Power to the Peeple

In mid-April I went to Jonas’s goodbye party: lunch, and a chance for each of us to say what he has meant to us and to thank him. Carolina was there and gave me a big hug; I rarely get to see her in person.

I’d been thinking about what my fellow County Hospital chaplain said about there being obstacles at every turn when she did the training program I am now doing. When I got a chance to ask her about that, she said the program somehow figures out what you don’t want probed into and probes into it; she used the phrase “karma accelerator.” Encountering four things from bad dreams within 24 hours the first time I traveled there is kind of striking.

She had some practical advice, including to write the papers in reverse: to start with the application of whatever it is to chaplaincy and work backward from there. I would never have thought of that. She also said not to freak out when my proposal for my thesis gets negative feedback; apparently that is traditional. She noted that you spend nearly two years developing a vast concept of chaplaincy, and then have to compress it to a laser point for your final project, also a very helpful observation.

While speaking that day with a patient who had been in a car accident, my hand gently came to rest on some object or other that was in front of me. When I finally looked down, I saw it was the patient’s plastic pee bottle. (Carlos thought this was such a great device that he had one for his bedroom, so he wouldn’t have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. He called it Power to the Peeple.)

One day I watched the trailer for End Game, a Netflix documentary about Zen Hospice and palliative care services at the Truly Wonderful Medical Center which features BJ Miller. It looks excellent. Sam and I might be in it; we were at a palliative care meeting one day when they were filming for this, though the camera was mostly aimed at BJ Miller. (End Game should be available on Netflix by now.)

TWMC offers a year-long training in palliative care that meets just one day a month. When I had lunch with Delia not too long ago, she encouraged me to do it. I wasn’t really that interested, partly because it didn’t necessarily seem like a good idea to add anything else to my schedule. I feel chronically tired, despite sleeping at least nine hours a night, sometimes ten, sometimes eleven. But that is OK. I accept that as cost of doing something that is really important to me. At the same time, I don’t want to be a burned-out over-functioner, and I decided not to apply for the class.

The day I watched the End Game trailer, I also happened to receive an email from someone who did the class last year and who said it was excellent, so I emailed the coordinator to ask if it was too late to apply. She said it would be fine to apply—the notice for the class says that spiritual care professionals are particularly encouraged—so I went ahead and did that, and now am waiting to hear if they will give me a scholarship.