There came a point in my internship when I stopped visiting 'sick' people and I started visiting people.
We are all in desperate straits.
People seem to avoid hospitals because they want to separate themselves from the reminder of sickness, of the decaying of the body, of the end of life. If they can segregate themselves from the sick, than they it will never happen to them. They will never get sick. They will never die.
I talked with a wife of a patient last week who told me that her husband had been struggling with different ailments for the last five years. He almost died the night before. Her doctor is doing everything for him. The man is living in a nursing home and wants to die. He is tired of the pain and the quantity of life versus the quality of live. He wants to go home but the doctor is fixed on curing versus caring.
We had another patient die in the hospital this week. Chaplains had been visiting her and her family all week. When I went to visit with her the family had me come up hold her hand and pray for an easing of her pain. She was in a tremendous pain. Her family didn't want to enter into hospice because they didn't want to deal with the reality that there family member was dying. She came in on a Monday and died on a Thursday.
Funeral homes usually will get the wake in around twelve, have the funeral service at two and have the body buried by three. In California they even have drive by wakes.
There is no acceptance of death in our society. Everyone wants to live forever.
People no longer accept the pain and death of the world. They are no longer shrouded in sadness for the moment, but rather regress the pain, ignore it, pass along by it.
Christians are called to carry their crosses and follow Jesus. This means picking up their pain, sorrow, their sadness and following Jesus.
They are not called to regress it, to ignore it, or pass along by it, they are called to pick their pain up and carry it into the presence of Jesus.
I stopped visiting sick people because I realized that there is no real difference between the person in the hospital bed and myself. We both are in desperate straits and we both need grace.
