I watched her die. My wife and I looked
through the glass wall of the ICU bay as she coded. What seemed like
an army of medical personnel charged in with a crash cart and
surrounded the bed of this tiny, frail, broken woman.
Heroically, an attending physician
stormed through the crowd of nurses and techs, parting them like
Moses parted the sea. His arms waiving above his head signaled the
command: Stop. No more. Let her go.
For the first time in weeks I saw
Marlene open her eyes. Her back arched slightly for an instant, and
then she sank back onto the bed, eyes closed forever.
Marlene Miller is not a saint whose
name will be found on any hagiology, but she was a special saint and
example to the people of Faith Lutheran in Philadelphia. A tiny
seven-year-old girl in 1960, disproportionately small even for her
age, she watched as a new church was being built in her neighborhood.
Her parents were not religiously observant, but the little girl took
it into her head that she wanted to go to Sunday School. People were
instantly attracted to her because she was so very small and yet
seemed so very delighted by this holy place. As she grew up, she
sought ways to give expression to her faith. She sang in the church
choir and taught in the Sunday School. One of her former students
remembered her as the nicest teacher he'd ever had.
Marlene felt called, even as a
teenager, to help the disadvantaged. She volunteered at the Woodhaven
Center, a home for the developmentally disabled. There she met
another volunteer, Tom. They fell in love and were married. They made
an amusing couple. He was over six feet in height and she did not
even clear five. Nevertheless, she always called him her “soul
mate.”
As Marlene aged she managed to
bring a unique child-like joy and enthusiasm to all of her volunteer
work. I always felt there was just a little more daylight in the room
when she was around. It was impossible not to adore her.
But what is remarkable about her is the
circumstance under which she lived out her calling. Marlene was born
with a rare condition called Turner's Syndrome. Girls with this
syndrome have only one x chromosome. Characteristically, they remain
small and infertile and are prone to very short life spans. Turner's
girls almost always suffer heart defects and kidney abnormalities
(Marlene was born with only one kidney). She was frequently ill and
it was supposed she would never live to graduate from high school.
Yet Marlene survived, even though surviving meant spending her first
wedding anniversary in a hospital bed following open heart surgery.
A valve-replacement surgery saved her
life, but the length of time she spent intubated caused permanent
damage to her throat. Marlene lost her singing voice and could only
speak with difficulty. She developed a throaty, wheezy whisper which
was difficult for her young Sunday School students to understand.
Shortly after I was called to Faith
Lutheran, Marlene suffered a major stroke. She lost a portion of her
eyesight and her short-term memory was seriously compromised. When I
visited her in the hospital her first question to me was about the
attendance at the church's Lenten soup suppers. By Holy Week she had
been released and dutifully reported to church for the annual Holy
Saturday Easter Egg Hunt. It was a gorgeous spring day, and Marlene
bounded into the narthex with ebullient delight. “What a beautiful
day for an Easter Egg Hunt!' she exclaimed. After greeting me and
some parents, she announced that she would go check on the children.
She turned and, with her vision impaired, marched directly into the
wall. The accident might have
been hysterically funny if it weren't so profoundly tragic.
Marlene's health was not her only
burden. Her husband Tom, a social worker, grew increasingly depressed
in his occupation. Cigarette smoking and endless hours on his feet
resulted in circulatory damage, eventually leading to an amputation.
His depression deepened. His use of pain-killers increased, and
the couple suffered severe financial strain. Through all of this,
Marlene maintained an intrepid cheerfulness. I would often visit her
at home to bring her communion, and she'd tell me about her day and
ask me about the goings on at the church while her three pampered
rescue cats lounged at her feet.
In her early fifties Marlene
developed an aphasia of her epiglottis. She could not eat without
aspirating food and was constantly hospitalized with pneumonia.
Because surgery to close her epiglottis would render her permanently
unable to speak, she elected to have a feeding tube inserted into her
stomach. Nevertheless, she constantly requested the Holy Eucharist.
This terrified me because, as a pastor, I have no right to refuse the
sacrament. Every time I placed the wafer in Marlene's hand I feared I
was killing her. Yet her need to receive Christ was greater than her
fear of choking or pneumonia. I confessed my concerns to her, but she
was adamant. I marveled at her faith.
In the early fall of 2007 Marlene had a
massive brain hemorrhage. It was necessary for the doctors at Thomas
Jefferson University Hospital to remove a portion of her skull in
order to relieve the pressure on her brain. I was told that she had
wakeful and lucid moments following the surgery, but I never
experienced any of them. I went to see her several times, to pray for
her or sing a hymn, but I could never get her to wake up. For all the
time I have spent in hospitals, including my experience as an on-call
trauma chaplain at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, I
have never witnessed a sight as disturbingly violent as the sight of
that tiny woman in the ICU. Her hair had been shaved. The flesh sewn
up around the missing portion of skull and the misshapen head were
like something out of an old horror movie. It all seemed wrong,
unjust, and cruel.
But this sight is not my final memory
of Marlene. I will remember her best for a visit I'd had with her a
few months earlier. She was recuperating from some illness in a dingy
nursing home in the Summerton neighborhood. She sat in bed,
restricted because of the danger of falling. Her arms were bruised by
IV sites and her short-term memory was all but gone. We shared the
sacrament, and as I left she spoke the last words I would ever hear
her say:
“Pastor, God sure is good, isn't he!”
Yes, Marlene. God sure is good. And I
know this all the more because I have known you.
* * *
By the way, I should
mention that at Marlene's funeral a neighbor—a Roman Catholic for
over seventy years—received Holy Communion for the first time in a
Protestant church. As I handed him the wafer he smiled and said,
“There's only one God.” As the 500th anniversary of
the Reformation draws near, I'm asking Lutherans and Catholics to
petition Pope Francis to allow Lutherans to receive the sacrament
with our Catholic brothers and sisters. If you agree, sign my
petition here.
No comments:
Post a Comment