I mentioned in a previous blog that actor Leonardo DiCaprio is one of my favorites, though if I’m being honest I have to confess that I’m no big fan of “Titanic” (I thought the characters were too shallow & the script rather silly at times; so sue me!). I first noticed him in “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” as Arnie Grape, the mentally challenged brother of a young man who struggles to do right by his family. It wasn’t until I was just finishing seminary, though, that I really took notice after seeing “The Departed” and “Blood Diamond” only five days apart. I was struck by the theme common to all these films: a man who is haunted by memories of family, and how we human beings deal with personal tragedy. Does it consume us? Or do we live with it and through it? After nearly two years as a chaplain, I thought I knew the answer. If there’s one lesson I’ve needed to be taught repeatedly, it’s always expect the unexpected – because the moment you feel smug, you’ll get knocked on your ass.
Tuesday morning February 16 dawned sunny, but very cold. But hey, who cared – it was Mardi Gras! I was out early, enjoying breakfast with a fellow chaplain at a favorite spot (Riccobono’s Panola Street Café); then we went to watch the Krewe of Rex parade down Napoleon Avenue to St Charles Avenue for the 139th consecutive year. I caught four beads and a doubloon, which left me in a good frame of mind for the rest of the day. Came home & slept four hours, feeling satisfied that the on-call I was scheduled for that night would be a good one. After all, I’ve grown a lot as a chaplain, I’m far more able to open up to people and in turn help them to cope. I checked on several patients and then went to bed just after midnight. I’d had a feeling that I wouldn’t get called at all in the night, so it was sort of a shock when the phone rang at 4am. I’m a light sleeper, so it did nothing more than rouse me out of a doze when a nurse told me that one of the patients in the ICU had just died. His mother told me that he’d always said he would die young like his daddy, who went from a heart attack at age 53. He was indeed a young man, with health problems that kept him in and out of the hospital for the past 7 years. During his last hospitalization, he told his mother “Daddy came for me, but I told him I wasn’t ready yet.” This time he was, and he died six months before his own 53rd birthday. I got back to the office at 5:30am, and figured it was pointless to go back to bed since I had just a few hours left. I could get sleep at home; in fact, I had to – because Wednesday evening a friend and I had free passes to a pre-screening of Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest film, “Shutter Island”. I’d planned to grab some breakfast when the cafeteria opened at 6am, but instead wasted an hour puttering on the computer. The chaplain who’d shared a meal with me the previous day arrived at 6:30 in order to be ready for the Ash Wednesday Service early that day. We talked for only a few minutes when the pager went off; this time the ER told me to come immediately because a 6-week-old baby was coding and the family needed support.
Going through the main entrance to the ER, I checked with the nurse at the desk, who indicated the room where about 15 medical staff were still working on the infant, & told me that her parents were in the Family Consult Room on the other end. On my way down the hall to see them, one of the maintenance crew looked at me gravely & said, “What a way to start a morning.” I asked what he’d seen; he said that some time earlier, he’d heard a lot of yelling from the front of the unit, then a nurse came running down the hall with the baby in her arms. I said I’d do what I could, and went to meet Mom and Dad. They were huddled together on a small couch; instantly I was struck by their disheveled state. Mom was wearing a ratty nightgown and slippers; Dad was actually barefoot. I introduced myself, and asked what happened. Mom told me that she’d found her baby not breathing, and they rushed here. She prayed aloud repeatedly, insisting that God wouldn’t take her baby away. Meanwhile, another woman who barely acknowledged anything, sat across from the couple, next to me, praying aloud in a whisper I couldn’t hear. I stared at Dad’s bare feet, thinking of the love of a parent for a child, one that puts such emphasis on another life that he doesn’t take time to grab a pair of shoes before heading out in 35-degree temperatures. I got Mom speaking briefly, about her two older children, and how they spoiled their baby sister, but the other two were too tightly wound to do much talking. Baby girl was born on Epiphany, I was told, and was six weeks old the day before. The phrase “the end of carnival” ran through my brain, but without significance. After about 30 minutes, two doctors came in; one sat next to Mom while the other stood at the door, as if wanting to leave but knowing she had to be there. The one looked Mom in the face & said how sorry she was; they’d tried everything they could, but were unable to save her baby girl.
There aren’t words sufficient to describe the grief process, and I have found that this is especially true when a young person dies. Some people can’t express; some people express very boldly. The woman next to me remained silent. While Mom wailed a denial, Dad began to cry, and in his pain actually smashed his head against the wall several times. At first he refused to go and see his daughter with his wife, who begged to see her baby. We encouraged him and he relented; I accompanied him back down the hall, at the ready if he should fall. Three nurses joined us in the room, quickly pulling the door closed behind us as the parents began to yell their grief again. We all stood there helplessly, witness to their grief and absolutely powerless to do or say anything to comfort. Mom wavered back and forth between English and Spanish, muttering about her ‘princesa’ and begging for a wrap or a blanket because her little girl was so cold. I was immobilized, but finally one of the nurses leaned down and said quietly, “she IS wrapped.” Two more nurses went to get the other woman, who I later learned is the maternal grandmother. As they opened the door and she took in the scene in the room, her legs collapsed beneath her and they rushed to grab a chair for Grandma. Then Mom began insisting that her little girl was only asleep, repeatedly assuring her husband that it was okay. This will stand as one of those indelible memories for me: Mom rocking back and forth, muttering her mantra: “solo esta durmiendo. Solo esta durmiendo.” After a time, I leaned down myself and said gently, in Spanish, that her daughter was indeed sleeping, for a time, but would be waiting for Mom and Dad until they were all reunited by God. The nurses looked at me expectantly; I knew they were waiting for a prayer. What on earth could I say? As if God were listening, the loudspeaker suddenly began playing “Lullaby and Goodnight”. For those not familiar with hospitals, this is the signal that a child was just born. I glommed onto that, put one hand on each parent and gave thanks to God for the gift of life, and especially the life of this child, and asked for God’s presence in the days to come as the family learned to let go of their baby girl for now, until we’re all raised to new life. The prayer seemed to bring a brief sense of calm. Then Dad (who had been stroking his daughter’s tiny hand), took the miniscule breathing tube in his mouth and began to blow air gently into it, as if he himself could somehow resurrect his baby girl. All the nurses, as well as me, had to look away.
I spent about an hour with the family, leaving just before my shift was finished. Went through all the motions, wrote notes, reported to the chaplains coming on duty, and left. Getting home at 9am, I promptly went to bed and slept for five hours, needing every minute since I’d gotten only two the previous night. In preparation for the movie, I walked down to the CVS to buy some snacks, then crossed the street and entered the Creole Creamery, with the firm intent of indulging in food as a form of self-care (something I’ve only done once before). I bought a big scoop of Chockwork Orange ice cream, and delighted in every lick of the deep, rich chocolate and bittersweet chunks interwoven with citrus. I’d hoped it would help me move past the numbness permeating my being, but it didn’t. It didn’t stop tears from repeatedly forming in my eyes as I thought of that father, trying to blow life back into his daughter. I watched a kid with his mom walking across the street by the Chase Bank, heard a radio blasting out Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” from the Thai restaurant on the corner, and wanted to scream down the street, “What the HELL is wrong with everyone?!? You’re all going on as if nothing has happened. Don’t you realize that this little girl is DEAD?! DEAD! – and now her family has to deal with that!” You’re a chaplain, I quickly told myself. You’ve seen it happen before, been witness to it more times than you care to recall. What was it that made this one so difficult to process? I didn’t know, and given my state of mind, was rather less than exuberant about seeing a film with such a dark theme. I kept my concerns to myself, not wanting to burden my friend who’d gone to the trouble to secure us the passes.
I found escapism of a sort in the film, but not the escape that Teddy Daniels experiences. In the end, what made the biggest impression on me was the very last line in the film: would you rather live as a monster or die as a good man? I considered those words in light of the ministry I do with patients and their families, and indeed in light of what it means to be a good human being. Can we not die to the monsters and live as good men? Is it a monster who warns his mother for years that he will not live a long life? Or is it a good man, a caring son, who wants to prepare his mother for what will be a painful thing? Is it a monster who tells a family that their baby girl is gone? Or is it a good man who grieves with them, prays with them, and cries for them as genuinely as if this girl were his own? The phrase runs round and around in my brain. When I envision it, what I see again in my mind is a father with no shoes on, concerned more for his child than for his own comfort. Waking to what he thought would be a pleasant day, only to find that Carnival is over in every conceivable way. Putting others first, even to extreme personal discomfort, and doing everything possible to bring life to the moment, to share in that life, to be a part of that life as long and as deeply as he is able. I believe that’s what it means to live as a good man.
