Sometimes a Watched Pot Boils – Part Two

Not a watched pot. Just potted watches.

“A watched pot never boils,” but sometimes they do. “And patients never die while someone sits vigil.” Well, that’s most often the case. But sometimes they do.

This morning, I found myself watching a pot come to a boil, then reflected on a patient who died during a very brief time alone (that’s Part One, which you’ll find below). But that was only after finding myself again in the midst of mourning the loss of a friend who most certainly did not die alone.

It has now been twenty-eight years since I was called to serve The Fort Jones Community Church. There’s a lot to say about my tenure there, but on my mind this morning, watching the pot slowly build up steam, was the Elder who wasn’t an Elder, yet. He served as an Elder would in every way but one. He just wasn’t “official,” initially. He was not allowed to attend Elders’ meetings, nor was he allowed to be called an Elder through the official channels of recognition in that congregation of that denomination at that particular time.

Watched pot, and pot-watcher.

He’d been a one-man woman for as long as anyone knew. But there had been an earlier marriage during the earliest part of his military service. The combined damage of that relationship, later experiences in Vietnam, and especially the inexorable deterioration and multiple diseases that accompany severe radiation exposure (he served on spotter planes above detonations on Enewetak Atoll), left him very mindful of his limitations, and the wisdom of simply serving wherever Christ called you, no matter what others may call you.

His advice, counsel, questions, and reproof of a then-twenty-four year old pastor in a redevelopment church was perhaps the single largest factor to my continuing in ministry there. His continued input and reminders over the subsequent years contributed significantly to my continuing in ministry…at all. For more than half my life, he called me his pastor, and he was my Elder and, I claim proudly, my friend.

The above barely does justice to him, but in this limited space, perhaps it offers some explanation for my reaction when I received a call from his wife some time ago.

After lengthy battles with the variety of damages his early experiences had imposed upon him, “He’s taken a turn for the worse,” she said. She wanted to know what my schedule looked like over the next week or so. She wanted to know where to find me when it was time for “his pastor” to help arrange the funeral for my Elder, my friend. That warning call came on a Saturday. Of course, I had duties the following morning. So, despite her concern that I might end up making two trips in the same week (and that in the time it took to drive there, he could be gone), I agreed that we would make the five-hour trip only after calling to confirm that he was still there to be visited.

We arrived that Sunday evening. He was still there. Using talents I’d developed in working with ALS, Cerebral Palsy, Muscular Dystrophy, and brain injury patients, I was able to enjoy a lengthy conversation with my Elder, my friend. He was weak, bed-ridden, but still able to reprove his pastor with good humor, even when I had to ask him to repeat with greater enunciation a particular gibe in my direction.

The next morning, we stopped by their home to visit briefly before heading back for the week’s responsibilities, knowing that my agenda and schedule were likely to be interrupted by news of his death. As we stood around his bed, though, his hand in my left, his wife’s in my right, and my wife completing the chain between husband and wife by grasping his big toe through the bed sheet, I prayed for my Elder, my friend—and I felt the unmistakable slackening in his grip, followed by the sigh I had heard from others many times before.

It momentarily threw me. I had never had someone die in the midst of prayer before. But knowing that he desired no “heroic measures,” I simply concluded my prayer (though probably more abruptly than I would have otherwise). At that point, his wife, retired from her nursing career, and I, an experienced Hospice chaplain, went into technician mode: things to check, calls to make, a pathway to clear. And then the long wait for contact from law enforcement (in some counties even a death on Hospice care requires the same attention as any other “unattended” death), their arrival, the arrival of the mortuary service and their departure with the body of my Elder, my friend. And then, the long drive home, trying to regain my bearings.

Somewhere along the twisting roads of the Northern California mountains, heading inland from my friends’ seaside home, I came to a realization. Nobody ever really dies alone. Granted, not all die surrounded by friends and family in the midst of a time of prayer. I trust that it was a blessing to my Elder, my friend, as the last words he heard on this earth were the prayers of his pastor. But as much as Jesus was with us in that moment, Christ is here, today, with every one of us.

Why, then, does it seem like so many choose to let go of the last threads of this life when all their fellow-humans have left the room? Maybe a lot of us just wait…until there aren’t so many interruptions to our conversation with Him.

Sometimes a Watched Pot Boils – Part One

“A watched pot never boils…and patients never die while someone sits vigil.” There are exceptions, though. This morning, just to prove to myself what I’d seen, I watched a pot come to a boil. But still, the adage is well-founded. It’s not something I would do very often.

The fact is, patients do most frequently die when alone. Some will hold on for that one last special visit. Some seem to remain long enough to hear the conclusion of a particularly interesting conversation. But it is in the little breaks in a vigil, when everyone leaves the bedside to see the new grandbaby, or the primary caregiver needs just one quick cigarette, or when a loved one comes away to the desk to escort the next shift’s visitor to the room…

Saturday, 2:00 p.m. – I was the one to find that he’d gone. The long-term care facility’s nurse had directed me to the room and said she’d be along in just a moment. She’d been sitting, reading to him, watching his breathing grow slower over the past half hour.

Saturday, 9:00 a.m. – Some of the family had gathered at our favorite breakfast place. On our way out – “Would you mind stopping by to check on Dad? He’s not doing too well, and I know he’d love to see you.” I promised I would go after the funeral. After all, the request was made by a son just hours before his mother’s funeral. His mother and father had long-since divorced and remarried others. I’d buried the step-father some months earlier. So, that afternoon, I left the widow’s funeral for the local long-term care facility where I entered her ex-husband’s room to find that he’d died.

Saturday, 3:00 p.m. – Because I’ve trained for, served extensively at, and taught others in making an appropriate death notification, I was asked (and it seemed only right for me) to handle this one. I made a couple of phone calls to determine where the family had gathered before dispersing to their distant homes. As I drove to the hotel restaurant at which they’d gathered, I prayed that I would be able to gather the four men in order to break the news all at once. But the potential of one being in his hotel room, another in the bar, one at a table in the restaurant, and perhaps the fourth standing outside saying goodbye to friends or relatives…I imagined they might make assumptions about the purpose for my visit. I was prepared for a less-than-optimal situation.

But when I walked in, the four brothers were standing together, engaged in conversation with one another, with everyone else in rapt discussions around various tables, seemingly oblivious to my presence. The second youngest saw me, welcomed me, and asked if I had stopped off to see his dad. With just the four brothers, I was able to explain that I’d stopped by, that the nurse directed me to his current room, but when I spoke to him he was unresponsive and, in fact, I had called the nurse into the room to confirm my suspicions. “She did, and apparently in the couple of minutes he was alone, he had died.” (I try to, and train others to break the process down into seven gradually leading elements. Given the circumstances, I was very glad to come up with even six steps.)

Shortly thereafter I found myself in the center of the hotel bar, joined hand-in-hand with a circle of thirty-some family and friends, praying with them. Having gathered to mourn and reminisce together, a new grief, anticipated but still shocking in its timing, was introduced. One of the daughters-in-law asked afterward, “Has anything like this ever happened to you before?” We were in good humor at that point, so I responded, “You mean, have I ever done a mother’s funeral, then left to visit the father, her ex-husband, been the one to find the body, come to the post-funeral family dinner and break the news of the second death to the family? No, I’m not sure that’s ever happened to anyone before.”

But this morning, I stood in my kitchen and watched a pot come to a boil. It’s not something I would do very often. But I’ll tell you why in part two.