Yesterday I had a meeting with my Teaching Parish supervisor, and we just sort of talked through her daily-ish routine. One of the first things she said was that she never accomplishes all of what she sets out to accomplish, because things come up. Most often, she said, she will plan the most productive day in a long while, and someone will be dying.
But when this happens, it does not keep her from doing her job. Being with a grieving family is doing her job. Certainly she prefers when her day is interrupted by births or weddings or any manner of happy things. But what she said about working through deaths was memorable. She said, "To be with people in the densely personal time of dying...what a privilege."
And a privilege it is. To be the one telephoned to come and be a part of the last words a family will ever say to each other is not one to be taken lightly. To pray with them, to read to them from the psalms, to sit in silence with them...there is no other career path that leads there.
I don't have much more to say about this just yet, but it was something I wanted to record.
But when this happens, it does not keep her from doing her job. Being with a grieving family is doing her job. Certainly she prefers when her day is interrupted by births or weddings or any manner of happy things. But what she said about working through deaths was memorable. She said, "To be with people in the densely personal time of dying...what a privilege."
And a privilege it is. To be the one telephoned to come and be a part of the last words a family will ever say to each other is not one to be taken lightly. To pray with them, to read to them from the psalms, to sit in silence with them...there is no other career path that leads there.
I don't have much more to say about this just yet, but it was something I wanted to record.