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Prayerful Pondering

~ by Pat Luffman Rowland

Prayerful Pondering

Monthly Archives: September 2014

A Patient of Courage and Wit

22 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Pat Luffman Rowland in healthcare stories

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

companionship, devotion to spouse, memories, patient care, strength

This is another story from patient representative days, first published in my December 1988 department report to physicians and hospital staff, then later in the Memphis Healthcare News. It is a smile maker and I hope you will enjoy it.

There are particular patient memories I hold fast because of a patient’s special courage, kindness, even wit. Mr. Simpson is one of those. In his 60’s, he had an extreme fear of contracting AIDS. When he was admitted to our hospital, his wife came armed with her own can of Lysol and as soon as he was in a room, she went about cleaning the bathroom and telephone again—just to be sure.

Mr. and Mrs. Simpson enjoyed one of those marriages that was sheer delight to observe. As we got to know each other, she told me of how they had both had previous marriages that came apart in the early 1940’s. She said her first husband left to get a haircut one day and just never came back. So the second husband, Mr. Simpson, made her go with him every time he went for a haircut for six years! Then she laughed that happy, throaty laugh of hers and you could picture how that happened over and over.

One day he decided he would leave a little test for the housekeepers by putting a tiny piece of paper in each corner of the bathroom. He chuckled telling me about it and said he was happy to say the housekeeper passed his test. His daughter added that the housekeeper should have left the scraps of paper with one word written on each: (1) I’ve (2) cleaned (3) this (4) bathroom.

After discharge, the patient would return for blood transfusions. One day, as the patient, his wife and I crossed paths in the lobby, we stopped for quick hugs and updates. Mr. Simpson said they had to hurry along because “I’ve just been given the blood of an 18-year-old and I want to get my wife right home.”

Those were some of the fun memories, but there is another memory that tugs at my heart and it happened shortly after his diagnosis of lung cancer. This beautiful human being, full of love and wit, called in all of his grandchildren to talk to them. Their ages ranged from twelve to mid-twenties. Mr. Simpson told them he wanted to be serious with them just for a minute. He explained his condition and that he knew his long years of smoking were to blame. He said, “Granddaddy should be up playing with you now and not lying in this bed. If I had taken care of my body, I would be doing that. So I want you to promise me, while each of you still has a healthy body, to respect it and take care of it. Don’t ever be foolish enough to put yourself where I am now.” With that, he dismissed the time for serious conversation and became, once again, the life of the party.

Certainly there were times when the Simpsons proved difficult for hospital staff as they struggled to hold on to the months of life he had left. But not a one of us would have put a single mark against such a courageous man and woman. This was a couple who helped us laugh when their hearts were breaking, who held close to each other and taught us lessons about love and commitment. If we had a hall with pictures of favorite patients, I’m pretty sure they would make the gallery by unanimous vote.

My Grandmother’s Love

18 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by Pat Luffman Rowland in Love for God

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

acceptance, faith, God's presence, love, memories, trust, wisdom

This is dedicated to the memory of Wendell Smith, who grew up across the street from my grandparents and loved my grandmother like his own, and was loved by her in the same way. Wendell called her Mama Dulcie just like the rest of us, and it was he who preached her funeral in 1991.

Dulcie Pauline Cotton Spencer had a way about her. A way that was warm, inviting, accepting of every person for just who they were. She was the best example of Christ’s love I’ve ever known. She knew Him well and loved Jesus with reverence and solid trust.

One of my earliest childhood memories of my grandmother is how she prayed on her knees every night at bedtime. With her braided hair unwound from atop her head and falling down her back over her homemade white gown, she spoke to the Lord. As an adult, I remember the many times I walked into her house and into her conversations with Jesus. He was her constant companion.

As a small child of barefoot summers, I remember the pain of getting a sizeable splinter in my foot and how Mama Dulcie placed a small piece of fat meat over the wound and wrapped it with a rag torn from a clean, but worn thin, pillowcase. (Repurposing, we call it now.) The splinter eased itself out. As an older child, I remember afternoons that she sent me to the garden for a fresh head of lettuce. I would wash it and then stand beside her and watch as she poured hot bacon grease over the lettuce, turning it into a wilted salad.

She was a cook that no would could top. I don’t suppose her kitchen ever knew a day without bowls of vegetables and platters of meat and a dessert of some kind. She loved cooking and loved even more sharing it with others. It was a delight to my grandparents for someone—anyone—to stop by for the noon meal. No need to call, food was always plentiful at the Spencer house. Chicken and dumplings was the grandchildren’s favorite and the dish she prepared regularly for friends and neighbors. In a small town, when someone is sick, you take care of them and their families with food. In my kitchen, I have a framed copy of Mama’s recipe for chicken and dumplings from the Medina Baptist Church cookbook. It was written just like she would verbally give it to you and what a treasure that is! “Use a good chicken” is one of the instructions. (For you of today’s generation, that means select a plump young hen big enough to feed several people.)

Mama Dulcie had fourteen children. Seven born to her and seven who married into the family—she and Papa knew no difference. There were sixteen grandchildren and I’ve lost count of the great-grands. Love flowed so naturally from Dulcie Spencer. Just like Jesus, she had no favorites; yet she loved with such abundance, that I think each one of us felt like we were her favorite.

Mama Dulcie took life seriously and she took her “soaps” seriously. It was a mystery to me that a woman so pure could enjoy stories that even in the 50s were a bit racy. Her favorite was “As the World Turns” and when the marriage of fictional characters Bob and Lisa became troubled, Mama wrote to Lisa. She told her about wrong and right and encouraged her to mend her ways. Are you smiling? Well, Lisa wrote back—I have the letter! She thanked Mama for writing to her and for her advice. But as I recall, Lisa continued to be a bit of a wild child, likely a great disappointment to my grandmother.

Mama Dulcie sang when she ironed, when she cooked, when she mopped the floors, pretty much all the time.  “In the Sweet By and By” and “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder” are two of the hymns I remember most—and she sang only hymns. She loved to paint and her pie safes had more coats of white paint than one could count. My mother, Mama’s firstborn, said Mama would rather paint than dust. There was just something about a fresh coat of white paint that made her very happy.

My grandmother was a gentle soul. She was kind and generous. She knew how to love and chose to see only the best in everyone, and this brings me to a story about Wendell Smith that he told me a few years before he died. While Mama and Papa were at church, Wendell, just a little boy at the time, went into their house (doors weren’t locked then) and into the kitchen and there saw the banana pudding Mama Dulcie had left on the counter to cool. He set the whole bowl of pudding in the middle of the floor and with a big spoon dug in. He said my grandmother’s only words about it were “Bless his heart, he must have been hungry.” Someone else might have been annoyed, even angry, but not this sweet lady.

One other memory given me by Wendell was this: “The Sunday before I announced my call into the ministry I gave my testimony, then Bro. John Pippin preached about five minutes and gave the invitation. It was during the invitation that six people responded giving their lives to Christ. During the invitation Mama Dulcie got up, walked up the aisle and got Bruce and Bryan (two of her grandchildren) and with one on one side and one on the other she brought them down the aisle and to Christ. Such was her faith that she wanted her grandchildren to be saved.”

I think I want to close with that memory. It says who she was. A woman who loved her family and her Lord and made sure the two were connected. She was the wisest woman I ever knew.

Mama and me 001

Saying Goodbye to Grandma

09 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by Pat Luffman Rowland in death

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

communication, faith, family, heaven, strength, wisdom

From 1984 to 1998, I worked closely with patients, family members and their health care providers at Methodist Healthcare in Memphis. For most of those years, I wrote the stories of some of the people I met in those patient rooms and critical care waiting rooms. The following is taken from a story published in 1989 and the name of the husband has been changed. 

Mr. Markle, the husband of a patient who died in our hospital two months ago, came to see me last week. He stopped by to let me know how he and his family were doing after the death of his wife. A very close family, they stayed near wife, mother and grandmother for those weeks before her death.

Mr. Markle said his wife told him the morning he brought her to the hospital that she would die there and she was ready to go. She had battled illness for 15 years.

Those weeks in the hospital the family would gather daily to share a devotional reading. The morning she died, the devotional was on death and the willingness to peacefully give to God sick and hurting loved ones.  One of the daughters remarked how significant the devotional was for that day.

Mr. Markle said the very hardest thing for him during his wife’s illness was a conversation he had with his five-year old granddaughter. With tears in his eyes, he told me this story:

“Papa, I love you and I love Grandma. And I love God most of all. Isn’t that right, Papa, to love God most of all?” “Yes, honey, it is.” “I know God doesn’t want Grandma to be sick and He will do what’s best for her.”

That little girl’s words paved the way for another tough conversation just days later when Mr. Markle decided to tell his two young granddaughters (the other was eight) about their grandmother’s imminent death.  He took the girls into one of our chapels and placed them on either side of him, then asked the youngest if she remembered what she had said about God doing what was best for their grandmother. She did. He told them that he thought God was going to take Grandma to be with Him so she wouldn’t have to be sick anymore. They nodded their heads and bravely accepted his words.

What Mr. Markle did for those little girls was a courageous gift. By telling them what the rest of the family knew, he showed respect for their need to know. That kept the little girls from feeling isolated and afraid, as often happens with children when loved ones die.

I was with the family the morning Mrs. Markle died—they called for me to come. What a privilege it was to be with them as they said their goodbyes. Though they were sad, there was a very strong sense of peace about each one. I saw, and the nursing staff saw, their powerful witness of faith. But most of all, two little girls witnessed their parents and grandfather’s way of dealing with death, and they understood that Grandma going home to God wasn’t the end, just a temporary separation.

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The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23 ESV

If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9

God has not given us a spirt of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7

Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name. For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations. Psalm 100:4-5

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

© Pat Rowland and Prayerful Pondering, 2010 - 2013.
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pat Rowland and Prayerful Pondering with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Hope must be in the future tense. Faith, to be faith, must be in the present tense. Catherine Marshall
Everything over your head is under his feet. Dr. Tom Lindberg
What an excellent ground of hope and confidence we have when we reflect upon these three things in prayer--the Father's love, the son's merit and the Spirit's power! Thomas Manton
Our Christian hope is that we're going to live with Christ in a new earth, where is not only no more death, but where life is what it was always meant to be. Timothy Keller

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