Today was an odd day. Kinda rough, actually. I hesitate to write about it, since I don't want to write an entirely negative representation of life here. I need to be honest in sharing my stories of life here though and this is what today held. To be fair, I firmly believe that these experiences could have happened anywhere.
My morning started off by leaving my apartment to let Steve out. I noticed a man at the kitchen table who I didn't recognize. When I came back inside and sat down for breakfast, I had no idea who he was and nobody introduced him to me. As someone who was a social worker for awhile and as the child of a social worker, I have a pretty good sense about people. Something didn't click right for me with this visitor. He seemed to talk in circles and said some pretty harsh things. At one point, he said that Jesus lost his salvation when the people killed him and that we lose our salvation when we do bad things. I listened patiently, then interjected that I don't believe Christ or we lose our salvation because nothing can separate us from God. He seemed slightly appeased by this idea, but quickly moved onto his set of statements. There were some other odd details about his story, but I'm not going to share those in such a public way.
My morning continued when my supervisor and I were invited to "do prayers" for a "fetal demise." I was just talking with Karen yesterday about the different language surrounding fetal death: stillborn, remains of conception, etc. I struggle with how to appropriately gauge what language to use based on the family's needs. Some parents consider the fetus a child and a part of their family from the moment of conception. Others seem to disregard it, preferring to designate it as remains. When we headed to the hospital this morning, we really had no idea how far along the mother had been or what the story was.
Upon arriving at the hospital, I saw a man who had built himself a little cave in a pile of snow and was sleeping in it. I've seen plenty of people who are sleeping on the sidewalk, park benches or public transit before, but seeing a man who had found the most protection and warmth out of sleeping in a pile of snow was a new one for me.
We visited with the mother who asked for our prayers. We went through the Evangelical Lutheran Worship Pastoral Care book's service to commend an unborn child to God. We prayed for her and sang "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" when she asked for it. After going through most of the prayers and readings, a nurse came in with a plastic bin and what appeared to be some fabric in it. I assumed the nurse was ready to do some sort of bath with the mother. Eventually, the nurse joined us on our side of the room, holding the fabric in the bin and handed it to the mother. The fabric bundle was actually the child that wasn't living. The mother held her lifeless child and said that had the little girl made it eight more days, she could have lived. Eight days. Eight days stood between this perfectly formed, but very, very small infant, and life. Sure, being born would have meant some time in the NICU and lots of medical care, but she would have been born. She would have grown into a baby, a toddler, a child, a teenager and eventually, she would become an adult.
I completed my Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at a great community hospital in North Carolina. Spending the summer as a hospital chaplain was interesting. I didn't have a lot of trauma cases, since I was assigned to a medical floor and to an outpatient rehab section. Part of me wanted to have the Obstetrics ward or the Emergency Room, just to experience the "bigger" cases. Of course I say that and I'm pretty sure that I was a part of the most deaths of my CPE group--not fun. I returned to LSTC feeling challenged and changed by my CPE experience, but always questioning if I had experienced everything.
Today, after doing prayers and trying to provide words of comfort, the mother held out her baby to us and asked if we wanted to hold her. I've never felt so simultaneously honored and horrified at the same time. I was a stranger, a nobody to her, and I was about to hold this child that never took a breath? Who the heck am I?
Then, on top of all of this, my head is spinning around the fact that my precious godson Henry was in the NICU for the first month of his life. He could have been born eight days too early.
I held that precious baby and focused on the moment with the mother, but my head feels incredibly heavy right now.
My supervisor stepped out of the room to get the nurse at one point and the mother said, "It's really hard to be here [in the OB ward] and hear all the other babies crying." I spent nearly a week holding Henry and hearing him cry, not realizing how painful a baby's cry could be to a parent who's body is convulsing in pain from the greatest grief that I think one can experience.
The day went on to hold some weird and some hard experiences. People keep asking me how internship is going. I generally say that it's good, but difficult. I wish that I could just show you the images in my brain of the hard stuff.
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