Grief

They say that among life’s stresses, the death of a loved one can be the most devastating. The grieving that follows to return to normalcy without the one who has died also becomes a most daunting task. It is made more difficult by the society we live in, especially here in the Philippines, that somehow puts pressure on the one grieving by telling him “to get it over with”, “move on, you can do it for the sake of the children”, etc. Little do they realize that they are not helping at all even as they mean well hoping to shield the grieving friend from the pain of loss.

This is the reason, I suppose, why grief help groups have sprouted in recent years. In the United States while I was doing my CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education), I became involved to a limited extent as co-facilitator with a “Good Grief” group. This is a group consisting of members who have experienced death of a loved one in the hospital. As they tell each other their stories and share their experiences as a way of nursing their grief, they slowly begin to heal and start to lead normal lives once again.

Just a few days ago, I had the privilege of being part of a similar group not as one who grieves, but as a counselor to one of them.

The group was composed of widows and widowers some of whom are also professional counselors and therapists. My client, a widower who just lost his wife and sister in a car accident was the newcomer to the group. It being the first session for my client, I was told by the group leader that they would not hold any therapy but just some sort of “getting to know you” session. With her permission, I decided to stay to observe the process.

As I sat there and listened to each one tell his/her own story, I realized little by little why a group such as this could be therapeutic to someone in grief. They were validating each other’s experience! My client began to realize that he is not alone; that his experience is a common experience and that he is still normal after all.

As I sat there and listened patiently to their stories, I also learned some “don’t’s” and “do’s” when it comes to supporting someone in grief.

• · Don’t try to make the grieving person feel better by saying that he can do it, that he is strong, and so forth. You cannot. No amount of words from you can make him feel better at this moment of grief.
• · Don’t try to tell him that you know how he feels since you also lost a loved one before. You don’t! Every person is unique and his grief is different from yours.
• · Don’t tell him not to grieve; anyway he now has an angel in heaven. He does not need an angel now. He needs his child alive.
• · Don’t tell him to be strong for the sake of the children. He is probably at his weakest now.
• · Don’t tell him not to worry as he will get it over soon. Every person’s grief is different. There are no short cuts. It can take week, months, or even years.
• · Do listen to his story patiently with empathy and compassion no matter how many times you have heard it already. He needs someone to listen to him and his story.
• · Do hold, hug, or touch the griever as appropriate. The feeling you impart by such non-verbal gestures convey comfort more than a thousand words can.

In the end, I realized what the group was all about. It is not there to take away the pain of grieving any more than it can take away the cause of one’s grief. Neither will the group attempt to make one forget the memory of his loved one; it is there to help him remember his departed with less pain by making him embrace his grief and accompanying him in his grief journey.

Finally, from the start and throughout the whole session the atmosphere within the group was cordial and warm punctuated occasionally by laughter prompting me to think that maybe this is what is meant by the passage in the Scriptures about God’s promise to the Prophet that He will turn our grief into joy (Jer 31,13).

A father's last wish

To pay tribute to fathers on Fathers’ Day, I want to tell you another father’s story from my journal.

In the course of my stint as a CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) Resident in two hospitals in Hawaii, I occasionally came across elderly male patients to whom I naturally developed some closeness, perhaps because I, being a father/grandfather myself, identified with them and their lot.

One such patient is an elderly catholic and still handsome 82 year-old Hawaiian gentleman with South American heritage. He was born and raised in Honolulu by landed parents. His father was a statesman and formerly a state legislator. He saw action during the war and was in the navy when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. All these information I learned from his stories in the course of my visits with him.

When I first met him, he had been in the hospital for more than a month already, nursing a leg wound that would not heal due to his diabetes and compounded by other health problems. Due to his health condition, he would stay in the hospital most of the time for as long as his Medicare benefits would allow. Thus, he has become a fixture in the unit where his sense of humor, positive attitude, and possibly his handsome features, has endeared him to the nursing staff.

Not many knew, however, that behind the jolly, happy disposition is a lonely man.

He was living alone in the huge house he had built for his family. His two remaining children were both married; one living in another island in Hawaii while the other was in the mainland. For the past ten years, he had lost his wife of 57 years to cancer, his 33-year old son to drug overdose and his 22-year-old daughter to a rare disease. In the course of my visits to him, he had told me all of these and more during our conversations, but not once did we ever talked about God, death, or the afterlife. As a rule, it is not our job to bring up the topic unless the patient brings it up himself.

But, I have always believed that God works through me in some way or another, mysterious or otherwise.

Thus, in one of my last visits before I transferred to another hospital for another assignment, I was telling him about the patient who just died in the other room when he went: “Well, if you have to go, you got to go.” And without missing a beat, I asked: “Are you ready to go?” And he replied vigorously: “Of course”. He then told me about his advance directives (Living Will) to his eldest child and how he wants to go. His last will and testament had also been written. He also told me for the first time how he had reconciled with God some months ago after he had stayed away from the Catholic Church following his wife’s death, about how he had learned to let go and to trust in God.

I seized the opportunity at his mention of God and asked him whether he wanted to receive the sacraments of reconciliation and Eucharist from a catholic priest. He said yes… It was a most poignant and beautiful moment, as this old man started to reveal his inner self to me and I saw the person beneath the jokes and the jolly mood. As we parted he took my hands and held them tightly and thanked me for another visit which he said he enjoyed as always.

That same day, a catholic priest visited him and he went to confession, received communion and was anointed with Holy Oil.

On my last day in that hospital, I decided to pay my friend a visit; but another patient was already occupying his bed. The nurse on duty told me that my friend passed away the day before. His body was taken away by his children that morning to be cremated just as he had wished.

DAD

As you all know , I participated in a CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) Residency Program in Honolulu, Hawaii last 2006. It was a one-year training program (September 2006 – August 2007) for prospective hospital chaplains, but my stint was cut short by a heart attack and a consequent quintuple by-pass in April 2007.

As part of our training, we CPE residents went twice a month for a 12-hour on-call duty at the hospital on weekends. I will always remember these on-call weekend experiences as they are forever etched in my mind.

One such experience happened a little after midnight sometime in November 2006. My pager roused me from deep sleep and alerted me to a “Code Blue” at a 6th floor patient room. (A Code Blue is called when a patient’s breathing stops.) A quick check of our computer records showed that the patient is a 63 year-old male Filipino catholic who had already been anointed so there was no need to call for a priest.

Upon reaching the scene, I was led by the nurse supervisor to the unit’s family room where a distraught mother, two daughters and two granddaughters were kneeling on the floor while tearfully praying the rosary. I did not know what to do at first. Then as if by instinct, I pulled out my own rosary from my pocket and knelt beside the mother to join them. After completing the five decades, we sat down quietly for a while until the nurse supervisor came into the room to tell me and the family that “the team was still working on him”. I pulled the supervisor aside to ask the nature of the case. She told me that the patient -- husband, father and grandfather to the family with me -- has had a sudden cardiac arrest and was being resuscitated at that moment.

The succeeding minutes became tense for me as well as for the family. I learned from them during the intervening moments as I tried to make conversation that the patient was hospitalized some two weeks before due to chest pains and shortness of breath. The family thought he was getting better as the days passed and was even looking forward to going back to their home in Maui to celebrate Thanksgiving. Until they called the “Code Blue”.

When the supervisor came back sometime later with the attending doctor, I guessed correctly from their faces the grim news – the patient was gone.

What followed was a scene I will never forget – the wife held onto me and the children started to shout a loud “NO, NO, DAD!” while stomping their feet and pounding their fists on the wall at the same time.

When they calmed down later and after I got the assurance from the supervisor that the body was ready, I led the family to the room where the body now lay, wrapped in a clean white sheet. There followed a heart-tugging scene I would never forget: the wife started massaging the body of the dead person and urged her daughters to do the same while telling them that their dad would come to life again from the massage. The youngest daughter was more in denial shouting “No… Dad wake up. You are not dead. I know you are just up to your old tricks again. No, Dad, you promise you will be there on my graduation… wake up, Dad!” At this point, tears started rolling down my cheeks. I left the room and told the nurse supervisor I would be back with my prayer book and holy water to say the prayers.

The scene was calmer when I returned. I gathered the family around the dead body and told them that we would all now bless the body. I used the blessing of the dead body ritual that I had learned from a book by Joyce Rupp. As we began the ritual, I invited everyone to remember the presence of the God in our midst. We needed this to give us hope and strength. Next I explained how we were going to bless, thank the dead person for what he had done for them and then say good-bye.

We spoke directly to the dead person as we blessed the various parts of his body (head, eyes, ears, hands, etc.). We recalled what his body had done for him and thanked him for how he had used that part of his body in some way as a gift to the family. For example, when I prayed a blessing for his head (the dwelling place of his brain and mind), the family placed their hands on his head. I mentioned how he had influenced their lives by his beliefs, attitudes, and values, and thanked him for sharing his dreams and hopes with them. After each part of the body was blessed, the family spoke together to him: "You will always be a part of our hearts. Good bye and go in peace." We continued in a similar manner for the rest of his body.

Throughout the ritual the youngest daughter gently held her father’s bare feet in her hands while his wife bent close by his side. When the time came to bless his hands in gratitude for the hard work he had done to provide for the family, his two daughters kissed the hands of their father in typical Filipino tradition and cried, "Thank you, Dad! Thank you! We love you!"

I left the room shortly after saying goodbye to the family who all hugged me as they whispered thanks. I wanted to leave the family alone with the dead body of their loved one. I also did not want them to see me cry…

I remember this story now because next Sunday is Fathers’ Day, a day when we can thank our own fathers for everything that they have done for us. Before it becomes too late to do so.

Lessons from Maddie

Not too long ago, my six-month old granddaughter Baby Maddie stayed with us for a whole week while her parents, my daughter Dana and her husband Marco, were vacationing in Japan.

And so for a whole week, my wife Thelma and two other daughters Pizza and Mae took turns in taking care of Maddie – feeding, bathing, dressing her up, and putting her to sleep while I would occasionally pitch in to watch her while she was sleeping or carry her when she would start to cry for help and express her helplessness by extending her arms begging to be held, hugged, and embraced.

One day as I watched her peacefully asleep, I realized how totally powerless and helpless a child is and how completely dependent she is on us adults at this stage for her continued existence. And I remembered what the eminent Oblate spiritual writer, Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI, has said about the meaning of Christ’s command to become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of God. He writes: “The quality of heart, seen in a child, that Jesus most challenges us to imitate is that of acknowledging powerlessness and helplessness. A child is powerless. It cannot provide for itself, feed itself, or take care of itself. For a child, if mum and dad do not get up and make breakfast, there will be no breakfast! A child knows dependence, knows that life comes from beyond itself, that it is not self-providing and self-sufficient.”

In life, I think we tend to forget this truth as we grow older, become self-sufficient, powerful, and able to do things for ourselves.

But fortunately, God has a way of teaching us and bringing us to where we started as being powerless and helpless. As we grow much older and start to approach our twilight years, God reverses our roles with our children and in the process, makes us feel helpless, and dependent upon them.

Then the child we used to take care of is now the one taking care of us.

And I thought this is what is happening to me now. My son Nico whose toys I used to fix is now the one I depend on when my computer is acting up and I am clueless as to what is happening. My eldest daughter Pizza whom I used to drive to school before, most of the time drives me now to my appointments with my doctor. It is anyone of my children too who always reminds me not to forget my medicines and vitamins and tells me how I used to bore them to death by my reminders to eat their veggies and drink their milk when they were growing up.

I thought then that this is God’s way of telling me “to become like children”, to be powerless, helpless and dependent so that one day, like my granddaughter Maddie, I also can extend my arms to God and tell Him that I am now ready to grasp His strong fatherly hand to lead me on, as I am powerless and helpless -- like a child.

Fr. Ben Leandicho, OMI

For some reason, priests have gotten my attention during these past few weeks. Perhaps because I have been reading again news stories about the alleged pedophile priests scandal that has been hounding the Catholic Church for sometime now.

Also, some two Saturdays ago, on 10 April, I felt saddened after watching an episode of “Maalaala Mo Kaya” on TV. It was about the true story of a young woman, Maria played by Gretchen Barreto. Maria was a self-effacing provincial lass who after becoming a widow with two children, defied her parents’ counsel and the public’s scrutiny and went on to cohabit with the town’s assistant priest leaving her own family and her hometown. (I assume he is a catholic priest. The narrator also did not say whether they got married or not; and if they got married, whether he first obtained a dispensation from the Vatican or not.) She later would find out that the priest had been molesting her young daughter. She sued him but later eventually dropped the case and forgave the priest without taking him back. The priest then went on to hang himself to death.

Again, just a week or so ago, TV, newspapers and tabloids feasted on the story of a priest in the province who had been found dead in a pension house (not a motel as reported earlier) with only his briefs on. He apparently died from heart attack since he had a heart condition after undergoing a coronary heart by-pass some years back. Of course, there were all kinds of nasty speculations as to the real cause of his death.

As if to soften the negative impact of this news about priests, it was with a sense of unexplained Christian joy that I received the news of the death of Fr. Bienvenido Leandicho, OMI, a little more than a week ago. Father Ben or “Tatang Ben” as many fondly call him, died at the FEU Hospital in Fairview in the early evening of Friday, Aprill 16, 2010. He was surrounded by five of his fellow Oblate priests who were praying for him and with him as he ended his long journey to life eternal. He would have turned 89 years old on July 12 and would have completed his 60^th year as an OMI missionary priest this coming December 23, 2010.

My family is close to Father Ben. My wife Thelma spent her growing up years and into her college days as a volunteer worker at the Missionary Association of Mary Immaculate office at Our Lady of Grace Parish in Grace Park, Caloocan City. “Tatang” Ben became like a second father to Thelma and thus, when I decided to marry her, I made sure I got his permission too! He was there at our wedding and concelebrated with then Father (now Archbishop) Orlando Quevedo, OMI, and my brother Romy. He saw my children grow up. He was there at every important event in our family life – our children‘s baptism and birthday celebrations and he never forgot especially our wedding anniversary. In return we never missed the anniversaries of his priestly ordination on the 23^rd of December which happily coincides with our own wedding anniversary, and his birthday celebrations whether he was in Fort Bonifacio as Chaplain, or in retirement at the OMI Regional House or the Oblate Missionary Center, both in Quezon City. Unfortunately, he was old and weak already to officiate at our children’s weddings. My family continued to visit him even when he was bedridden already and unable to communicate.

This soldier of Christ, who is fondly called “General” by his fellow Oblates because of his bearing and who spent most of his last years ministering to military men, police, firemen and jail personnel was buried last Wednesday, April 21, at the OMI cemetery in Cotabato City.

Without passing any judgement on the other priests I mentioned at the start of this article, I do not know whether there is any significance in the death of Father Ben during this Church-designated “Year for Priests”. Come to think of it and considering its theme as “The faithfulness of Christ, The faithfulness of Priests”, maybe it is, as it is certainly for me, a reminder to all of us that there are still many more priests out there who, like Father Ben, have lived and died remaining faithful to their priesthood.

Fare thee well, “Tatang” Ben and rest in peace.

(Mis)Understanding Suicide

I have been confronted by death many times inside as well as outside the ministry in the past, but none has left me more numb as deaths by suicide.  Deaths by suicide always leave me with inexplicable pain and unanswered questions.

It was so when a very dear friend apparently killed herself some years back leaving a distraught husband and son.  Her death even left me with a tinge of remorse since I thought I should have known better and did something when she appeared to be depressed and hinted of wanting to talk a few days before it happened.  I was stunned for many days after that.  Why did she do it?  Why she of all people?  She was such a gentle person she could not even hurt a fly.  She was so selfless and always thinking of the other first.  She was prayerful having been raised well by her parents and educated in catholic schools all the way.  How could she have done it?  Was her soul damned because of it? 

Similar questions came to my mind when I heard of the more sensational cases of suicide in the not too distant past.  There was the case of 12-year old Marianette Amper who hanged herself inside their thatched house in a remote village in Mindanao apparently due to extreme hunger and poverty.  It caught national attention and politicians even used it to draw attention to the present state of the poor in the country.  Then there was the well-publicized suicide of the wife of a well-known TV news personality.  And most recently, the suicide of the son of a famous movie actor.

It was only recently did I realize that perhaps I was asking these questions because I was brought up to look at suicide as a heinous sin, a mortal sin.  That it is a sin of despair, like Judas’ sin of hanging himself after he betrayed Jesus.  That it is a sin of losing hope and therefore anyone who commits suicide is damned forever.  We were even taught that those who died by suicide cannot be given the last rites of the Catholic church and cannot be buried on sacred grounds.

It is refreshing and comforting then to find a well-respected and eminent spirituality writer and preacher, Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, OMI write about suicide and tell us how we have apparently misunderstood it in the past.  He has taken it upon himself to write at least one column on suicide every year so that we, specially families of suicide victims, can take comfort in what he has to say.

Fr. Rolheiser writes a regular column in the internet (www.ronrolheiser.com).  The following is only one of seven (7) columns on the subject of suicide from 2001 to 2009:

“Margaret Atwood once wrote that sometimes things need to be said, and said, and said, until they don't need to be said any more. Each year I write a column on suicide because, given the misconceptions about it, some things need to be said over and over again.

What are our misconceptions about suicide? What must be re- iterated over and over again.

First, that suicide is not an act of despair. We are, too slowly, emerging from a mindset that understands suicide as the ultimate act of despair - culpable, irrevocable, and unforgivable. To commit suicide, it is too commonly believed, puts one under the judgement once pronounced on Judas Iscariot: "Better to not have been born." Until recently, victims of suicide were often not even buried in church cemeteries.

What we didn't understand when we thought these things is that the propensity for suicide is, in most cases, an illness, pure and simple. We are made up of body and soul, either can snap. We can die of cancer, high blood pressure, heart attacks, aneurysms. These are physical sicknesses. But we can suffer these too in the soul, not just the body. There are malignancies and aneurysms too of the heart, mortal wounds from which the soul cannot recover. In most cases, suicide, like any terminal illness, takes a person out of life against his or her will. The death is not freely chosen, but is an illness, far from an act of free will. In most instances, suicide is a desperate attempt to end unendurable pain, much like a woman who throws herself through a window because her clothing has caught fire. That's a tragedy, not an act of despair.

If this is true, and it is, then we should also give up the notion that suicide puts a person outside the mercy of God. God's mercy is equal even to suicide. After the resurrection, we see how Christ, more than once, goes through locked doors and breathes forgiveness, love, and peace into hearts that are unable to open up because of fear and hurt. God's mercy and peace can go through walls where we can't. As we all know, this side of heaven, sometimes all the love, stretched-out hands, and professional help in the world can no longer reach through to a heart paralysed by fear and illness.

But, where we stand helpless, God's compassion can still reach through. God's love can descend into hell itself (as we state in our creed) and breathe peace and reconciliation right into wound, anger, and fear. God's hands are gentler than ours, God's compassion is wider than ours, and God's understanding infinitely surpasses our own. Our wounded loved ones who fall victim to suicide are safe in God's hands, safer by far than they are in the judgements that issue from our own limited understanding. God is not stymied by locked doors as we are.

When suicide victims wake on the other side, they are met by a gentle Christ who stands right inside of their huddled fear and says: "Peace be with you!" As we see in the post-resurrection appearances of Christ, God can go through locked doors, breathe out peace in places where we cannot get in, and write straight with even the most crooked of lines.

Finally, too, there is a misunderstanding about suicide that expresses itself in second-guessing: If only I had done more! If only I had been more attentive this could have been prevented.

Rarely is this the case. Most of the time, we weren't there when our loved one departed for the very reason that this person didn't want us to be there. He or she picked the time and place precisely with our absence in mind. Suicide is a disease that picks its victim precisely in such a way so as to exclude others and their attentiveness. That's part of the anatomy of the disease.

This, of course, may never be an excuse for insensitivity to those around us who are suffering from depression, but it's a healthy check against false guilt and anxious second-guessing. Many of us have stood at the bedside of someone who is dying and experienced a frustrating helplessness because there was nothing we could do to prevent our loved one from dying. That person died, despite our attentiveness, prayers, and efforts to be helpful. So too, at least generally, with those who die of suicide. Our love, attentiveness, and presence could not stop them from dying - despite our will and effort to the contrary.

The Christian response to suicide should not be horror, fear for the person's eternal salvation, and anxious self-examination about we did or didn't do. Suicide is indeed a horrible way to die, but we must understand it for what it is, a sickness, and stop being anxious about both that person's eternal salvation and our less-than-perfect response to his or her illness.

God redeems everything and, in the end, all manner of being will be well, even beyond suicide.”

 

"Yes, Virginia, Love means..."

There is an email that is being forwarded and re-forwarded nowadays about what love means to children… Terri, age 4 says: “Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.” Seven-year old Danny says: “Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.”…Bobby, another 7-year-old says: 'Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”… Elaine, age 5 says: “Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.”… Little Mary Ann who is only age 4 says: “Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.”…

But my favorite is that of a four-year-old child who did not say anything but showed us in action what love means… His next-door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there… When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said: “Nothing, I just helped him cry.”

This email about children came to mind the other day when I came across the news about 6-year-old Virginia Rojo. Her story may have escaped the attention of many as it is buried deep inside the Regional News pages of the national dailies. And I immediately thought her story deserves retelling and being forwarded to as many people as possible. It tells us what love means to Virginia…

The news account tells us that Virginia’s mother, single mom and 39-year-old Lorna, left late Sunday afternoon with her 9-year-old eldest child for work as a laundrywoman and househelper. She left 6-year-old Virginia to take care of her youngest child, a 4-month-old baby boy in their house in Barangay San Jose, Sipalay City, in southern Negros Occidental. Virginia and her brother were already asleep when their house, which was made of light materials, caught fire at around 8 p.m.

Virginia, in an interview with a radio station, said she woke up “feeling hot” and heard a voice, whom she believed was that of “Papa Jesus,” telling her to take her baby brother out of the burning house. She then scooped her baby brother from his makeshift hammock and raced out of the house. Unfortunately, a burning curtain fell on her causing her burns in her arms, face and chest. Ignoring the pain, she kept on going holding her baby brother tightly until they reached safely the waiting arms of neighbors. The baby miraculously escaped unharmed.

Upon reading her story, it occurred to me that, like the four-year-old child who just sat on the old man’s lap when he saw the old man crying, Virginia also did not merely tell us what love means, she showed to us what love means by doing what she did for her baby brother even at the risk to her own life.

Just like the man on the Cross who showed us in concrete what love means…