Most people are aware that New Orleans is a heavily Roman Catholic city, but I never realized just how pervasive the presence is until I moved here. This is the only place I’ve ever lived where Black people are as likely to be Catholic as they are to be Baptist or Pentecostal. Many times it’s apparent from a person’s name: the Creole or Cajun names like Boudreaux and Thibodeaux (as common as Smith and Jones are in other places) are almost always indicative of somebody who is Catholic. So one day several months ago when I met Mary, whose surname is a Cajun one not mentioned here, I was a little surprised to see that her religion was listed as Protestant.
She was 72, and so tiny that at first I thought her room was empty until her nurse explained that she was sitting in the chair beside her bed, a sight obscured to me by the large curtain that was half drawn. Mary had been hospitalized for over a week by the time I met her, and it was plain that she was eager to have a visitor. Unlike some people, she didn’t talk about her own aches and pains, or complain about them. Instead, she spoke about her daughter, who lives in Minnesota and hikes mountains when she’s not busy writing books and teaching at university. She also talked about her son, who is in his early 40s and still unmarried, because – as she puts it – he is his mother’s caretaker first and foremost, and therefore he could not commit himself to another woman in the way he felt a husband should. Mary was proud of him for being such a devoted son, but she worried about this a lot; she wanted very much to see him happily married. We also spoke of religion; her surname was that of her husband, who himself had been Catholic. Mary was not, but allowed her children to be raised in the Catholic faith. Prayer was very important to her; that, too, sticks out from our first meeting. Prayer sustained her, and we had prayed a nice prayer together before I left. It’s only looking back that I realize Mary was the type who focused on everyone except herself. No talk about her heart problems, or if she was scared, or lonely as a widow of five or six years. Instead, she found strength through giving to others. She even gave me the advice that LSU’s dental school is a great place for inexpensive dental work, after I showed her the tooth I had chipped on a piece of Halloween candy.
I had not seen Mary since, though I was aware that she was what I call a “frequent flier” – the people who spend a great deal of time in and out of the hospital. She had not been in my unit so I didn’t get the chance to see her again until last week, when she was again hospitalized and this time given a room in my ICU unit. I went to visit her last Tuesday, and came in while she was discussing some things with her nurse. The nurse wrapped up and Mary looked up at me rather vaguely, asking, “is there something I can do for you?”
I was rather crestfallen that she did not remember me. I see so many people, and most are tough to remember though I try my best (especially after a patient said it was good to see me again, leaving me horrified because I had no clue who he was!). Mary was one who was easy to remember, if only in part because of her boldly Cajun surname. I explained who I was, without mentioning our previous visit, and asked how things were going. Mary told me that she had been in a rehab facility, and it was a nightmare. There was one nurse for 30 patients, and said RN worked 17 hour shifts. She rarely saw her nurse, her bedding was rarely changed, her doctor’s orders were not followed, and her special dietary needs were ignored. She deteriorated rapidly and had to be readmitted to our hospital as a result of the rehab facility’s negligence.
It was incredibly difficult for me to listen to all this, because it brought back strong memories of our first meeting in early November. At that time, my aunt had spent six weeks in a rehab facility like the one Mary told me about. The anger I felt over the lack of decent care for my aunt was strangling to me since I was 2000 miles away and could do nothing. It was very difficult at the time to focus on my patients instead of the injustice facing my aunt and my family in Tucson. I had to tamp down the anger I could feel rising in me again, this time on behalf of this sweet lady who seemed to spend all her time trying to make things better for others. I commented neutrally that it must have been a horribly frustrating experience for her, and she replied, “Well, I realized that God put me there for a reason. When I came into the hospital again, my doctor asked me about the facility and how it had gone. I told him every detail and told him not to recommend that place to any other patient, ever again. He said he wouldn’t.” How characteristic of Mary to say such a selfless thing, to state that there was a reason. She was not impotent with anger over the treatment she’d received, nor was she acting like a martyr. It was a straightforward, matter-of-fact statement. While I processed that, she cocked her head at me and asked, “so, did you ever go to LSU’s dental school and get that tooth looked at?” I stuttered to a halt as I realized that she indeed remembered our visit, had remembered all along – or perhaps her memory just needed a nudge. We spoke briefly about it, and then, in her characteristically blunt manner, which is so reminiscent of my aunt, she asked, “Well, are you gonna pray with me?” I smiled broadly and did so.
Earlier this week, Mary signed a DNR order, which means that if she reached code blue status that she was not to be revived. Then she and her son chose a hospice care facility to assist her as she went home; he signed the papers on Tuesday afternoon. Very early yesterday morning, though, her condition worsened dramatically. I was called by the doctor to pray with her at 10:30am, about 90 minutes before I was off duty after a full night on call. Mary’s every breath was labored, and it was difficult to understand what she tried to say. No family was present and based on the things she’d said about her relationship with her son, I explained my concern to her nurse. He was en route to the hospital from his job; his sister was flying in from the Midwest.
Mary’s daughter did not arrive in time to try to speak with her again, but her son was at her bedside when she died two hours after we’d prayed together. I never did ask her how she reconciled the Catholic and Protestant faiths (and believe me, in this city they are DIFFERENT faiths), but I learned from her how to demonstrate grace in the face of a challenging situation. It made me think of the teenage Mary in Luke 1, being told that she would be the mother of God’s only child. Instead of complaining or whining, she said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.” Maybe it’s a stretch to compare the two women, but for the first time I have a full understanding of the phrase spoken so reverently in the Catholic Church: Ave Maria, Gratia Plena. It means a whole lot more than just a mother’s love for her child.
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