at-one-ment, part three

But where is part two?

A Buddhist Episcopalian priest, a spiritual social worker, and a Greek Orthodox Monk walk into a cancer ward…

I may write about yesterday tomorrow. Don’t you want to know how the joke ends?

This morning, I woke up and noticed the message light blinking on our phone. My friend had called at 5 a.m.

As of 4 p.m. yesterday, I was convinced I was never going to see her, or speak to her again. So this was unexpected.

She needed me to find this woman A.K.’s phone number. I started with Facebook, saw that we had mutual friends, made some calls, left some messages.

I call my friend’s husband. If you can come today, he says, you should. I cancel work and head over. As the day unfolds, these things happen:

I’m in the car, driving to the hospital. I suddenly have this elastic sense of time expanding. There’s no need to hurry. The first song to come on the radio is R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts. I cry.

I get ahold of another mutual friend on the cell phone and learn that the 5 a.m. call is because A.K. is a member of a local Greek Orthodox church that is associated in some way with performing miracles. My friend wants to take her family to the shrine there. Today.

I arrive at the hospital just as the Buddhist Episcopalian pastor does — the man who led the healing circle on Saturday. He’s come with Greek Orthodox icons in hand, because he knows about my friend’s desired errand, plus a jar of healing oil used for anointing. My friend, her husband, her mother, the two boys, me, we invoke the holy spirit and receive blessings on our heads. My friend tells a story of visiting the shrine to Tecla, in a cave in Syria, last fall, where nuns anointed her belly with oil.

Afterward, we talk about whether or not God cares if you are fearful.

I insist that it’s human to be afraid of what you can’t know or understand. We’re just knocking around in these stinky, messy bodies. The pastor leaves the icons for my friend, on loan. We set up an altar on the cabinet top with an apple, and the tissue-flowers and get well cards the kids made with a social worker yesterday.

The day goes by. I’m glad to be able to just sit with my friend. Her husband takes the boys to the park, her mother goes out for lunch. I put my hands on my friend’s shoulder, her arm, her head, offering Reiki healing (I was once certified first degree, many years ago). My friend naps and I sit beside her, meditating.

Midday a doctor comes to break the bad news. They won’t let my friend off-campus to visit that church. Her mother tells me later that there was no way in heck she was going to drive her over there anyway.

A.K. and I finally reach each other. The priest/monk — he’s both, or something — at her church is willing to come to the hospital. He will bring his “vestments.” She would like to be there for it. She asks me to call her if he arrives before she does.

Meanwhile, another friend has arrived. One who is a professional estate organizer, and thus one who knows a lot about the ins and outs of end-of-life care.

A new doctor arrives, one I haven’t met yet in my weeks of hospital visits. He asks my friend, “Do you have any questions about your condition?”

She doesn’t, but I do. I ask him to speak with me in the hallway. The organizer comes out too.

WTF? I basically ask. Yesterday, she was given hours to live, and today, here we are.

He explains that with infections, you know where you stand. But organs are unpredictable. They can fail, they can recover. Yesterday, yes, she had “hours to days” and now they’re back to “days to weeks.” She’s been upgraded. But there still isn’t anything they can do for her, other than pain meds.

The organizer asks him if her care protocol would be any different if she were in hospice. The organizer says that once this thing is invoked, our friend will get medicare coverage and more services than she knows, more than she can get now.

He says she has to talk to her other doctor. And maybe he mentioned a social worker would come after?

Moments later, a social worker walks into the room. He’s there because he’s supposed to give her her “directive” to fill out. But that’s a mistake, because she’s already filled one out. It just needs to be notarized.

He’s an awkward, almost abrasive man, at first. The confusion… something.

The organizer, the mother, the patient, and I are all looking at him. The organizer asks him about hospice. I’m thinking that we aren’t supposed to discuss it with him, but I’m not sure. The mother looks away. She looks tired, uncomfortable.

But then the social worker starts talking. Really talking. About the benefits of hospice. About how sometimes people go on hospice and then heal. How there’s what doctors do and then there’s the fourth dimension. He asks my friend if she’s cried. It’s healing to cry. We don’t know, he says, if this is the end, or just the biggest spiritual trial you will ever face. Miracles happen. I’m a hypocrite, he interrupts himself at times to note. That he can talk about miracles but still worry about debt, the day to day. If we really believed we were all fundamentally good, that kind of thing, we’d rise above the mundane.

But that’s my point. Human beings are messy.

He quotes The Course in Miracles, Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, more that I can’t remember. My friend is glowing. We’re all glowing. He holds her hand. He hugs her. He says now is the time to forgive people, to do the work she needs to do to be free. He suggests looking in the mirror and practicing loving herself. He exhorts, “OBNOXIOUSLY love yourself, because that’s how the divine sees you.”

This is a social worker, just some guy, right?

I have to speak from my heart, he says.

Yes. Thank you.

The organizer and I get out colored markers and make a sign with this saying about obnoxiously loving yourself and we post it on the wall.

My friend is now entranced with the idea of hospice, whereas before it had sounded like a death sentence. Her mother tells the social worker how they’d had hospice for the last two weeks of her husband’s life, three years ago. How wonderful it was. So that was why she’d looked away. The frustration of being the mom, of knowing that you can’t give advice because your kids don’t want to hear it from you.

The husband returns, a private meeting with the doctor is called.

I’m in the hallway with the organizer, we’re sharing a gurney, each of us on our laptops, checking email, arranging things. I speak to A.K. — the healing is not confirmed yet but is estimated to be around 4-ish. It’s 3:15. I’m suddenly very very very tired. I feel like I need to get out of there. In a hurry.

You’ve hit the wall, the organizer says.

I say goodbye to everyone. I hug and kiss my friend. Yesterday I’d said “Talk to you later” and it had felt hollow. Today I said it and it seemed true. True-ish.

Out in the fresh air, after five hours on the ward, I immediately start to feel better. And I still want to go home. See my family. My New Mexico in-laws just arrived today. I call A.K. one more time to check on progress with the monk.

She’s beside herself. He’s asked her to pick him up and drive him to the hospital. She’s the pope-mobile.

I wish I could be there and I say so. That’s okay, she says, you got to attend that first healing in the morning. But but but, I’m missing the vestments… sigh.

I will be calling her again for details.