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The last goodbye

The clinical pastoral education (CPE) program I'm involved in is a 10-week intensive program. "Intensive" is meant to describe the condensed nature of squeezing 400 hours of CPE into 10 weeks. By contrast, the extended program fits the same number of hours into 8 months--a few hours here, a few hours there. During the summer, however, each day is a grind. I come home exhausted yet satisfied. Many nights I go to bed before 10:00 and wake up before 6:00 to try to fit in a run, knowing that I'll be too exhausted to exercise by the time I get home.

While "intensive" may describe the act of completing 400 hours of CPE in 10 weeks, the program is also emotionally intensive. My first patient visit was an end-of-life situation in which the family was planning to withdraw life support from the family matriarch. They had requested a pastoral care visit, to which another chaplain and I responded. My colleague "C" led the family in prayer, after which they asked me to give a blessing to their mother. Honestly, I nearly broke down during the prayer and I remained emotional afterwards, yet it wasn't out of sadness--at least not fully. I felt honored to be invited into this sacred space of a family saying their final goodbye to their loved one.

I had another very different end-of-life experience today, in which the family was utterly unprepared for dealing with death. They politely declined my offer to help. Regardless of whether my presence was appreciated, each of these incidents was humbling in its own way.

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