SEETHING was I,
when at the first opportunity to really sob, I had a social worker barge in and
start talking process. I lashed back at her in the most assertive way my
emotions could allow. With tears streaming down my face and my nose running, cradling
Nathanael’s body, I said, “I’m sorry, but does this have to happen now? This is the
first opportunity I’ve had to really be sad. Would you leave us alone, please?
Thank you.”
Only eighteen
hours beforehand had we met our deceased son. And with close family invited in to share in our loss at the
earliest opportunity, we found 6pm on that Friday night was the first time we
had to break down.
The social
worker was only doing her job, and she was obviously trying to fit it in before
the weekend. I didn’t give her an option to do what she needed to do, because
she came and sat down next to the bed and said, “I’m very sorry for your loss… I need to go through these
forms with you.”
You know it when
you sense that people don’t actually get your loss or what you are feeling; it’s
a great deal worse when they pretend to care and prove they don’t. Yet, I still
knew I had to apologise, and I did a few days later. That’s another thing; as
pastoral carers we don’t want to be placing those who are grieving in a
position where they have to do additional
emotional work. We ought to relieving the burden, not adding to it.
Because of the
above story, the following quote resonates cogently:
“Our role is to
respectfully earn our place at the bedside, and never assume that just because
a person is vulnerable and sad, and we are competent and willing, that we can
enter into their experience uninvited.”
Earning our
place at the bedside is appreciating that we step on holy ground. God is, in
fact, present, by the very nature of the eternality in our midst. We imagine
hearts as antique shops with precious items everywhere. If we make one careless
move we push a delicately poised fine porcelain piece to the floor where it
will smash. But caution does not mean fear, for in fear there is no abiding
peace, and it is Christ’s incarnational peace that we must carry into such
sacred space.
“Our role as
pastoral carers is to be internally brave, and comfortable enough in our own life
story to hold strong emotions in such a way as to offer them to be explored if
requested, but equally, to carry them for a time if they are too heavy or
painful.”
Counsellors and
pastoral carers are only of benefit to the people they help when they are
sufficiently healed of their own broken antiquity to be able to operate as a
free spirit able to discern the Holy Spirit
and do the will of God.
A dual
competence then becomes possible: 1) to go into intrepid territory with
cautious confidence implicit of safety if it is clear they wish to ‘go there’,
and 2) to understand it is our own desire
that wishes to ‘go there’ when they don’t, and that to resist such a pull is to
serve their interests; for serving our own interest is falling short of the
glory of God, and a great injustice.
This seems
fundamental, but it’s worth stating: there is a direct correlation between the courage
required to do the work where we are comfortable enough in our own story with being able to bear the pain of another’s
story. Bearing another person’s pain requires from us the very strength we
learned in having dealt with our own pain.
“I never
answered her questions because we both knew she wasn’t asking them to hear a
reply.”
Many mysteries
prevail in the space of loss and grief. Most things cannot be reconciled.
Questions inevitably cannot have neat and boxed-up answers. But the unspoken
silence dignifies the mystery. The unspoken silence allows the things of God to
be as they eternally are. The unspoken silence becomes space for the Holy
Spirit to enter, to create capacity in the grieving, and to begin the process
of healing.
Isn’t it
wonderful the things we can communicate without words? When words only sully
the mystery, where truth is hardly knowable, an unspoken silence builds a
bridge of intimacy that words would only denigrate and destroy.
“In my most
pastorally caring voice I said nothing.”
Astounding is
the simplicity in the abovementioned wisdom!
The polar
dichotomy of suggesting that a voice says nothing! But that is the key to our
method.
The Incarnation
is real in us when we realise that our pastoral care is about “life that makes present and visible the realm of the
invisible spirit.”
Jesus could
communicate the things of his Spirit with few words or no words. That is both
our challenge and opportunity. Less is more.
When we govern
ourselves as mute — unless to speak would be abundantly appropriate, as it
often is — we are able to pray through every vocal deliberation before we even
commit to uttering a word.
In any event,
many moments in palliative care are exigently sacred. The less we say the more
our pastoral method has credibility and veracity. The less we say the more God can
say. But to say something at the Spirit’s leading is to obey the will of God.
The less we say
in the field of the divine, the more the divine might say in the field of life.
The pastoral
carer is a divine advocate; skin-of-skin, the Holy Spirit.
© 2015 Steve
Wickham.
The four quotes
above, which are among the best I’ve ever read, come from an article by Jenni
Ashton called, Pastoral Care for Families in Palliative Care. The profound wisdom
in these quotes on being “divinely respectful” in vulnerable spaces has been
gleaned through thoughtful reflection over the process of more than two
decades. They are pure gold and are worthy of sincere and laboured thoughtful
reflection.
