An Early Goodbye on a Sunday Morning

On a Sunday I was called in to the hospital just before six in the morning to be with a family whose loved one had died only a few hours earlier. This was my first on call. On the drive to the hospital I was attempting to do two things: wake up and figure out what on earth to do and say. I arrived at the hospital and went directly to the nurse’s station on the particular floor. The nurses appeared relieved to see me, and I was relieved that they were relieved.

The sister of the deceased was also at the nurse’s station. After making introductions, I invited the sister into the waiting room, and she described to me some of the family’s story. The mother had endured a lot of tragedy and death of loved ones over the past year not least her husband, and she had not processed much of her grief. The sister explained that earlier that morning the mother was visibly angry. The wife and two children were also in the room. The wife was clearly trying to hold herself together. The son meandered in and out of the room, and the daughter sobbed trying to hold back her tears. The deceased man in his forties died of a variety of issues including liver and kidney problems. The sister explained he had a “drinking problem” but continued to drink even when he was warned about his medical condition.

At this point I could not think of the situation becoming any more delicate and complicated. Then the sister said, “I thought maybe a word from you…” She trailed off and assumed that I knew what she wished for me to do. I construed her words and expression to be a request for me to assuage the situation with a few feeble words. Perhaps because I was too tired to be anxious, I felt at ease, and I calmly held the sister’s hand and explained that I was here for them and would remain with them for as long as they wished.

When we entered the patient’s room, the mother was standing over her son’s body, and the wife and two kids sat across from the foot of the bed. The mother looked at me with a blank stare. I introduced myself first to the mother and then to the wife and kids. The room’s silence felt heavy, and words felt like they would be worse than silence; words felt like they would be trivial. After a few moments the mother made a move to sit down, and I helped her to a seat. I held her hand and had my arm around her shoulders, and we sat there for what seemed like a rather long time. Then she looked up at me and began to smile and whispered, “thank you.”

I gathered the family together and offered to say a prayer. It was probably one of the simplest prayers I have ever prayed, though I do not remember the contents of the prayer exactly. With what little and few words they could muster, the family thanked me. The deceased’s daughter’s sobbing turned into weeping, and the deceased’s mother (the daughter’s grandmother) embraced her and said quietly, “Jesus understands.” The mother’s mood seemed to have shifted from anger to beautiful care. I was deeply moved by the mother’s embrace of her young granddaughter. 

The wife of the deceased took her two kids home, and the mother of the deceased returned to the bedside. She began to stroke his face and then kissed his cheek. Tears came to my eyes as I watched her tuck her son into bed one last time.

Through this entire ordeal I was praying, and when I was praying aloud with the family, I was also praying silently for what to say. Questions were roaming through my mind: what could I possibly say to comfort a wife, mother, sister, daughter, and son? I was outside the land where words seemed useful. This relatively young man died only a few hours ago, and he did not die a heroic death. 

It felt like there were probably a hundred right things to do in this situation and ten thousand wrong things to do. I cannot judge how each person understood my presence that morning, and I do not remember everything I said nor could I justify every move I made.

These are occasions when I am reminded that our often-assumed control over life is an illusion. We are vulnerable and fragile creatures. I was also reminded in part why I am becoming a pastor and why I headed into theology in the first place. Our own mortality looms large, and the road leading up to death involves all sorts of joy and heartache and perplexing questions. 

Stories that Shape Us

We have all told a story or two at some point, and so why not share a few jots on an opinion about telling stories.

Writing a story does not begin with a concept or belief or ideology. It begins with a person or two, a place with some dirt, and an event that is just real enough to believe and just fantastic enough to be worthy of telling. Flannery O’Connor claimed that if a writer begins with a person, there is no telling what will happen next.

When he was writing novels, especially The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky was constantly conflicted about who was related and what they would end up doing. His novels are famously ideologically driven, and that is one of the reasons I enjoy his novels so much. But the ideologies are there only so long as people with all their psychological and moral complexity and ambiguity are there.

Where does a person begin? It could begin with a phrase, “Call me Ishmael.” It could begin with a suggestive circumstance. Hazel Motes sat on the train leaning one way and looking another; similarly, Raskolnikov walked down the stairs slowly as if indecisively. A person begins with movement, be it speech or gesture. Oceans and rivers and trains move and define people. Family reunions with all their potential explosiveness can move and define people as much as oceans.

But in any case, why would I be particularly interested in holding an opinion about writing fiction other than wishing to write fiction that is not quite terrible? Telling the stories of the Bible, following the movements of people with all their baggage and strangeness, crafting sermons that follow the contours of the biblical narratives themselves. That’s why. At least part of it.    

Walter Brueggemann has developed the rather interesting description of the preacher as poet, and he explains, “The preacher is called to weave an artistic connection between the text in its elusive, liberated truth, and the congregation in its propensity to hear the text in forms of reductionism” (Finally Comes the Poet). He does not encourage this description of preacher as poet because telling stories is neat. Rather, through narrative the preacher calls the congregation into an alternative reality, a reality that is different than the controlled ideological reality that so often gives shape to our experience. The poet preacher calls the congregation into an alternative reality of God’s promises. God’s promises of restoration involve people and movement, and this movement defines the people.