Pandemic Parables: Small Disappointments
Sunday June 14 2020
Despite the rejoicing that the number of virus patients continues to slowly decrease in the hospital in Frederick, Maryland, where I am working as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August, it was also a week of small disappointments.
But first the numbers. Although there have been thirty seven deaths from Covid-19 in the hospital, one hundred and sixty eight Coronavirus patients have been released so far. Hallelluia!
The victory walks are still taking place, but with much less frequency. That’s because we have far fewer virus patients in the hospital than at the height of the curve. Therefore fewer are being released (and some prefer to skip out of the hospital quietly, celebration-free.)
As of Friday night we had twelve Covid-19 patients who were confirmed and four under investigation. That’s one less than last week - better than one more. Especially as social distancing provisos in the county have eased. Indeed at times, and in certain situations, they seem to have been abandoned.
Despite that development, may the number of cases continue to decrease and soon disappear into oblivion. Amen!
The disappointments seem petty in comparison with such good news.
So, in advance, forgive me for all the small mindedness I am about to display.
It’s the office.
If you remember from past parables, in the middle of the pandemic the hospital embarked on an already planned building project. This meant that the chaplains, and our boss - the head of Pastoral Care - lost our offices and were in temporary accommodation. Our boss perched in her assistant’s office. Her assistant worked from home.
We chaplains moved into what is effectively part of the wide corridor that goes from one of the now closed hospital entrances to the Birthing Center - a short distance. Our area is separated off with tall padded dividers that are high, but not nearly ceiling height.
This gives the illusion of privacy but you can hear every word that goes on inside and outside that barrier.
Between the entrance doors and the start of these dividers are comfortable chairs including a couple of rockers.
This is the waiting room for the Birthing Center. It is void of people now, but when visitors are allowed to return this is where family members and young siblings gather to await the newest member of their families.
It is a joyous, noisy place full of loud conversations and fretful, over-excited children crying.
When the wind is right in the morning you can smell frying bacon from the industrial kitchens below us. On some afternoons you hear an increasingly loud whirring and smell a sudden burst of jet fuel. It’s a helicopter landing on the roof above our heads, usually to whisk away a seriously ill patient to another hospital.
As part of the course that Resident Chaplains take we have to bare our hearts in a group meeting three times a week, and solo with the head of the department once a week. During these sessions our lives and feelings are probed.
Because of Covid-19 we now do these sessions on line.
In our office.
(Although I have managed to find a more private place for the solo supervision session until the end of June.)
We have been eagerly looking forward to moving. Especially when the workmen were there with their everpresent charm and mechanical noise.
Some weeks ago the man in charge of the renovations said to me.
“Do you know where the new chaplains' office will be?”
“No,” I said. But we are all longing to find out.”
“Come,” he said.
I happily trotted after him.
If I’d had a tail it would have been wagging.
He led me to the small corridor between our old office and the rest rooms and said:-
“All of this is being sealed off and your office is being created in this space.”
I thanked him and rushed back to tell the other chaplains.
It made the inconveniences easier to bear.
However not all plans go as we think they will. The office next to our future home was expanded. Our presumed home shrank. And shrank.
It was clear it would only fit one small desk.
We waited, breath bated to see what the new plan was.
And when it was revealed we sulked.
Or at least I did. But the others did look crestfallen.
We were staying where we were with more suitable work stations being brought in.
Staying in the corridor with no sound privacy, despite needing to discuss patients’ details and our own personal issues.
We have a massage ball in the shape of a construction hat that we put in the floor and stamp on when we are frustrated.
A lot of stomping went on in the chaplain’s office that day.
We were even to lose our Summer cottage.
Let me explain.
Taking up a huge amount of space behind the partition was an ancient, enormous conference table. One end of it, near the window was my work station. I always bring in a packed lunch. I wanted a different view from the one I regularly saw from behind my computer.
“I’m going to the Summer cottage for lunch today” I announced to the chaplains on one of our first days in this space.
“Would anyone like to join me. There is enough room here for social distancing.”
I shoved my lunch bag across the table and walked around to join it. One of the other chaplains brought her cafeteria tray and joined me, sitting on the opposite side.
We enjoyed a quiet companiable lunch.
Although it seems ridiculous, our Summer cottage became a refuge of safety in the midst of sometimes turbulent, always exhausting days.
The tension that flooded the hospital throughout this crisis seeped into our bone’s marrow leaving us constantly exhausted.
By settling at the Summer cottage during lunch we somehow stepped into a peaceful other world.
On Thursday we lost the cottage.
That was moving day and men came, dismantled the behemoth and carted it away.
There were only two of us there the next day., Friday. The two who had most enjoyed the Summer cottage. We had been given a temporary home for two days in an unused office in the volunteer’s section of the hospital.
It had walls that went up to the ceiling.
We tried hard not to be jealous.
The Volunteer Director is an absolutely lovely woman. “Come and see my office she said to me,” on the second day we were there. “It is one of the grandest in the building.”
And it was beautiful. It was large, with two windows, a big desk and a small round conference table and chairs. I was delighted that she had such a space.
“It was the same size and exact layout of the CEOs office,” she said with a smile. “He has a different one now but at the time his was directly above this one.”
She went over to the wall and stroked it.
“You see this has wall paper.”
I did, it was a very lovely, elegant, neutral print.
Her grin got bigger.
“The workers made a mistake. They wallpapered my office instead of his. And he didn’t get his done for a couple of years after that. “
We both laughed at the ridiculousness of the mistake - and what must have been the CEOs surprise and disappointment.
It somehow made the loss of our office space and furnishings easier to bear.
Things clicked back in to perspective today.
It is Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body of Christ, and so a perfect day for our church to be open and celebrating the Eucharistic publicly for the first time since the beginning of the virus.
Free tickets were required to enter so that social distancing would be strictly adhered to. Masks had to be worn except for receiving communion, and only the cantor at the front could sing. The priests would not process to the altar, nor greet parishioners in front of the church.
I knew this would be the case as I drove to the beautiful old building with the tallest bell tower in Frederick. A place that I have missed enormously.
But there. Right inside the doors of the church were the priests!
I stopped and laughed out loud.
There were two larger than life cut outs of the priests fully robed, with enormous grins on their faces welcoming in the faithful.
They would have been outside the doors but it was a windy day.
It would have been terrible to see these two do a Mary Poppins - or perhaps more fittingly an Enoch - (the saint who left earth to walk with God) and ascend heavenwards.
It made me realize once again that there is humor in every situation if we look hard enough. My Irish ancestors honed that gift of laughter during the famines and wars that have regularly swept through the Emerald Isle.
The mass itself was really different- and yet wonderful. And comforting.
it made me realize that our office situation will work itself out.
Especially if I start to remember it’s benefits.
It is spacious, has a window, and I like bacon.
The helicopter gives me a shiver every time I hear it. As I pray for the patient being whisked away I am deeply aware that it is a vehicle of mercy, hopefully a transportation to healing.
In this most uncertain time it is easy to cling to the way we think things should be. To people and possessions that give us comfort. Our own equivalent of office locations and enormous ancient tables.
To wallow in the unfairness of small disappointments.
Perhaps we are meant to let go. To allow people and situations to leave our lives trusting that ones that are right for a new season will appear when they are meant to.
Lord help us to do so. To know when to hold on. When to let go.
When to push. When to rest.
When to wait. And wait. And wait.
Knowing that You are our Provider. You have never let us down. And you never will.
Let us know that truth with great certainty deep within our bones
Grant us your peace Lord.
Your shalom.
Let us experience in new ways Your goodness in the land of the living.
And in the meantime let us rest, comforted in the knowledge that whatever the future holds.
It will be good.
Amen.
