Small Steps

I was on call Christmas Eve, here at the hospital all evening and through the night. And I must report that for some this season of usual cheer was replaced by waves of grief and holes of dark sadness. For some, this Christmas is like this ornament, broken.

8:45pm, I get a page from the emergency center that a cardiac arrest patient has arrived and the husband is in the lobby. The 30 something female patient is in "the room" that you don't want to be in, because to chaplains this room equals sad families.

Escorting the husband down the long hallway to a private waiting room our steps are small. My usual long strides are replaced by meager paces as I mimic the rate at which this worried husband is moving.

After a short time the doctor darkens the door to deliver the worst news. The husband breaks down, but shock and disbelief allow him the agency to direct me to retrieve his 11 and 15 year old children now arrived in the lobby.

This is one of the hardest parts of my job. Back to the lobby, I know the news, they don't. But it's not my place to deliver it, so my face must be a mask. Every signal of my body language is a lie. While escorting these two innocent now children of a single parent to the back room we take small steps. It takes long, but not long enough.

Dad's face does not lie. Children break down, and the family huddles in a scrum of screaming tears and painful hugs. This competes for one of the hardest scenes I've watched. More family arrives accompanied by more disorder and hurt. My role now expands to encompass crowd control as we wait for the coroner.

In the midst of hospitalized red tape, waves of grief and phone calls to break the news, an hour flies by, then two. The 11 year old vomits as a physical response to his grief. More family arrives. I struggle to avoid offering the cliches that "this is God's plan," or "It'll be alright," because this is not God's plan, and for this huband and children it will never be alright.

More family and two pastors show up to support everyone. By the time they're preparing to leave the hospital it's been three hours. The family is exhausted from crying so much, I'm exhausted from trying not to. After final embraces and parting words the husband and two children make their way to the car. Their family is one short. Bidding them goodbye and fighting my own tiredness and anxiety, I notice as they slowly walk away that once again they're taking small steps.

The crowd dwindles, and my moment to leave them arrives.

My walk back to the on call room where I can rest takes longer than usual. Burdened by my own grief I kept asking the terrifying question, "What if that was my wife?" And the last thing I noticed before I got to my room was that I also walked with small steps.