I deal with death a good deal. Today I was walking through a floor with two other chaplain and one chaplain said to me, "I wonder what people think happened that three chaplains are together on one floor." I had never been to a hospital with a chaplain before I started working at one as a chaplain, but people know us here, they know our color and they know our faces. We walk hand in hand with death and stand at the chasm between now and evermore for many people. You have never lived until you walk a hallway with a family that has been waiting to identify a loved one for an hour while the body is cleaned, or seen the look of hope in the eyes of old men when you know the truth but aren't allowed to tell them. Well maybe you have lived, and maybe its ok to never experience these things. These are the things I hate about my job. I had to answer a call at Methodist North one night and when I got out of my car in my blue coat a man on the side of the road asked, "Who died." To those who do not know and are still filled with hope we can be banshees, to those who know and don't have the strength angels... And if we aren't careful... we become calloused and cold. We deal with death so much we were asked to write letters to death and then we gathered together in one place and read them to one another. My letter is personal but nothing I am ashamed of so I post it for any who are interested, blanking out no names and making no apologies.
God Bless
Justin
Dear Death,
It is because of you I keep from wasting away. I could sit in my chair and rot, I could do nothing, never reaching out, and never living in my community. I think without you I would never love and without you I would never know love. I stood in the room with you one night waiting. Waiting for the moment of expiration. As his breath became thin, as his blood pressure dropped you stood their waiting, ever so patiently, thinking if not now, later.
Death, I know that you will have your way with us, I know that you will come for my family one by one and then one day you will come for me. But in that instant while you stood their and waited I watched a wife and mother hold her lovers hand and it made me see where I stand, and that I stand alone. You drive me death to desire to act yet I stand ever watching ever waiting, you hang over my shoulder warning me of some inevitable time when we shall walk hand in hand to the boatman at the River Styx.
When you come Death I hope to be able to sing my history, when I was seventeen, when I was 21 and so on, and I hope like the singer sung to have no regret but to know that I truly lived. More than you I fear regret, to stand before God and regret the chances I didn’t take and the love I never found.
But that doesn’t mean you don’t take. I remember when I was young you took my Uncle Jim then later you took my Uncle Bud. I cried for both men, I cried because there was no longer a place in my life to talk with them, never again would I ride through the hills of West Virginia in Jim’s Jeep, or talk theology with my Uncle Bud. I wish I knew your response when I cried, and your facial expressions during my sobs.
After a night of visiting your sites over and over again, I am weary. I am physically weary but more of the soul. I am tired and restless. My heart sleeps but my body lies awake with the faces of the dead, the slack jaw and the half open eyes. Sometimes it is like any moment their chest will spasm and their lungs cry out for Oxygen. I still have burned in my mind the girl who died by the train. Her face still and silent her body cocooned in a bag. The walk for identification was an eerie sound, the sound of heels hitting the floor in a silent building. The long walk lead by the man in blue…
I tried to approach a woman on my hall and she fled from me like we all flee from you, as if I were death myself. Sometimes it feels as if I carry your scythe and wear your mask. I am associated to you, yet I don’t take life. I am full of holes, holes of the men in my life who have gone before, holes of the ones I have seen. I don’t hate you, but I feel a little emptier every time I see your work. When I am gone you will still walk the Earth, long after even. Eternity is in the hearts of men, but death is eternal.
Sincerely
Justin
