this I believe: love

The weekly ritual after our team meeting when I worked in home hospice: We dimmed the conference room lights and lit a candle.  A colleague (usually a chaplain), read the names of those who died that week in our care.  If any of us had worked with that patient, we were encouraged to say a few words about the person, their family, or our experience as a caregiver.  I'll never forget the story a young nurse told.   She was a beautiful, intelligent woman. Tall and red-headed and possessing that air of competency and compassion that we all want in a nurse or doctor.  She had a quick, warm smile.   I'll call her Kate.  Kate worked in the poorest neighborhoods in St. Louis - the areas where we occasionally needed security escorts, where there were stop signs on corners covered in posters and decorated with teddy bears because it's where a kid had been shot and killed.

On this day during our memorial time, Kate told about a poor man, dying virtually alone.  He was in his early twenties - younger than we were!  He had a place to be, a 'home', but the people around him were not coping well with his care.  I don't remember if they were family or friends, but in his weakened and confused state he kept throwing himself out of his bed onto the floor.  They were angry and frustrated with this.  In hospice, we call this 'terminal restlessness', and odd, restless behaviors are not necessarily uncommon.  One day, Kate walked in and he was on the floor again.  Something dawned on her - he was so terribly weak, so wretchedly frail.  "He wants to die on the floor," she realized.  And she got down on the floor and put her arms around him.  After a short time, he died on the floor, in her arms.

I will always be awed by her love.  To me, this was an act of spontaneous love and mercy.  I witnessed and was a part of many such moments during my work in hospice.  It made me into, what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. might call, an extremist for love.   There are many uncertainties in this life, but I know that we are put here to love one another.  To grow to be unafraid of loving one another.  To grow to be unafraid of feeling the love others have for us, and knowing we are loved. 

Recently, I have been saddened to witness and be touched by violence and death, both in my community in and my professional life.  I am humbled by the healing we all need. 

Violence and death pull up many uncertainties in us.  Yet, if I had to say I believed only one thing, I would have to say this:  Love.  I believe the boy who died in Kate's arms experienced some type of healing and peace through love and her willingness to overcome internal fears, and conventional rules and norms. 

I have friends from every spiritual and non-spiritual system of belief...but, it's hard for me to write about love without writing about God.  Almost daily, I witness something more powerful and profound, more miraculous than the many hard times that can be a part of our lives.  I call this "God."  And there's not much I can know about God for sure, but I have experienced love. 

In dark moments love may come to you in unexpected forms and places .  You are also an agent of love.  This I believe.