By the time Laurel arrived at the hospital, my father - her brother - had spiked a fever and had been in enough pain to require his first hospice-administered morphine patch. His breathing had already shallowed, and all hopes of his return home had been dashed. He was going to die in hospice on the fourth floor of Elmhurst Memorial Hospital, and not in the hospital bed that my sisters had so dutifully cleared space for in the front room of the house, facing the big bay window that looked out at the magnolia tree in the front lawn.
Laurel and Tom had been toying all week with the decision to drive the eight hours from Lincoln, Nebraska to the Chicago suburbs. We all had been toying with many decisions throughout the week, because there was so much we didn't know. Was dad going to get home? Was the surgery to drain fluid from around his heart going to rejuveniate his tired body enough to keep up with his chemotherapy schedule? Or were we at the end? We rarely left the hospital during that week, and we barely even left the unit. We each ran out of clothes and had to decide whether to risk leaving the hospital for the length of a laundry cycle, or whether just to pop over to WalMart for a quick purchase of a new t-shirt.
Thursday morning, Laurel decided that she needed to see her brother. She and Tom packed the car and began their long, flat trek across Iowa and northwestern Illinois. Providence, good fortune, or a sixth sense impelled her to call my father's hospital room early in their drive, early in the day. Because on Thursday morning, he had still been conscious, still been sitting up in bed and drinking frozen fruit juices (cherry, grape, lemonade), still been able to hold a phone and converse. It would be the last conversation for this sister and brother.
As their drive wore on, my father wore down. He grew hot with fever and tired, weak. He still hoped that he would go home that afternoon. The hospice nurses quietly told the rest of us that he was too sick to go home.
My mother held vigil at his bedside. All four of us daughters entertained visitors and friends in the large family waiting room. Joel, my father's only living brother, kept returning to the hospital, before work, after work, on his lunch break, unable to stay away. Thursday evening, Joel and his wife Cindy, along with my cousin Jennifer, joined all of us for dinner in the family waiting room. Once Laurel arrived, we all accompanied her to my father's room, where she greeted him and kissed him, even as he was too asleep and too drugged to respond.
I looked around the room. Dad was surrounded by his wife, his sister, his brother, his niece, his four daughters, his grandson. We were all there. Every sibling, every child.
"We need to bless him," I heard myself say out loud.
I had refused, earlier in the week, to perform an anointing for my father while he was in the ICU following surgery. I let his own pastor (and dear friend) do that very important work. Not simply because I was too emotional to do so, but because I wanted to be daughter in that moment and not pastor.
But Thursday night was different. Things seemed urgent. My father was not likely to last the night. The group assembled at his bedside was going to break up and head home for the evening, and we wouldn't all be in the same place together again while my father was still living. I was both pastor and daughter, feeling both spiritually moved and incredibly anxious.
"We need to bless him."
I looked up the service of Commendation for the Dying on my phone. I glanced through the prayers and readings. I called my family's pastor and invited him over. And then, I decided that we needed oil, if we were to properly anoint my father for his passing.
Surely we could have prayed and blessed without oil. I know that now. But if I were to muster the courage to show my pastor-side to my whole family, I needed everything to be perfect.
I thought back to my time as a hospital chaplain, and remembered that chaplains had offices, and those offices came stocked with rosaries, Bibles, prayer cards, communion kits, and, presumably, vials of anointing oil.
At the nurses' station, I asked if they could page the on-call chaplain to ask about oil. They dialed the chaplain's extension, spoke to the person who answered the phone, and explained that I was looking for anointing oil. The conversation went on for longer than seemed necessary. The nurse explained two, three, four times what I was looking for. I was worried that the chaplain didn't have oil, or didn't want to give it to me. The nurse handed me the phone: "I don't think he knows what I'm asking for - can you explain it to him?"
"Hello - I'm up here on the fourth floor, and I'm a pastor, and I was wondering if you had any anointing oil so that we can say some prayers together as a family."
"You want...oil?"
"Yes."
"I don't think we have any, and what is that you need it for, again?"
"For prayers..."
Silence.
"Wait. Who were you trying to call?"
"Isn't this the chaplain's office?"
"This is the lab!"
The nurse must have mis-dialed. Oops.
"Are you able to connect me with the chaplain's office?"
"Of course. Sorry about the mix-up!"
The phone beeped as the call was transferred. I wanted to laugh and cry all at once. When the call connected, it took a fifteen-second conversation with the young Ethiopian on-call chaplain to explain what I was looking for. He volunteered to bring up both oil and a Bible.
In my father's room, my family alternated between silence and restless conversation. The oil hunt had taken far longer than I'd expected, and I feared that some members might need to leave before we had a chance to join in blessing. I assured them that the chaplain was on the way up, and even though it was late, they should just be patient for a few more minutes. I wanted to believe that this small service of blessing was as important to everyone else as it was to me.
The chaplain stepped into the room - he was wearing the required powder-blue jacket that identified him as part of the chaplain staff. He handed me a Bible with a burgundy cover, and a small, plastic bottle of anointing oil that had a picture of the Virgin Mary on one side of it. I should have expected that it was mostly Roman Catholics who asked for anointings. He offered himself to us, offered to talk to us or to pray, and I was probably too aloof in my refusal. I'm sure I was rude even as I tried, gently, to assure him that I was a pastor and that there was another pastor about to arrive, and so we did not need his help as much as others probably did. I should have let him pray.
My family's pastor arrived behind the chaplain, and once I had thanked the chaplain for the oil, he left the room and closed the door.
The hospital evaporated, the world stopped spinning, everything was no more, except for that room, that dark room filled to overflowing with dear ones, dim lights, quiet music for Christmas playing in the background. No space on earth was holier than this one.
Before we left the room or left the state, before my father left this earth, before we knew what grief would be, we prayed. We sang. We read scripture to remind ourselves of hope. And in the last prayer that would be said over my living father's body, I unscrewed the cap from the little Virgin Mary bottle, I put my thumb over the bottle opening and turned it upside-down, I dragged my oil-soaked thumb over my father's hot forehead, down and across in the shape of the cross, and said,
"Mark, daddy, brother, uncle, friend, child of God: you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever."
I meant it more than I've ever meant it before. More than I might ever mean it again.
Laurel and Tom had been toying all week with the decision to drive the eight hours from Lincoln, Nebraska to the Chicago suburbs. We all had been toying with many decisions throughout the week, because there was so much we didn't know. Was dad going to get home? Was the surgery to drain fluid from around his heart going to rejuveniate his tired body enough to keep up with his chemotherapy schedule? Or were we at the end? We rarely left the hospital during that week, and we barely even left the unit. We each ran out of clothes and had to decide whether to risk leaving the hospital for the length of a laundry cycle, or whether just to pop over to WalMart for a quick purchase of a new t-shirt.
Thursday morning, Laurel decided that she needed to see her brother. She and Tom packed the car and began their long, flat trek across Iowa and northwestern Illinois. Providence, good fortune, or a sixth sense impelled her to call my father's hospital room early in their drive, early in the day. Because on Thursday morning, he had still been conscious, still been sitting up in bed and drinking frozen fruit juices (cherry, grape, lemonade), still been able to hold a phone and converse. It would be the last conversation for this sister and brother.
As their drive wore on, my father wore down. He grew hot with fever and tired, weak. He still hoped that he would go home that afternoon. The hospice nurses quietly told the rest of us that he was too sick to go home.
My mother held vigil at his bedside. All four of us daughters entertained visitors and friends in the large family waiting room. Joel, my father's only living brother, kept returning to the hospital, before work, after work, on his lunch break, unable to stay away. Thursday evening, Joel and his wife Cindy, along with my cousin Jennifer, joined all of us for dinner in the family waiting room. Once Laurel arrived, we all accompanied her to my father's room, where she greeted him and kissed him, even as he was too asleep and too drugged to respond.
I looked around the room. Dad was surrounded by his wife, his sister, his brother, his niece, his four daughters, his grandson. We were all there. Every sibling, every child.
"We need to bless him," I heard myself say out loud.
I had refused, earlier in the week, to perform an anointing for my father while he was in the ICU following surgery. I let his own pastor (and dear friend) do that very important work. Not simply because I was too emotional to do so, but because I wanted to be daughter in that moment and not pastor.
But Thursday night was different. Things seemed urgent. My father was not likely to last the night. The group assembled at his bedside was going to break up and head home for the evening, and we wouldn't all be in the same place together again while my father was still living. I was both pastor and daughter, feeling both spiritually moved and incredibly anxious.
"We need to bless him."
I looked up the service of Commendation for the Dying on my phone. I glanced through the prayers and readings. I called my family's pastor and invited him over. And then, I decided that we needed oil, if we were to properly anoint my father for his passing.
Surely we could have prayed and blessed without oil. I know that now. But if I were to muster the courage to show my pastor-side to my whole family, I needed everything to be perfect.
I thought back to my time as a hospital chaplain, and remembered that chaplains had offices, and those offices came stocked with rosaries, Bibles, prayer cards, communion kits, and, presumably, vials of anointing oil.
At the nurses' station, I asked if they could page the on-call chaplain to ask about oil. They dialed the chaplain's extension, spoke to the person who answered the phone, and explained that I was looking for anointing oil. The conversation went on for longer than seemed necessary. The nurse explained two, three, four times what I was looking for. I was worried that the chaplain didn't have oil, or didn't want to give it to me. The nurse handed me the phone: "I don't think he knows what I'm asking for - can you explain it to him?"
"Hello - I'm up here on the fourth floor, and I'm a pastor, and I was wondering if you had any anointing oil so that we can say some prayers together as a family."
"You want...oil?"
"Yes."
"I don't think we have any, and what is that you need it for, again?"
"For prayers..."
Silence.
"Wait. Who were you trying to call?"
"Isn't this the chaplain's office?"
"This is the lab!"
The nurse must have mis-dialed. Oops.
"Are you able to connect me with the chaplain's office?"
"Of course. Sorry about the mix-up!"
The phone beeped as the call was transferred. I wanted to laugh and cry all at once. When the call connected, it took a fifteen-second conversation with the young Ethiopian on-call chaplain to explain what I was looking for. He volunteered to bring up both oil and a Bible.
In my father's room, my family alternated between silence and restless conversation. The oil hunt had taken far longer than I'd expected, and I feared that some members might need to leave before we had a chance to join in blessing. I assured them that the chaplain was on the way up, and even though it was late, they should just be patient for a few more minutes. I wanted to believe that this small service of blessing was as important to everyone else as it was to me.
The chaplain stepped into the room - he was wearing the required powder-blue jacket that identified him as part of the chaplain staff. He handed me a Bible with a burgundy cover, and a small, plastic bottle of anointing oil that had a picture of the Virgin Mary on one side of it. I should have expected that it was mostly Roman Catholics who asked for anointings. He offered himself to us, offered to talk to us or to pray, and I was probably too aloof in my refusal. I'm sure I was rude even as I tried, gently, to assure him that I was a pastor and that there was another pastor about to arrive, and so we did not need his help as much as others probably did. I should have let him pray.
My family's pastor arrived behind the chaplain, and once I had thanked the chaplain for the oil, he left the room and closed the door.
The hospital evaporated, the world stopped spinning, everything was no more, except for that room, that dark room filled to overflowing with dear ones, dim lights, quiet music for Christmas playing in the background. No space on earth was holier than this one.
Before we left the room or left the state, before my father left this earth, before we knew what grief would be, we prayed. We sang. We read scripture to remind ourselves of hope. And in the last prayer that would be said over my living father's body, I unscrewed the cap from the little Virgin Mary bottle, I put my thumb over the bottle opening and turned it upside-down, I dragged my oil-soaked thumb over my father's hot forehead, down and across in the shape of the cross, and said,
"Mark, daddy, brother, uncle, friend, child of God: you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever."
I meant it more than I've ever meant it before. More than I might ever mean it again.