I attended a Spirituality in Medicine conference today. It is part of my CPE unit and is sponsored by the parent entity of our hospital. I was glad I went because a couple of the speakers were wonderful. In fact, I’ve decided that I’ve got to sit in on a class with Robert Wicks because the man could have talked all day, and I would not have been distressed at all. There was so much wisdom and pointed rebuke in the laughter.

One of the best comments, though was from his quoting a Russian proverb:

“When you live next to the cemetery, you can’t weep for everyone.”

That is so true. Yet you don’t want to trade your compassion for being numb or callous. Both are trademarks of being over stressed and burned out. I could go there, were it not for the fact that I’ve been trying hard to debrief and dump the load that I am not asked to carry.

Some times, the stories of families stay with me. The PTSD-driven wife whose husband died of respiratory failure, and whose children have separated themselves from her by thousands of miles. The family with the 20-week gestation baby, who were stunned at the sudden arrival, one that no one could stop, and no one could have predicted. The child who went home with a broken arm and a terminal bone cancer diagnosis. And the sisters who were in denial that their dad, who barely made it alive from the ER to the ICU, was going to die.

(I know that the fact I can remember these faces and their stories is in itself, telling. But I promise that it does not make me weep to think of them. It only makes me stop, breathe and pray.)

Being a chaplain, though, does mean that sometimes, you are sleeping next to the cemetery. In between calls, you wonder who you will talk to next, and how difficult their reality will be — a reality that perhaps they didn’t want to face. Or worse yet, didn’t know they would face that day.

And I’m just grateful that I am there to listen to them, to pray, and to walk through it with them, all the while, holding on to God.