“I shall be able to obtain the golden body of the Buddha because I gave up my arms.” I think of the many golden body Buddhas I witnessed over the years who through their passion not only gave up their arms, their legs, their minds, their lives doing the compassionate acts of caring for the sick. “If my words are true and not false, I shall be able to have my arms restored.” And these caregivers time after time continued to return to their passion of care.
One night I was the on-call chaplain overnight and was notified that an Adult Trauma Code Level 1 was being brought in to the hospital. A level one trauma means that there is at least one person from all the disciplines in the hospital present and attending the admission and emergency room treatment.
The role of the chaplain in all of this is loosely defined and usually up to the individual chaplain to define their own role. The way I defined mine was to notify the person recording all the events in the room of who I was and that I was the chaplain. Then I would stand off to the side behind the persons who would be providing the actual medical treatment. The space is very small for what needs to be done.
Once I’m checked in and am standing out of the way, I chant in my head and witness. I witness the efforts the skilled professionals make to try to revive a male victim of motor vehicle accident, he was a pedestrian. I am constantly chanting and watching as they give blood, various fluids, injections probably to try to chemically kick start the heart or to boost the heart rate. All the while they are working shifts giving chest compressions and breathing bag.
One shift tires and keeping the rhythm they change over and someone new picks up the beat. This goes on for quite a while and all to no avail. When the finally called his death I witnessed something I had never seen happen before. Rather than everyone filing out and going on to the next patient the next trauma everyone hung around. They were hugging each other and crying. I could see the shoulder shake and the bodies tremble. After a while then they began to wipe their noses and go about the business of the emergency department.
As a few of them were finishing up the paperwork and reports I asked about the scene I had just witnessed. I’ve written about this event before, yet as a witness I will tell the story again about Chilly Willie. He was a homeless man, a street person. He was what they called a frequent flyer, meaning he would appear in the ER once or twice a month to get something treated. The ER was his personal physician, as it is for many homeless and poor.
About 10 years before his wife, as a pedestrian was killed by an automobile. Before that Chilly Willie had been what society would call normal, employed, had a place to live and all the things used to measure normality. Then when his wife died it all fell apart. For 10 years he lived on the streets and all that that entailed. That night they said that over the last couple of months he had begun to turn his life around and was about to get his own place again. They said they were seeing him less and when he did come he showed signs that he was managing his health care, you can tell these things.
They deeply cared for this person society had cast aside. Society had no place for a man who was deeply traumatized by the death of his wife. Society only had space for him as a homeless person, nameless to most. The folks, the Medicine King Bodhisattvas in the ER, knew him, he was a real person to them and they mourned his life and his death.
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