started ringing.

 

Sacrilege!

 

I turned round and gave the offending chap a “please do something” stare.  He hung his head – as well he should – and seemed to nod towards my pew.

 

The phone rang on.  My stare became a glare. 

And then I realized it was my phone that was ringing. I was mortified and signaled my abject apology.

 

A similar thing happened this last week.  Every day during the height of the pandemic, and every Tuesday since the fear and tension have subsided, I have been invited to join the Emergency Department morning “huddle.” This is when the leaders briefly pass on needed information to their team.  At the end I pray for everyone who would like to stay.  It has been one of my greatest joys and privileges in the hospital. 

 

At my very last huddle someone’s phone rang. I looked around at the assembled people, but still it rang. Then a technician nodded towards the small cross body bag that I wear. Sure enough – it was ringing,

Some things haven’t changed despite a rigorous year of learning.

 

One memory led to another. I recalled that there is a reason I wear the bag.  When I first got the phone I put it in my clothing’s elastic waistband. One day, when I was new, I was walking down a long corridor when I realized that my phone had slipped deep into my underwear.

 

And then my crotch rang.

 

I still have no idea how you deal with that decently in the middle of a pre-Covid-19 crowded corridor. Hence the bag.

 

I have always taken walks throughout the hospital.  I deliberately take the longest way to my assigned beat on the third floor to do rounding. 

This week was full of mental snapshots.

 

A custodial worker stopped me in the corridor the other day. We have said hello and smiled at each for the last year but we’ve never had a proper conversation.

“My grandson,” she said with no preamble. “I’ve got a problem with my grandson…”

“Tell me about it,” I said. And she poured out her heart about her on-the-cusp-of-manhood child’s child, who was running with the wrong crowd and breaking her heart in the process.

 

She talked. I felt her deep emotions and reflected back what I heard and what I was feeling. Skills honed during this residency program. Some of the tension oozed out of her. She started to relax. She had been heard. And we prayed, right there on a second floor corridor yards from the ICU.

 

Medical, emotional, and spiritual needs being met on different sides of a wall.

 

Talking about a wall.  On my travels this past week I passed the place where the secret medical library was housed, that I mentioned in a previous parable.  I had tracked it down behind a “Medical Staff Suite. Physicians Entrance” door, and had persuaded an assistant to let me in to the inner sanctum. Only to find that a meeting was taking place within and I couldn’t enter.

 

I was determined to see it before I left.

 

I passed the assistant’s office who had let me in before and told her I was desperate to finally see the hidden library.

“I don’t think it’s there anymore,” she said.

What! Oh my goodness.

“Yes,” she continued. “They are doing renovations in that area and I’m not sure what’s happened to it. But I’ll let you in so you can see.”

 

Sure enough, when we got inside, the brass plaque on the wall, telling of who had donated the library, was gone. So had all signage.  The door was locked and the windows were ceiling height, with no ladders or extra tall basketball players around to help me peer in.  Through the crack in the door I could see lots of nothing. 

Had the library been vaporized? Nobody seems to know.

 

It remains a mystery.

 

On my floor I passed a nurse practitioner who was wearing her white coat, and I was startled. Since the beginning of the pandemic such coats were banned and so were sleeves covering up tattoos that had been obligatory when the world was right way up. This was so there was no impediment to medical staff being able to wash hands frequently up to the elbows.

 

I remember thinking that these senior-level nurses, that I admire so greatly, looked vulnerable without their coats, like turtles without shells. Now their raiment armor is back on, once again clothing the wearer with authority and respectability.

 

It is a visible sign that the Covid-19 presence in the hospital is waning.

 

We are not yet completely out of the Coronavirus woods, but the numbers are low.  On Wednesday we only had four virus patients and a further four under investigation. Two hundred and forty four patients COVID patients have been released, and we have had no deaths since the middle of June.  Thank you Lord.

 

As I have said before, the hospital is well prepared for a potential second wave, which we pray never comes. On Wednesday we heard that there now enough N95 masks that people can have a new one at the end of each shift. A far cry from the days that non-medical staff were told to wear them until they fell apart, such was the shortage and the blocked supply lines.  We have come such a long way, and we are all incredibly grateful.

 

There have been goodbyes with so many people over the last few days, including my online residency peer group. It was easier than it might have been as we have not been all together in person since March.  One of the hospice chaplains is transferring to the hospital and will start on Monday.  One will stay for a two-week interim period moving from hospice to the hospital, before transferring with his military wife and their family to Belgium. The one who I see daily will stay on for a few weeks until a third resident chaplain is confirmed. Interviews are taking place for both the hospital and hospice from the current crop of interns – all good people.  Whoever they choose, we will leave our posts in good hands.  A relief!

 

The process is all askew and not as smooth as it would be normally because of necessary changes brought about mainly by the pandemic. So although the 2019-2020 Residency Program has ended, I am the only one from our group who makes their exit today.

 

However, one of the other chaplains in our office, a supervisor-in-training, who has been at the hospital for three and a half years, is also leaving. So the four of us chaplains who are regularly in the hospital during the day, had a socially distanced final lunch together yesterday. It was the last time we will be together because of different schedules.

 

Some of you might remember from an earlier parable that we used to have a ‘summer” cottage” in the office. (One chaplain hearing about this thought we had purchased real estate.  Not so!)

It was a huge behemoth of an ancient wooden table that dominated what we thought would be a temporary office space while major construction was going on around us.  My computer was on one side near the end. So I would walk to the other side to have lunch so I could look out the window.  I called it “going to my summer cottage” and it became a ritual with the chaplains, one we became attached to. Without moving from the office, every day we had lunch in bucolic beauty.

 

And then, when the plans for our new office were finalized, we lost our summer cottage! But you can’t keep a good, British storytelling chaplain down. For the last few months two of us have been eating on the “summer trolley” – a commandeered library cart from the volunteers’ area. They have no need of it at the moment as there are no volunteers, and probably won’t be until sometime next year.

 

Today we piled boxes around this trolley so that it assumed the shape of a banqueting table.  We then covered them all with grandma’s lace – aka Costco paper towels - and had a raucous, delightful, delicious barbeque lunch.

 

A fitting final gathering.

 

The last time I logged off my computer I smiled at the screen. Throughout the hospital the main screen saver is a beach scene.  It seems to be taken from within a cave looking out.  The edges of the picture are black in contrast to the bright seascape in the center.  Somehow, after had a computer upgrade, mine was different.  There was no black in the picture. A wider view was visible as though the photographer had stepped out of the cave. There by the side of the water, invisible on every other computer I had seen, was a woman with her hair flung back.

 

Running.

 

In so many ways that picture has spoken to me during this last semester.  It certainly resonated with me today as I was leaving.

 

I clocked out for the last time and headed for my car. With great joy I carried three goodbye presents from different staff members – a staff chaplain, members of the volunteer staff, and a front desk security officer.  Each touched me deeply. 

There was a beautiful scented candle.

A mug that said, “It is well with my soul” - and it is. My soul is well. 

And a glorious arrangement of brightly colored flowers that caused my well soul to sing.

I felt swaddled in love and appreciation, and I was incredibly grateful.

 

I walked past the three flag poles in the main foyer, one of which has the Maryland State flag. Seeing it I was reminded of something my transporter friend had told me. He had pointed out that the American flag had an eagle atop its pole, but that the state flag and the hospital flag next to it, had round steel spheres at their apex.

 

“Did you know that by law the Maryland flag has to have a cross on the top of its flagpole?” asked my transporter friend, his eyes brimming with intelligence and humor.

“It goes back to the state’s religious roots from when it was founded?”

 

I did not.

 

“Come,” he said, and led me to the big entrance window. “Look!” and pointed towards the three same flags in the parking lot.  Sure enough, the Maryland flag’s pole was topped with a cross.

 

I know myself.  From now on I will check the top of every pole I pass that flies the state flag.

 

I said goodnight for the last time to the evening shift security officer at the front desk. Walked past the ornate stone wall topped with spiky, fake foliage. A wall that had finally emerged from its huge, white, building shell, just before I left my own hospital cocoon.

 

One last time I drove past the man who used to be a valet parker when there were so many visitors and volunteers that the parking lots overflowed. Now he is gratefully reassigned to hours of boredom. He sits in an open front tent guiding what visitors there are and enforcing any new parking protocol.  The hospital didn’t lay off anyone during this pandemic. They found ways to keep everyone productive if they wanted to stay. God bless them.

 

The valet parker is from Thailand.  My cousin and his family live and work in Thailand.  So this valet and I have a bond. He waves and smiles broadly at me every day as my car passes him just after four thirty every weekday evening like clockwork.  I waved back today savoring the last time this sweet ritual is likely to happen.

 

And then I drove out of the hospital and on to freedom.

 

My time at the hospital would not have been possible without the encouragement, love, and prayers of all who read and commented on the Pandemic Parables.

 

This is not hyperbole.  This is fact.

 

During the depths of this virus season there were times when I was going through incredibly difficult times, merely hanging on by the fingernails of knowing that I was called to the hospital. I would write and post a parable, and the reader’s words, your words, of response would act as a balm filling up this storyteller turned chaplain’s sad, lonely, and sometimes overwhelmed heart.

And then there were surprise gifts, sometimes sent in response to a parable. An electric kettle; a cairn; home made fortune cookies; toilet rolls; a pink rabbit; a hand knitted, vibrantly colored pair of socks; a crocheted woolen hanging rainbow. My friends will never know how much these treasures meant. How they pushed back darkness with kindness. Thank you. From my heart. 

 I said this in one of my earliest parables, and it remains true as I end them. In the Good Book, in 1 Samuel 30:24, it says that those guarding the home front, looking after the baggage and supplies, shall get an equal reward and share of the spoils as the ones that plunged into battle.

 

My friends and readers, your heavenly blessings will be great.

Thank you for reading, commenting, and encouraging.

 

May the Lord pour out His love into you in new ways.  May He make a way for you where there is no way. And for your loved ones also.

 

May He provide for you in miraculous ways so there is no lack in your lives.

 

May you walk in the blessings prepared for past generations of your family that they did not claim, as well as the ones laid up for you alone.

 

And as it says in the great blessing of Aaron – the Aaronic priestly blessing:

“May the Lord bless and keep you;

May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you;

May the Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace.”

 

And so as one adventure is ended, another unknown one begins. I can see a few steps ahead of me, that is all.

But because I know the Lord will guide and guard me I have peace. Knowing that because he is already there, the future will be good.

 

Amen.

Copyright © 2020 Geraldine Buckley