Four years ago, I spent the summer working as a student chaplain at a hospital in the Quad Cities. Life as a chaplain is weird. In a matter of moments you can go from consoling a mourning family to calming a person detoxing to rejoicing at a birth. One of the most beautiful practices at the hospital I worked in was that with every birth a song would quietly play down the halls. The song played as people went into cardiac arrest, as nurses took blood and gave meds, as aids cleaned up vomit, any time a baby was born there was a moment of rejoicing on every floor of the hospital. Here's an ode to that, written in my last week of chaplaincy:
...from a chaplain
The lullaby sings softly down the hall
--a child is born.
For a moment, there is joy,
sweet celebration, of life, of promise.
But, I wait for the merismos
--a bookend to the birth.
In anticipation, I wait, for the rattling breath,
the labored, gasping, death.
I wait for the merismos.
Which encompasses life and death and all that is between.
I wait, for those coming and those going
and I stay with those in limbo, in the dark and in the light.
I wait, for the merismos.
A sudden long-awaited end,
While I wait, I hear it again
--a voice proclaiming I’ve lived
and I will live again--
The lullaby sings softly down the hall.
(c) Katie Chullino 2010
