More CPE Reflections

Space and time are finally making a difference for me. When I would come home after being at the hospital all day, I'd make myself some dinner, turn on the TV, and fall asleep sitting up after about twenty minutes. I usually slept every night for about two hours and woke with a crick in my neck. At first this really bothered me. I thought I just didn't have the stamina I needed to be a chaplain; then I discovered that the other CPE-ers were just as exhausted as I was. Of course, I finally realized, as so many people have pointed out to me, the exhaustion was more emotional than physical. After going back to Seabury on Monday night, I finally felt as if I had left the world of chaplaincy and was back in Seminaryland. I've also noticed that I don't fall asleep in the evening the way I used to. I seem to have a great deal more energy. Others have mentioned that it takes a while to "come down" from the CPE experience. That's certainly been true for me. It's also interesting that, while I was doing CPE, the thought of going back to school just wearied me. I think I just couldn't deal with the emotional load of both CPE and school. Now that CPE is over, school is looking really good. I love the fall. New books, new pens, new pads of paper.

Enough Already with the Rain

It is a wet August. The good side of all this is that I don't have to water all the new plantings around my townhouse. And that is good news for the plantings because I'm far from a model gardener. I've never taken Candide very seriously and haven't spent much time cultivating my own garden.

I was driving on the north side of Wheaton when a violent thunderstorm hit a few minutes after 3pm. I was driving north on Main Street when it seemed like an explosion hit the trees on the other side of the road. They fell over like toothpicks onto the street. Luckily, no cars were in the way. I decided to turn around and head home, threading my way through north Glen Ellyn. I felt like a rat in a maze. I'd go down a street and then have to turn around and head down another road because fallen trees blocked the way. Quite the mess.

CPE is Over

It's been a particularly odd day. CPE ended yesterday and I feel as if I've stepped from one planet onto another. The world is so different today. My supervisor told us how the summer's experience would be "cumulative." The pile up of tragedy has been getting to me the last few days. Today, with the responsibility of caring for all those sick people suddenly lifted, with the absence of my badge and my pager gone, I feel a strange loss. I do not feel relief. I'm all too aware that the hospital is still full of people, some of whom I came to care a great deal about.

I haven't gotten much done today. Played lots of solitaire. Watched a few movies. Went to see Bourne Ultimatum and out to dinner with my friend Linda. But during the movie, all I could think about was that all those people who were beating up on each other and jumping through windows and off buildings would never have been able to walk away from those situations. They would be in the hospital having multiple surgeries at the very least. Most would be dead.

It has been a very long 11 weeks.

Finishing CPE

So, here I am, one week to go in CPE. I'm glad it's ending even though it was a great experience. But . . . too many 70 hour weeks. It's not the physical strain. That I can handle. It's the emotional strain. My supervisor said the effect of it all is cumulative -- and she's right. I keep thinking of the song, "Blowin' in the Wind." Yes, "too many people have died."

I had hoped to write about this experience, but the need for confidentiality prevents me from saying very much about specific patients or my fellow students and staff chaplains. Of course, I wrote lots of verbatims (write-ups of conversations with patients or families) and reflection papers on any number of topics. I've saved them. I imagine I'll look at them in a few years and laugh at myself.

Before CPE started, I worried about having to pray spontaneously with patients more than anything else. I know that probably sounds lame, but having grown up Roman Catholic and then having become Episcopal, I am truly one of the "people of the Book." When it came time to pray, however, I did just fine. A couple of times I did forget the name of the person I was praying with, so there was a bit of "Lord, surround . . . surround this wonderful man with your love." I generally began my oremus with "The Lord's Prayer," which I called "The Our Father" for the many Roman Catholics at my hospital. I liked to begin with something I knew. Sort of a warm-up. For the RCs, I had to remember to end the prayer at " and deliver us from evil." If I slipped into the "Protestant ending" ("For thine is the power, etc.), I sometimes got quite the look from older RCs. I was immediately suspect and probably a dangerous heretic of some kind.

Almost invariably the patient would cry as we recited the prayer together. Almost invariably. Often the patient and I had been having a pleasant, harmless conversation before the prayer. No God-talk. No talk about sickness or death or dying. Quite a few were in the hospital for relatively benign reasons, so terminal diagnoses did not explain the tears. But they cried. I would like to talk with each of them to understand what touched them. Was it a specific line? Or was it just the act of saying it? Did it bring back memories? Of childhood faith? Of a faith abandoned? Or was it just the grace of the moment? Did they feel what I felt so often in patients' rooms? Did they feel that God was there with us? That something happened between us that had nothing to do with either of us? That when all was said and done, in moments like this only faith mattered. That, in truth, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.