A Chat with the Chaplain

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A Chat with the Chaplain

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Yesterday I had a chat with the hospice chaplain, a composed and together lady, with soft brown hair framing a quickly attentive face, Irish blue eyes that could laugh but frequently looked at the world with the steadiness of one who does not mind what others are able to read from the back of her pupils. She said that she did not have to do much in her job. Simply listen to the dying tell their stories.

I wondered if I would tell her my story, a story I have repeated blow by blow to any of my friends who had the patience to listen, and a story I have written essay by essay until much of my soul is now in the hands of many people, with a prayer that their unseen eyes are kindly. Have I not told this story often enough? Will it make sense to tell it one more time to someone fifteen years my junior as I lie in the last loneliness? Will I at that time need or want a new friend?

I wondered, "Does she teach a course on how to die?" You see, I never get things right the first time. I have lurched into the tasks of life, bravely, foolishly, often taking the new path, breaking tough ground, doing what others have not done. But it has not been lost on me that my efforts have been clumsy compared to those who followed me. Indeed, I suspect that somewhere there is a world headquarters for the people whose whole purpose and destiny has been to rectify my partial successes. The "clean up after Cowan squad." If I screw up dying, how does someone else straighten me out for the next crack at it, when there is no next time.

And then I thought, how often I have had to die in life.

Eight years after twelve years of preparation I died to my first career. A year later, Monica told me that our dalliance had been great fun, and I was a great guy and all of that, but marriage was not in the cards. Three years at a consulting company and I was shown the door. I checked into a corporation at age forty intending to spend my life working there, and before I was fifty they cast me out. The young man who could climb four flights of stairs with a five drawer wooden file cabinet on his shoulder without puffing is gone, replaced by a sixty year old man who checks his heart rate after he climbs unburdened one set of stairs.

God has given me much in life, much joy, much happiness, much success, but every two or three years she says, "This, now this, this will die." And as I protest she adds, "Not your will son, but mine will be done."

So the chaplain need not teach me a course on how to die. Another brown haired lady with salty streaks of gray has already taught me that semester by semester. And I will not tell the chaplain the story of my life, but the story of my other deaths. So much more interesting, for there I met my mother God as she set aside her knitting, rose from the rocking chair from which she has served me so much, and said, "Remember now son who I am, and who you are. At this time, and on this subject, I will stand and you will kneel."

Yes, chaplain, life has already taught me to die. I ask only of you that you assist as I struggle to bend my knees finally, for the last of many times. And as I genuflect, hold my hand. I need its warmth as a reminder that although I am kneeling before an empty chair, when my grasp weakens, I can expect once more that I will be lifted up by hands as kindly as yours.

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