Bon Secours
Just Quickly.[Sept 4]
We are at the hospital. Don had a massive stroke early Friday morning, more than the Hospice team could handle out in the pine trees, so we are in the hospital in Richmond. He and I have been made comfortable and given all the support we could ask for and more. His wish would not have been to make work and trouble for these wonderful folks. He is at peace, sleeping now
His vital signs, are much weaker this morning, so it will likely be soon that he gets to go on his last walk.
His Dad, who died at 99, said to his nurse one night that he was going for a walk in the woods, and died that night. He was a forestry professor at UWA.
In 1824, the streets of Paris were littered with the misery, illness and death that followed the French Revolution, and subsequent upheavals. A group of 12 nuns began to serve the needs of the sick and dying not within their safe cloister, nor in the dreadful death traps that passed for hospitals, but out in the street and hovels. They treated everyone, regardless of religious or political leanings, and survived several anti Catholic pogroms.
In 1881, three sisters came to Baltimore MD, opened the first day care ever, continued their mission of home care, and in 1916 opened Bon Secours hospital. I was born at this hospital. (In the steamy heat of June, my laboring mother was admonished to cover herself with the bedclothes. When she, typically, would not, the sister said, “But Mrs. Pickman, what if the Doctor should see you?”)
Good Help was exactly what we received from Bon Secours, not just at the hospital, but with the Hospice Program. Mostly lay people now, working for peanuts, visiting and comforting people dying in their homes. Not a peep of Catholic doctrine, no Hail Marys, only a small crucifix high on the wall of each room in the hospital. I found myself staring at this, saying the prayers of my Catholic youth, and weeping while I watched at Don’s bedside. At the end, though, I said to him the whole Lord’s Prayer, power and glory forever, which I learned from my Quaker mother. A Scots Presbyterian would want that.
The folks who came to the RV in those last days were wonderful, and when at the end we were not able to manage the seizures and panic that last mortal stroke caused, we got the same gentle care from the nurses at the hospital. They made time to sit with me and talk, and let me cry on what was happening, and were always monitoring his comfort. And when he breathed his last, we all sat for a long while as the color of his skin faded to an old ivory, like an old Japanese carving, and the heat of his body slowly left. A nice young man came in to just be with us, to listen and affirm, and let us know we could stay as long as we needed.
As a child, going to catechism class, I remember discovering that the answer to nearly every question in the “quiz” was Sanctifying Grace. This seemed to me a commodity that one earned, a little like indulgences, the bartering of lengthy prayers or good deeds for less time in purgatory, but principally by going to Mass , Confession, receiving Communion and obeying the rules. This tally sheet of my sins ( teasing my brother, disobeying my parents, chattering in class) could be fixed, it seemed, just by doing what I was going to do anyway, enforced by my family. It seemed a little too easy, and I went right on teasing my poor brother and chattering in class, since it could all be fixed.
I think I found Sanctifying Grace, in the mission of Bon Secours. We were listened to with full attention, our fears were met with reassurance, our needs attended to, never once did our “immoral” unwed relationship meet with anything but acceptance. And it never occurred to me to think that all this care and love was done to balance out their sins, or to get me back to Mass.
There is another extraordinary power that sustains me, and that is you, gentle reader, and all those others who have worried and prayed and sent me courage and condolences. In the village times of human history, we would all be physically together, doing much the same thing. We move around today, in search of work or dreams or better weather, leaving our physical village, but it seems to me that the internet has filled the need for contact with those we know well, that are family, blood or chosen, old friends, or even those we know only through the air. Those of us who live on the road are even more in need of community, and behold there you all are. Better than a thousand nosey neighbors with casseroles feeding off my sadness, better than sitting at visiting hours, miserable with my loss, having to be a part of the huge party that is a funeral and wake. At moments when my sadness overtakes me, I look up at the sky and your thoughts come to comfort me like a soft shawl. Thank you. If I have the power to do so, bless you.
[On Sunday, Sept. 6, at 12:30, Don breathed his last, in my arms, in no pain, with two of his three daughters nearby. His harsh breathing stopped, started again and then stopped, and his brave heart rested at last.]
I have moved back into the Airstream, after the first two nights, I found there were too many stories in that bed in the 5th wheel. It has taken me 10 days to get my things out, the 5th wheel is a sad place, too many of Don’s molecules are there, I keep turning around expecting to see him, or reliving some of the really bad parts of the very end. His clothes are gone to Good Will, but his toys, the Ham radio set up, his TV, and all his tools are still there looking reproachful still that he was uninterested in them as he slowly turned inward to prepare for death. The inside of the Airstream is a disaster. I accumulated way too much stuff while living in the enormous space of the 5th wheel, and a lot of it reminds me powerfully of him so it’s hard to part with it. But distill I must, and only save the best bits, and remember the best times.
We are at the hospital. Don had a massive stroke early Friday morning, more than the Hospice team could handle out in the pine trees, so we are in the hospital in Richmond. He and I have been made comfortable and given all the support we could ask for and more. His wish would not have been to make work and trouble for these wonderful folks. He is at peace, sleeping now
His vital signs, are much weaker this morning, so it will likely be soon that he gets to go on his last walk.
His Dad, who died at 99, said to his nurse one night that he was going for a walk in the woods, and died that night. He was a forestry professor at UWA.
In 1824, the streets of Paris were littered with the misery, illness and death that followed the French Revolution, and subsequent upheavals. A group of 12 nuns began to serve the needs of the sick and dying not within their safe cloister, nor in the dreadful death traps that passed for hospitals, but out in the street and hovels. They treated everyone, regardless of religious or political leanings, and survived several anti Catholic pogroms.
In 1881, three sisters came to Baltimore MD, opened the first day care ever, continued their mission of home care, and in 1916 opened Bon Secours hospital. I was born at this hospital. (In the steamy heat of June, my laboring mother was admonished to cover herself with the bedclothes. When she, typically, would not, the sister said, “But Mrs. Pickman, what if the Doctor should see you?”)
Good Help was exactly what we received from Bon Secours, not just at the hospital, but with the Hospice Program. Mostly lay people now, working for peanuts, visiting and comforting people dying in their homes. Not a peep of Catholic doctrine, no Hail Marys, only a small crucifix high on the wall of each room in the hospital. I found myself staring at this, saying the prayers of my Catholic youth, and weeping while I watched at Don’s bedside. At the end, though, I said to him the whole Lord’s Prayer, power and glory forever, which I learned from my Quaker mother. A Scots Presbyterian would want that.
The folks who came to the RV in those last days were wonderful, and when at the end we were not able to manage the seizures and panic that last mortal stroke caused, we got the same gentle care from the nurses at the hospital. They made time to sit with me and talk, and let me cry on what was happening, and were always monitoring his comfort. And when he breathed his last, we all sat for a long while as the color of his skin faded to an old ivory, like an old Japanese carving, and the heat of his body slowly left. A nice young man came in to just be with us, to listen and affirm, and let us know we could stay as long as we needed.
As a child, going to catechism class, I remember discovering that the answer to nearly every question in the “quiz” was Sanctifying Grace. This seemed to me a commodity that one earned, a little like indulgences, the bartering of lengthy prayers or good deeds for less time in purgatory, but principally by going to Mass , Confession, receiving Communion and obeying the rules. This tally sheet of my sins ( teasing my brother, disobeying my parents, chattering in class) could be fixed, it seemed, just by doing what I was going to do anyway, enforced by my family. It seemed a little too easy, and I went right on teasing my poor brother and chattering in class, since it could all be fixed.
I think I found Sanctifying Grace, in the mission of Bon Secours. We were listened to with full attention, our fears were met with reassurance, our needs attended to, never once did our “immoral” unwed relationship meet with anything but acceptance. And it never occurred to me to think that all this care and love was done to balance out their sins, or to get me back to Mass.
There is another extraordinary power that sustains me, and that is you, gentle reader, and all those others who have worried and prayed and sent me courage and condolences. In the village times of human history, we would all be physically together, doing much the same thing. We move around today, in search of work or dreams or better weather, leaving our physical village, but it seems to me that the internet has filled the need for contact with those we know well, that are family, blood or chosen, old friends, or even those we know only through the air. Those of us who live on the road are even more in need of community, and behold there you all are. Better than a thousand nosey neighbors with casseroles feeding off my sadness, better than sitting at visiting hours, miserable with my loss, having to be a part of the huge party that is a funeral and wake. At moments when my sadness overtakes me, I look up at the sky and your thoughts come to comfort me like a soft shawl. Thank you. If I have the power to do so, bless you.
[On Sunday, Sept. 6, at 12:30, Don breathed his last, in my arms, in no pain, with two of his three daughters nearby. His harsh breathing stopped, started again and then stopped, and his brave heart rested at last.]
I have moved back into the Airstream, after the first two nights, I found there were too many stories in that bed in the 5th wheel. It has taken me 10 days to get my things out, the 5th wheel is a sad place, too many of Don’s molecules are there, I keep turning around expecting to see him, or reliving some of the really bad parts of the very end. His clothes are gone to Good Will, but his toys, the Ham radio set up, his TV, and all his tools are still there looking reproachful still that he was uninterested in them as he slowly turned inward to prepare for death. The inside of the Airstream is a disaster. I accumulated way too much stuff while living in the enormous space of the 5th wheel, and a lot of it reminds me powerfully of him so it’s hard to part with it. But distill I must, and only save the best bits, and remember the best times.
posted by Thistledown24 at 6:09 PM
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