A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Elizabeth Zook is a member of the Presbytery of Kamloops, Minister-in-Association with St. Giles, and serves there as an elder.

I stopped and turned towards the elevator to answer the insistent call of my pocket pager to the Special Care Unit in Paediatrics. I’d been dreading the call all morning. At coffee I’d heard that a child had been admitted in very serious condition and was not expected to live. Entering the unit, I spoke briefly with the head nurse. The child’s grandmother had tripped on the ice and had fallen on six-month-old Aaron’s head. His prognosis was very poor. I glanced across the unit and saw a calm woman sitting quietly at the bedside of the child. Aaron could have been sleeping had I not seen the tube down his throat, his slightly swollen head, and, on closer examination, his eyelids beginning to turn blue.

I walked to the woman and stood with her, looking at her child. After about five minutes of silence (it seemed so much longer), I spoke, “He’s so beautiful.’’ A tear rose in her eye and meandered down her cheek, but she did not look up. “Aaron is a good name,” I continued. Now she looked at me, so I went on. “My name is Elizabeth Zook, and I’m the chaplain at the hospital.” She nodded and silently continued her vigil at her child’s side. Again we stood in silence. After several minutes, I touched her arm and left the unit.

An hour later I saw her again, this time sitting in the lobby outside of the unit. She didn’t acknowledge any recognition, but I walked up to her and asked if she’d like a cup of coffee. She nodded and I went to the unit kitchen and poured two cups. “Mind if I join you?” I asked. She took the coffee but ignored my question. We again sat in silence.

“You don’t have to stay. I’ll be okay. You must be busy and have a lot of things to do.” I waited briefly.

“I want to be here.” Again we sat in silence. I fought my desire to say something appropriate, to reach out to comfort this hurting woman who seem so skillfully to be resisting my efforts to help.

Finally she spoke again, “You could do something. Aaron’s never been baptized. He needs to be baptized.”

“Do you have a church?” I asked.

“We’re Catholics.”

“I’ll call a priest. He’ll be here shortly,” I said and left gratefully. Finally I could do something. Just being seemed to be too difficult. I took the details for the baptismal certificate from the hospital chart and hurried to my office. In ten minutes I returned with the neatly typed certificate, a small silk rose, and a New Testament inscribed “In honour of Aaron on his baptism.” The priest arrived and together we watched as he baptized her child. She ignored both the rose and the Testament after her initial simple word, “Thanks.”

We both returned to her son’s bedside, looking at his motionless body, listening to the rhythmic hiss of the respirator. By now his entire body had begun to swell and his eyelids were turning black. We waited together. Minutes later I again turned to go. On impulse I reached for her hand and she squeezed my fingers momentarily before dropping my hand.

Late that night I returned – I had felt so inadequate in my care both for her and her child. She looked at me with surprise. “I had to come,” I said quietly. We stood together again. Then, she reached for me and began to sob as I returned her hug. I looked at her and mouthed the words, “I care,” and she nodded.

The next day Aaron died. We stood together at his bedside after the respirator had been turned off and his breathing finally ceased. Minutes later the tubes and piping were disconnected and I brought Aaron to his mother. She cradled him in her arms, rocked him back and forth, and we both cried. It seemed so wrong that his life had been taken in so terrible a fashion, and that all our skill, technology and love had been so ineffective in preserving it.

Finally she whispered, “Can you pray?” We held hands as we prayed together. An hour later I took her child again and returned him to his crib in the Special Care Unit. Together we gathered her possessions, his blanket and stuffed animal, and left the Unit. At the door of the hospital, she initiated our embrace and simply said, “Thank you.”

How do you do pastoral care? Pastoral care happens when one walks into a risky situation and then offers oneself as Christ offered himself… to hurt with those who hurt, to cry with those who cry. And so, doing pastoral care hurts. One cannot alleviate suffering without entering into it. And as one enters a painful world – not with profound words of comfort or wise words of gathered experience – but by simply standing with the one who hurts and silently identifying with their pain, the Christian can know a part of a heart’s hurt. After entering Aaron’s mother’s fearsome pain, we together could affirm mutual faith in the value of life in our prayer and I could introduce to her a hope which could break through the despair of Aaron’s dying.

“Pastoral care happens when one … offers oneself as Christ offered himself … to hurt with those who hurt, to cry with those who cry.”

When did pastoral care happen? Aaron’s mother clearly stated her need for the traditional resources of the church – she recognized the great benefits of both baptism and prayer in times of personal crisis. But those were not the only moments when pastoral care occurred. Pastoral care happened in the tenseness of waiting. Together we began to understand the pain of Christ’s cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Pastoral care occurred in the moments of touching and hugging. We became pilgrims offering aid to each other. One human to another struggling to find healing in sharing a heavy burden at least briefly.

Christ himself provides the model for providing excellence in pastoral care. He told this story to exemplify it: “You have my Father’s blessing … for when I was hungry, you gave me food; when thirsty, you gave me drink; when I was a stranger you took me into your home, when naked you clothed me; when I was ill you came to my help, when I was in prison you visited me. Then the righteous will reply, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and fed you, or thirsty and gave you drink, a stranger and took you home, or naked and clothed you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and come visit you?’ And the king will answer, ‘I tell you this: anything you did for one of my brothers or sisters here, however humble, you did for me.’ ”

Translated into our words, this story speaks of attending to definite physical needs, psychological distress, isolation, abandonment, helplessness, fear and hopelessness, all of which were real needs for that woman in the Special Care Unit at Prince George Regional Hospital. Somehow spiritual care was inextricably linked with general compassionate care. Indeed, for Christ, it seems that all care is somehow spiritual because of the attitude with which it is done. “Anything you did for one of my brothers or sisters here, however humble, you did for me.”