I Will Never Take Being in a Hospital for Granted
The coronavirus pandemic has already altered daily life beyond recognition. It will shape our lives for years to come, mostly in ways that are impossible to predict, let alone understand. Esquire asked twenty people to share their experiences in the first few months of the outbreak. Each of their first-person accounts is a reassurance that none of us are facing this alone. Check out the full list here.
What’s so hard is that no one with COVID can have visitors. I find that I’m doing a lot of calls to family members of COVID patients, because they’re not allowed to come in. That’s very emotionally draining on me, too. There’s sorrow. There’s grief.
My skills for doing a spiritual assessment over the phone have definitely improved. I have had some really amazing conversations with patients. I called this young guy, in his twenties, who had COVID. Toward the end of our conversation, he was like, “I was not expecting this today. This was really good. Thank you so much.” We prayed together, and it was really meaningful for him—for someone to reach out and acknowledge his suffering and ask if he wanted to pray.
I had a situation where a gentleman who’d been married for over fifty years was only allowed to stay with his wife for an hour. [She didn’t have COVID-19.] I blessed her with holy water and said the Prayer of Commendation and provided spiritual support. He was at risk just by being in the hospital, but he had to say goodbye. We were on the elevator walking out of the hospital together, and he was like, “We were just having coffee this morning.”
I’m really disappointed in the church. I just feel like more priests need to be here in the trenches. Because that’s what the church has told people their whole lives. And then you have an eighty-year-old patient who thinks these sacraments are so important, and they aren’t available because of the virus.
The church talks about presence. You can’t do confession over the telephone. You can’t do the sacrament of the sick over the telephone. We are an embodied faith. You need to be there with the person, holding their hands, anointing them with the oils, hearing their confessions. There’s something so healing about touch. I just—I will never take being in a hospital for granted.
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