The Small Packages

 

It was the small packages that bothered me the most…

I’ve become familiar with death, and have learned to accept it.

As a part-time Hospital Chaplain, I have been with people who were dying, sitting with them as their lives faded away, talking with them, sharing jokes and stories, making sure that they were not alone as they faded.

Saying prayers as their breathing became labored, and holding their hands as they exhaled for the last time…

As I watched the life leave their bodies, it was as if they deflated, and I knew that they had moved on.

I have spent time with families in waiting rooms and chapels as they prepared for loss, and stood with them at the bedside when the lights had been lowered, and shared a prayer, or simply listened as they began to mourn. I have also made arrangements and performed funerals, for both friends and strangers…and in the end, I said the final words over the grave as I poured the sand “In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection…”

I have also stood with a priest (in training) as he said the Last Rites for the first time by without another Man of the Cloth, and helped him with his anxiety.

As a Patient Transporter a a big hospital, I have watched as bodies were prepared to be taken from the room and have even made the trip to the morgue myself.

We always went as a team, as we had to move the body on to a transport cart and then cover it with a sheet before carefully taking it to the basement, avoiding all public areas.

The morgue was not like the ones you see on TV, there were no banks of stainless-steel vaults where the body could be stored and then rolled out dramatically for identification or examination. That would not be practical for a busy morgue, sadly, there would not be enough room.

Instead, the morgue was a large refrigerated room, with shelves along the walls, and filled with row upon row of dull metal carts, while some empty, most were occupied by a body, zipped into a thin, white plastic bag.

The room was lit by banks of florescent lights, institutional, without warmth or hope.

I got used to being in the company of death…at least for the most part. I have come to see that it really is a part of life, and nothing to fear. I have never seen any one who was screaming and sobbing at the end, they all moved on peacefully…most asleep or unconscious, although some were praying, looking at loved ones or simply smiling, and there was one man, who told me he was an Atheist, and “…didn’t need no preacher” when he met me, but was calling out to Jesus when the end came.

After all I have seen and experienced, I can’t believe that death is the end…although I do not know what comes next.

However, this is not to say that I never find death painful…or unfair, as I mourn those I have lost, and feel sorrow for those who have died due to addiction, accidents, illness or violence.

And felt injustice at those who have died too young…

This is what bothered me the most about those trips to the morgue, about the small packages.

They were placed on the shelves the lined the walls of the room, in neat little bundles. At first glance, it was hard to tell what they were. I had to ask, and when I learned the truth, it made me incredibly sad.

Children are not supposed to die.

Our children should be playing in the Sun, laughing at cartoons, complaining about school work and vegetables, and sleeping in soft beds, not held hostage to the evils of this world, or laid out on a cold steel shelf, in a room beyond hope.

They are supposed to wrapped in love, enveloped by the warmth of family and all those who care for them, but sadly, we know that this is not true for every child. Many face challenges and trials that are not of their own making. They have faced violence, abuse, disease and poverty…neglect and loneliness.

The world is not always fair to the innocent, nor does it always deal justly with the guilty, leaving most of us simply shaking our heads.

Looking at those small packages, laying in that institutional room, was evidence of just how unfair the world can be.

They also brought back some of my earliest memories…from before I became who I am, maybe even before I knew my parents.

Those are memories of being on a cold ward, filled with metal cribs, of toys pushed through the bars, of being alone, of being cared for by the doctors and nurses who sought to recover children who had been on the verge of being lost.

Of looking up every time a door opened, to see if there was a familiar face…come to take me home, wherever that may be.

Those small packages also reminded me of how fortunate I am, to have been given the life I have…

Because I know that I too could have been wrapped up in one of those small packages, were it not for the Grace of God, and the intervention of the compassionate.

And this reminds me to practice compassion in all that I do.