Quote of the day: Sometimes the Time to Weep and the Time to Laugh are the Same Time

As some of you know, I’ve begun a new vocation this year: Hospice Chaplain. This job comes with some new ministry challenges, and I’ll share some of them in days to come.

Today, though, I’ll only talk about one. I often visit people who are asleep or unresponsive.

In the past, people have certainly been sleeping while I preached. It’s a very different thing to be alone in a room with someone who perhaps can hear me, perhaps not. Leaving and coming back later hoping to find the person awake isn’t an option. I need to care for the person in that moment.

I work in nursing facilities. When I come to a room, I knock. I introduce myself in a moderate voice. Sometimes closed eyes will open, and we’ll have a delightful conversation. If the eyes don’t open, that doesn’t mean I leave. I pull up a chair and sit for a while, maybe read some Scripture, sing a hymn, and pray.

And then, due to government requirements, I chart and write up the visit. Many words are written and boxes are checked to say, “The patient was unresponsive.”

Because you never know what people can hear, I’m happy to be there to speak of God’s love and grace. I know that God does hear prayer for the patient.

Nonetheless, such a visit isn’t as satisfying as a visit where a patient can celebrate life or ask difficult questions or even just complain about the facility’s food.

This last week, I had one of those quieter visits. The nurse told me he’d received medication that would make him drowsy, so after I knocked and introduced myself in a moderate voice to the patient, I wasn’t surprised that he remained asleep on his back. Here’s what made this visit different: the patient had a Bible open on his chest.

I was curious what passage the patient had been reading, so I looked at the Bible.

It was opened to Ezra 2 and 3. Ezra isn’t a book most people turn to; generally, people seem to turn to Psalms or one of the Gospels. I pulled up a chair, opened my Bible to the passage, and found a wonderful verse that relates to the work of hospice.

The book of Ezra is about the exiled Jews returning from Babylon and finding the temple in ruins.

This is Ezra 3:13 (our quote of the day): No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.

In hospice charting, when discussing a patient’s death, there is a place to note whether the family’s mourning is “appropriate.” Loud wailing and rending of clothes, appropriate back in the day, are no longer in style.

What I greatly appreciate about this verse is the mix of sounds of joy and sounds of sorrow. At the time of a person’s death, there really should be both things. I’ve been in rooms where a family is gathered around their dying loved one, telling old stories. And laughing heartily at those stories, then crying. Both the laughter and the tears are “appropriate.”

That is one of the things that was so jarring about the recent mockery of a memorial in Gaza. The coffins of children were paraded about only to the sound of rejoicing. There was no need to distinguish the “shouts of joy” and the “sounds of weeping.” That response to the death of a child is not “appropriate”. It’s evil.

But when we face our own losses, there is room for the idea of a wake, a party of celebration, as long as there is also room for the sorrow and great pain that comes with the loss of a loved one.