Our response to the poor in long term care facilities

Several weeks ago, I accepted a half time position as a nursing home chaplain. This facility has several hundred residents and only one chaplain (me). With that number of folks to visit, I have tried to focus on one nursing unit a day as well as to respond to requests for a visit and those who are dying and/or families of the deceased.

As I walk through the hallways, I am aware of residents in their rooms and make mental notes to visit each of them with some regularity. Early this week, I was ready to go home; there had been a death, a second resident near death, and several of the residents upset that they would not be leaving the transitional unit for home as they had anticipated, but they were rather, being moved into the skilled care rooms on another unit. As I neared my office, I saw a resident in her room and didn't even consider stopping. I stopped suddenly, as if someone was in my path urging me to turn around and check in on the resident I had elected to not see. There she was, with her wheel chair foot rest caught on her room mate's bed and she couldn't move back into her own area of the room. I recognized her as a woman with whom I had visited the day she was told she could not go home, but would be moving to long term care. She was inconsolable and we simply sat together as she began to mourn the loss of the life to which she was accustom.

As I entered the room, I asked if I might be of assistance. She responded that she didn't know what was keeping her from moving her wheel chair. I immediately realized that her wheel chair was caught on a bed frame, and after explaining what we needed to do to free her, I was able to move the bed and finally wheel this woman back into her own "room." She was most grateful and she thanked me for coming to visit her.

As I left the room and resumed the walk to my office, I realized how many of our residents must find themselves in similar circumstances much of the time. I was struck with the selfishness of my decision to pass by this woman but "see her another day." I also realized how we marginalize those who show no obvious need at the moment leading us to continue whatever we had been doing. This was a humbling realization and an even greater experience of the blindness that can so easily overcome everyone of us in relation to those we meet and pass by daily. I was reminded too, that the only thing upon which we can count is the moment. There is no assurance that either that resident or I would be here tomorrow. In not taking the time to stop, I would have refused a God given gift of myself to another and denied the other person the comfort and freedom of unrestricted movement in her room.

The bushel basket that so easily covers our light, is also responsible for our times of unawareness of and outreach to the marginalized and poor. Let us throw off that which dims to light and become bright and perpetual beacons in the world.