Faith in the ER

I’ve been in an angry, sad, worried funk for months now.

My husband’s out of work - after 25 years of good, gainful employment in the homebuilding industry. For months, he’s been throwing his resume out there and “working his network,” so far to no avail. Companies he’s worked with for years are scaling way back, or closing their doors. His prospects are grim…our money is running out.

But, not too worry! The economy’s in the crapper, as well, and predictions of recovery have us months out - as if anyone knows what’s going to happen anyway…. After years of being firmly entrenched in the middle-class, our little world is melting away around us and I’m more than a little scared about how it will all turn out…This kind of situation – and thinking - can really suck you in, and bring you down….

And, that is why I am grateful one of my jobs is being an emergency room social worker a couple of days each week. If you ever want to a reality check, just spend some time in a busy ER. That’ll put your personal problems into perspective.

One of my duties is to gather the family when a patient is dieing, and to be with them as the process unfolds. Serious, daunting, humbling work – this. No matter how many times I am with a family through this, it amazes me – how sad, and real, and life altering each death is - for every family.

The other day a very elderly man came in, having collapsed, after a few days of a “real bad headache.” His family found him down, when they returned from taking his wife to a doctor’s appointment. “He was alright when we left,” his son said. “He had a headache, but he’d had that for a few days.”

“When I found him, I shook him and asked if he was alright,” the son said. “’I recken,’ daddy said…Turns out those were his last words.”

The man was very old, and pretty sick, and had a lot of medical problems. Yet, his death – as all deaths, I believe do – came as a terrible shock to his family.

They gathered, and cried, and prayed, and laughed, and remembered him at his best, strongest, and most stubborn. They stood gathered around his bedside, talking to him, stroking his forehead, patting his chest, watching him slowly fade away…

The hardest part of being with a family through this - for me - is watching the wife-now-widow sit next to the bedside, holding her husband’s hand, wondering, how - after all these years – to let that hand go and tell him, “Good bye?”

These elderly widows are proud and strong. They hold their heads high, and dab the tears from the corners of their eyes with dignity and poise. They sit - not seeming to hear what their children are saying around them - studying the face of the man they’ve shared some 50-60-70 years with. They know he’s gone, but, they don’t believe it. They realize life from here on out will be very different…

Many of these families don’t look like they have much. Their clothes and their faces tell stories of hard work, and long hours, for a lot of years. Many of them don’t believe much in doctors, or medicines, or anything except a good hard day’s work with some time spent with the family at the end of it. Their families seem close. Their faith seems strong. Somehow, you get the sense that faith and the closeness of their family will see them through.

I admire their faith and closeness, even as I cling to my own and try, once again, to turn my worried, rattled thoughts to, as the Phillippians (4:8) said, “…whatsoever things are true…honest…just…pure…lovely…(and) of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” It beats listening to those bleak economic forecasts, anyway.