The Great Equalizer

As a rule of thumb - I don't cry. Well, not when anyone can see me, at least. The other day, this article from the Washington Post kinda made me teary, not only because of the senseless spectacle the religious right made of the whole Schiavo situation, but because Hospice care is a very sacred vocation and to denigrate it into the likes of Auschwitz was extremely ignorant and cruel.

I will tell you something about me that not very many people know: when I lived in Manhattan, I used to volunteer at a Catholic Hospice on weekends. While I was changing bedpans and feeding patients, my friends thought I was out partying and drinking. In a place where death is a daily visitor, it was a privilege to be there for the living. On late Saturday nights, when the hallway lights had been dimmed and I was getting ready to strap my rollerblades for my 3-mile ride to my Upper East Side apartment (best time to skate on 3rd Avenue, by the way...) I would look around and imagine a multitude of Saints and Angels everywhere silently and piously keeping vigil ready to take the faithful (and not-so-faithful) home.

I still remember a lot of the people I met: there's Eddie, a 13-year old sensitive kid whose mother was dying of AIDS; I taught him a few bars on the piano of his favorite song, "Lean on Me." Then there's David who worked in Broadway; we sang "Moon River" - well, he sang and I provided piano accompaniment that cold Christmas Eve. His partner Michael died of AIDS the following morning. Edith didn't speak English but luckily for us, I spoke (very bad) Spanish. I used to take her out for a spin on the dance floor (i.e., the hallway) until her brain tumor made it impossible. In the end, she didn't even know I was there to say hello. Of course I was a big hit amongst the nurses - I was cute (according to them), young, fresh out of graduate school (and I had a great piano repertoire!) - but really they were The bigger hit to me. It didn't matter who the patient was, if they're from Jewish and Italian Brooklyn, Hispanic Bronx, Irish Queens, or posh Upper West Side neighborhoods; in the hospice, they were all treated with respect and love and dignity. It didn't matter if they were Catholic or Jewish, gay or straight - the process of dying is a great equalizer.

So if I rant about Vatican pronouncements and theological conundrums, please understand what I already know: that at the hour of a person's death, at that instance when life ceases, the only thing the living can do is pray with all the humility and faith they can muster. Papal encyclicals weren't read at death beds, but songs like "Abide With Me" and "Danny Boy" were sung. In the end, it is the love of the living that sends the dying home to God.

From the Article:
For the past two months, Ledoux has been stuck in her own sort of netherworld, caught between her midlife calling to provide pastoral support to the dying and the public portrayal of Woodside as an unholy death chamber. Intellectually, she knows the "people out front were extremists," but she cannot reconcile how self-professed Christians -- many wearing robes -- could have been so "degrading, hurtful ... misguided."

"This is sacred ground," she says.

So what does this post have to do with Her Hotness, Delia Gallagher? Nothing, really. Except her boss, Robert Moynihan, joined the Schiavo fray - and for those In the Vatican who all expressed outrage over this issue - please save me the bullshit Culture of Death crap. Go to a hospice and spend some time with the dying, but please leave your politics and theology behind. Just bring your songbook. And your love. Lots of it.