Varied responses to death all of which are "normal"

More reblogs for Dying Matters. A mixture of stories to illustrate the very varied responses to death. There is no one size fits all. What's important is to be alongside each individual or family where they are at.

 

It's amazing how many awful things happen very late at night. One night after midnight I was called in by the A&E staff. A man in his late 40’s had suddenly died after a suspected heart attack. When I arrived I found his wife was in a state of denial and her only support was from a neighbour. The neighbour was doing a sterling job but I gently probed about other family members. She said she had no-one. I asked her what she wanted me to do and she said “could you wake him up for me?” Initially I felt a bit stumped. I’d never been faced with such outright denial. I took my courage in my hands and gently told her that I couldn’t wake him up because he had died. She just said “Oh yes, I’d forgotten” I tried to engage her in a goodbye ritual but felt it was going over her head. I said some formal words nonetheless so at least she could hear them even if it wasn’t going in. I sat with her for a while. I felt totally inadequate. I just didn’t seem to be making any connection. After about an hour she decided she was going home for a cup of tea. I spoke briefly to the neighbour who assured me he would look after her.

Driving home I had to struggle with my feelings of inadequacy. As I got back into bed I “handed” the situation over to God. I felt better for that.

I later found out, through a colleague, that the woman was the same at the funeral visit and subsequent funeral. I wonder where she’s at now in her life?

That’s sometimes the difficulty with chaplaincy. In a parish situation you get the opportunity to continue the journey for longer with people. In the hospital I only get to accompany people for a short while and I often never get to know the end of the story.

 

By now I was feeling pretty well established as a hospital chaplain and nothing much phased me. I was happy to be on-call and not worried about what I might get called to. One night I had a call to come out to a 74 year old woman who was dying. Her family were present. The only strange thing about the request was that they wanted holy water. I checked that the patient wasn’t Roman Catholic and was assured she was Church of England.

I turned up with the holy water and my oil for anointing and was really surprised to find the patient was conscious. She was dying from heart failure and is often the case, was still aware of what was going on. This threw me as I hadn't yet experienced it. By then I had attended the bedside of many dying patients none of them had been remotely conscious. My words had been aimed more at the relatives than the patient. This situation meant I had to say words that meant something to a woman who was just about to make the most amazing journey of all. I felt inadequate and ill equipped. I checked that the patient didn’t want to speak to me alone and then stumbled through a liturgy. The family and the patient were very appreciative but I felt I hadn’t done a good job.

This taught me a valuable lesson. I now always ask if the patient is conscious. What I should have done was to take a few minutes out once I was aware what this family wanted and prepare myself and compose myself.

Another occasion, in the early hours, I was called into A&E. A 45 year old man had suddenly collapsed and died. The family had asked for a chaplain to come and say some prayers. There were lots of very distressed relatives already there when I arrived. They asked me to wait for the rest of the family to turn up. In the end there were about 25 relatives present. The room in A&E is very small. The body was on a trolley. I stood beside it. The family spilled out of the room and into the corridor. I tried to project my voice so they could all hear.

 

My practise is always to invite the family to anoint their relative and to say anything they want at the moment of anointing that honours their relationship with the deceased. They all took turns to file in and place their finger in the oil and anoint their relative. A man came forward. He didn’t put his finger in the oil. He just stared at me. Then he said really angrily that my God had killed his brother. He was pointing his finger in my face and saying“It’s your fault, you and your God, that’s why he’s dead.” I let him rant. Then I asked him if he had kids. He said he did. I asked him would he do anything to deliberately hurt them and he said no. I said I didn’t believe in the kind of God he believed in. I believed in a God who was a loving and kind parent like he was to his children and that bad things happen and we just don’t know why. With that he slumped at my feet and wept. His friends helped him up and led him away.

Violence doesn’t frighten me. I’m very familiar with it. I’m sure that helped me in that situation. It made me aware how vulnerable we are and what a target we are for people’s projections of what they think they believe in. I hope I did a good job that night by allowing the man his anger.

 

One day just as I was preparing to go home I was bleeped by children’s A&E. A 2 year old had suddenly become unwell. Resuscitation had not been successful. The family had asked for a chaplain to come and say some prayers.

When I arrived there was obviously great distress. The young mum was cradling her son, her sister was sitting next to her silently weeping and their mum was trying to be there for them but couldn’t keep the tears back. It turned out that the sister felt terrible because the baby had become unwell at her house and stopped breathing. She had tried to do CPR. She felt it was her fault that he had died. Gradually more of the family arrived. I was shocked to find out that one of the family had recently been murdered. As an extended family they were still mourning for this young woman’s death and now they had another tragedy to cope with.

I did an anointing, naming and blessing ceremony with them. They took turns holding the baby and anointing him.

After this as I sat with the mum and she started to tell me about her life. She had two children and they were put on the “At risk register” due to their dad’s violence to the mum. This had been so severe that it had put her in hospital and he had gone to prison for it. He was out of prison now but was not allowed any contact with her or his children. I was touched by this young woman’s desire to do the right thing. She wanted the dad to be told as soon as possible. Then she told me she had just sent the sister round there. I suggested this might not be the best way to go about it and it was better left to the police to inform him. I felt she had enough on her plate without having to deal with a potentially violent man. She agreed and phoned her sister and got her to come back.

I had been with the family for a couple of hours by then. I stepped outside the relatives room and asked what the hold up was. The Sister from A&E told me that they had been told to wait for the police, who wanted to see the body and talk to the family due to the children being on the at risk register and the sudden nature of the baby’s death. The Sister said she would phone the police again and see why it was taking so long.

Another couple of hours passed and the nursing staff changed shift. The new nurse who was looking after the family assured me she would keep chasing the police and find out what the hold up was.

By this time the baby had become cold and was going stiff. The mum had noticed this. She started rocking back and forth and saying “Please wake up. Please wake up” The rocking became more persistent and the strain in her voice was unbearable. Several members of her family had their heads in their hands. I was struggling to know what to do. I suddenly remembered the story “Water bugs and dragonflies” I said I’d be back in a moment and I ran over to the office and got a copy of it. I sat down next to her and said I was going to read her and the baby a story. She was still rocking and by now wailing. As I got into the story I could feel people’s demeanour change and they started to listen. By the end of the story you could hear a pin drop. Afterwards I just placed my arm around the mum and she lay her head on my shoulder and we just stayed silently like that for a while. Companionable silence is an extremely effective tool.

Six hours had now passed since I was first called and I hadn’t had a break or a drink or anything to eat. I excused myself and went back to the office for 15 minutes and had a cuppa and some chocolate and listened to some nice music. I felt odd leaving them but I knew I had to look after myself. I’d be no good to anyone if I conked out.

About half an hour after I arrived back, some police officers arrived. I wasn’t impressed by their attitude as they weren’t being very apologetic for keeping them all waiting so long. They explained that they needed to have a look at the baby and while that was happening they would have chat about what had happened. The mum found it hard to give the baby over, but she did. She then told the officer the sequence of events. He didn’t write any of it down and his phone kept ringing. He eventually gave his phone to a colleague and asked him to answer it. The colleague came back into the room and interrupted the statement and said he needed to talk to him urgently. The officers left the room. They came back in a few minutes later and said they were sorry but they weren’t allowed to continue and that the area team would be taking over this case. They explained that they were on their way from Gravesend and shouldn’t be too long.

I was absolutely dumbstruck. The baby was brought back in and given to the mum and they left. About an hour later the other team turned up and it all started again with mum having to hand the baby over. This time they were apologetic from the start and seemed to have a better attitude. Before they started I said I hoped they were going to take notes of what the mum was saying so that she didn’t have to repeat it all over again. I also asked if they could arrange for someone to go and tell the dad as this was weighing on the mum’s mind. I also stressed the importance of not giving any details of where mum was living due to him being out on license and the terms of the licence were no contact with mum or children.

I could tell by the way they were looking at me that they were wondering how come a priest was so aware of the terminology. It was really helpful to have had the background in working with domestic violence in order to support this young woman effectively.

They took the statement and said they then wanted to go back to the sister’s house first and then go back to the mum’s house. The police left with the sister. I then had the difficult task of getting the baby into the mortuary.

At times during the 8 hours that I had spent with the family I had been asked to hold the baby. Mum said she wanted to take him to the mortuary. I said she could do this but she wouldn’t be able to come into the working part of the mortuary. She asked me if I would take him for that last part.

Before we went over to the mortuary I spoke to the nurse who was coming with us and told her that this was going to be the flashpoint. During my chats that evening the mum had said to me that she was dreading that moment. That she had known where her baby was for every minute of his life and he had never been left alone. How was she meant to leave him?

We sat in the relatives room of the mortuary for a while and then I stood up and said she needed to say bye for now and that she could come back the next day and spend more time with him. She stood up but couldn’t quite hand the baby over. I gently lifted him from her arms and the nurse took hold of her. The mum really wailed at that point and I quickly left the room so as not to prolong the agony for her.

Once on the other side of the door I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself. The porter opened the fridge door for me and I gently laid the baby in there. The porter then said how hard he found seeing dead children. I then spent some time with him and how it affected him. I made sure the paperwork was done and I left the mortuary and went back to the mum in the relatives room.

When I said my goodbye to her I gave her a hug and told her to feel free to contact me if there was ever anything I could do. I watched this young woman walk away. She was trying really hard to be strong but she was slumped as she walked. I wondered if she was ever going to recover and I wondered if I’d ever hear from her again.

As I got into my car the radio flickered to life and Robbie Williams dulcet tones emerged singing “Angels” I wondered whether this family were going to be able to sleep that night knowing their little angel was gone for good.

As I got nearer home I decided that I wasn’t going to cook as it was now 1am. I remembered a late night chippy and picked myself up a bag of chips to take home. I sat at my dining room table half eating the chips and half staring into space and I began to start processing the events of one amazingly intense night.

When I talked about it with my supervisor he pointed out the many complex roles I had held that night. I had been the point of continuity. The doctors and nurses had changed shift but I had stayed throughout. I had been a bereavement counsellor to the extended family over the murder of the young woman as well as the tragedy of the baby’s sudden death. I had carried out a priestly function in anointing the baby. I had been carrying out staff support in looking out for and allowing the nurses and porter to express their sadness at the events. I had advocated for the family to the police and I had given some practical advice with relation to the domestic violence and the implications of contacting the dad. I had also physically carried out other roles in taking the baby to the mortuary and placing him in the fridge.

I hadn’t seen it like that but my supervisor was right. It was a very intense night with varied interactions with many people and it shows the complex nature of chaplaincy.