Care for the Dying

Guideline #10. Be a rock, but do not be a landslide. Do not just march in and take charge. Look, listen and assess the situation. Practice compassionate pastoral presence. Be the solid, confident presence of faith and hope. Observe the family; see where they are, and what they seem to be going through. Pray for discernment in order to determine the extent of your role. The seat next to the sick or dying patient does not belong to you (maybe for just a few minutes). That closest chair belongs to the spouse, the children, or the parent. The better you know the family, the more prominent your role will probably be. Different family and friends might have very different expectations of you. Again, do not take advantage of or bully others in their time of grief. Give comfort, encouragement, and hope, always pointing to Jesus. Acknowledge their grief and recognize that their grief is normal and proper. Again, I want to expand and clarify these words of instruction with a personal story.

A home patient we will call Teresa was dying of cancer. She was a very young-looking forty-year-old mother of two teen-aged children. Teresa had put her faith in Christ and become active in her church only about a year before. I had been to visit with Teresa a couple of times when she was able to share her thoughts and her faith with me. It became clear, however, that Teresa was now actively dying. I never know for sure, of course, but I was fairly certain that she would die that day.
There were about twenty family members and friends gathered in and around their small, poorly constructed duplex. Teresa was non-responsive, lying in a hospital bed that was placed in the living room. Her own mother, sister, and brothers, and her two daughters were rotating in and out of those chairs closest to her bedside. I went to be with this family, listening individually to some and also leading them together in prayer a couple of times.
Then Teresa’s pastor arrived, along with his wife and another woman from the church. This pastor was an outgoing people person, but he took little time at all to stop and listen to this grieving family. He announced his presence, took his position at the foot of the bed, said a nice big prayer and began singing with his guitar. His wife and the other woman backed him up with some pretty good harmonies. The patient’s family and the pastor were all Hispanic so there was no real cultural gap, but no one in the room seemed to know the songs other than the pastor and his two backup singers. They sang three or four long songs, then without a pause in the performance, the pastor began to preach. My Spanish is very limited, but it sounded like he was preaching the Gospel, and he mentioned death and dying.
It was all so overwhelming. There seemed to be little, if any, acknowledgment of what was happening. There was no listening to the very real grief of the family. There was another platform kind of prayer and then there was more singing. I had already been there about two hours and I had other patients scheduled to see who were not very far away. I told one of the family members that I needed to go, but I would still be in the area. And so I slipped out while the pastor was still singing.
It was a little more than an hour later that I got a call from one of our nurses, reporting that Teresa had died. I hurried over to the house where the family was showing their grief with a lot of tears and weeping. I realized that the pastor and his entourage were no longer present, so I asked the patient’s sister when they had left. She said they had been gone for less than a half hour. She also said, “We are not calling him back over here.” I went about my task of listening to grieving family members and weeping with those who wept. With so many people present, it would have been very nice to have a few more ministers to give caring support. I stayed until about an hour later, when the funeral directors came to remove Teresa’s lifeless body. I led in a prayer, thanking God for His grace given to Teresa. I also asked the Lord to help these grieving loved ones, most of whom apparently did not yet have hope in Him.
I wished that the pastor had known more about listening to and showing love to this grieving family. I feel that he could have been used in such a great way if he had been more of a gentle shepherd to these grieving souls.