Healthy Dose of Faith

When David Peckham walks into a patient’s room at Simi Valley Hospital, these are some of the things he says:

My name is Dave Peckham.

I’m the chaplain here.

Don’t get any strange ideas.

Peckham understands why patients tend to tense up when he comes around. They can’t help wondering, “Does this mean I’m going to die?”

No. All Peckham wants is to talk to them, hold their hands, listen to their fears and, when possible, offer solace. While physicians tend to the body--with CAT scans and X-rays, MRIs and IVs--Peckham and other Ventura County chaplains are concerned with the soul and the spirit.

“I can’t give an IV, I can’t give a shot. All I can give is a good prayer,” Peckham said.

Sometimes that is just what is needed.

In the past, chaplains appeared at death. But today, hospitals have found that chaplains can be useful even to patients who wouldn’t normally call on the church for help. With recent studies showing those with religious traditions fare better in a hospital setting, more and more institutions are making chaplains key members of the medical team.

At Ventura County Medical Center and Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, pastors are allowed to roam the halls as they wish. St. John’s Medical Center offers classroom instruction in chaplaincy, and 13 chaplains and five resident-trainees serve at its Oxnard and Camarillo sites. The residents work in the hospital for a year before taking jobs at hospitals throughout Southern California.

At St. John’s, just as patients have medical charts, they have spiritual charts, an assessment of the needs that range beyond the corporeal. As in medicine, it’s a question of priorities. Is a person in a spiritual crisis? Despairing? Did someone request a visit from a chaplain? Who needs to talk first?

“I think it helps enormously,” said Dr. Michael Jones, an emergency room doctor at Simi Valley Hospital. “I really believe emotional stress can lead to physical sickness.”

And just as in physical medicine, emotional ailments can be emergencies.

Sometimes it’s a patient weary with pain, or nearing death and in fear. Sometimes it’s a family, dealing with the loss of a loved one, or bewildered by a brusque hospital routine.

Many times it’s a staff member. This is, after all, a place where a consistent assault of tough-to-take news is part of daily existence. This is where working lives revolve around pain.

The hospital chaplain sees it all. It can be an awesome responsibility. The chaplain is witness to life’s biggest events.

At Simi Valley Hospital, Peckham is supposed to work an eight-hour day, but he doesn’t. More often he is called in on weekends, or works into the night. Emergencies don’t happen only between 9 and 5.

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He has a pink, elfin face, a trimmed, reddish beard, and an almost preternaturally calm demeanor. His is a warm, soothing voice, touched by a South African accent. He stops by the emergency room first, ducks his head into patient rooms, makes a point of saying hello to every staff member.

Not all the day is tears. More typical is the drop-by visit, the joke-around chat. Sometimes, it’s an affirmation of life. Each visit takes on its own significance.

The hospital typically has 200 patients. He couldn’t see nearly that many in a day. So, just like a doctor, he provides triage.

Some patients ask for no visit from a chaplain. Some have relationships with their own churches. Some just want to talk. And some need to ask the big questions: What next? Will I survive? Why me?

“Life becomes extremely important when you’re facing death,” Peckham said.

So, Peckham is there to listen, to offer a thumbs up to a patient fearful of heading into surgery. Mostly his job is to be there and accept.

Each chaplain has his own style. When George West, a chaplain at St. John’s in Oxnard, walks into a room, he kneels to get close to the patient. He is a stranger. He expects nothing in return, but gets something intangible, and valuable, back.

“It’s an amazing intimacy that happens very quickly,” he said. “That’s fine. That’s what I do.”

The questions can be difficult, even unanswerable. When someone says it’s not fair, sometimes all you can say is, “You’re right, this sucks,” Peckham said.

When someone says, “I’ve been praying all my life. What do I do now?” it’s hard to know how to respond.

Sometimes it’s holding a hand or saying a prayer. Sometimes, it’s a hug. Sometimes it’s sharing grief.

“Tears are a wonderful gift from God, for when the words run out,” West said. “You don’t need to say why” God works the way he does.

Most important is not to judge someone else’s way of confronting the end.

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One of West’s patients insisted on every lifesaving treatment possible, even when he and family members couldn’t understand why she would continue. “Are you afraid of dying?” West asked. He tried to tell her it was all right to die, to explain that she didn’t need to fear death. No, she said, she would not stop the painful treatments.

“I’m atoning for my sins,” she told him.

West couldn’t step into the relationship between the woman and God. He didn’t try to persuade her any further.

“I’m her advocate,” West said. “I don’t care how painful it is.”

As he puts it, his role is to journey through spiritual choices--”It’s not to judge. Thanks be to God.”

In the ideal world, families would already be prepared for death. Each member would have written living wills. Every person would be aware of the deceased’s wishes.

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That isn’t the way it works.

So, Peckham often finds himself dealing with the burial and funeral. He helps with the painful process of making decisions, so that people have time to grieve.

“I never had to deal with handling anything,” said Linda Forsythe, whose mother died of a stomach aneurysm at Simi Valley Hospital. “He just did everything. He’s very kind. Soft-spoken. Compassionate. Efficient.”

Death can be messy. But death can also be “good,” when it happens at the right time--with family members present. At peace.

Peckham was called in one afternoon for just such a death. The Rainey family members had chosen to have 89-year-old Nellie Rainey removed from her respirator. The hanging TV flickered in the background. Peckham led them in a prayer. They had prepared for her to go.

“We counseled with David. There’s something wonderful about it if it’s the right choice,” said Frances Flynn of Camarillo, Nellie Rainey’s daughter. “She went peacefully, talking about God and heaven [near the end]. But, I grieved, that moment when she died.”

Flynn has asked Peckham to preside over the funeral of her brother, a former Simi Valley resident who died in North Carolina last week of liver cancer. Peckham will say a prayer at the brother’s grave site in Simi Valley.

Death, as much as birth, can feel like a miracle, chaplains say. West recalled a death that stayed with him.

“I said the Lord’s Prayer, and as soon as we said ‘Amen,’ her heart rate just drops bit by bit--74 . . . 68 . . . ,” West said. “I still get goose bumps. It’s a holy moment to be present when somebody dies. What an honor that is.”

Peckham, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor, believes many other cultures have an easier time with death. He remembers a Muslim family who bathed their dead father. They washed his entire body with a cloth, cleaned each nail. They sent him off in a way that codified their beliefs.

While most chaplains are Christians, chaplains are required to put their own beliefs on the shelf. There is no room for Evangelism in the hospital.

Further, chaplains need to be attuned to other religious cultures. West has studied Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. He recognizes the religious touchstones of each religion. St. John’s had a Buddhist monk several years ago.

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“Culturally or spiritually, it’s no skin off my nose to meet where they are,” Peckham said. “Jesus would meet people where they are.”

Someone who refers primarily to a “higher power” is probably a member of a 12-step program such as Alcoholics Anonymous. When a woman mentioned “wheeling the whoop,” Peckham knew he was talking to a nature-worshiping Wiccan, he said.

“People say ‘God knows best,’ but that’s very often a facade,” Peckham said. “Westerners like to take that road, not allowing people to interact on a vulnerable level: with fear, anger, resentment, anxiety.”

Peckham is a man who welcomes strong emotion, who allows people to reveal what they will no matter how they feel. One day, a man whose son had died months before walked into Peckham’s office at the hospital. There is no time limit for grief.

“Here’s what I’ll remember: He was this hard-working, big man and he just broke,” Peckham said afterward. “He had lost his only child. He had lost his wife. And he was sobbing.”

It’s difficult not to take those kinds of things home at night. Some chaplains deal with their jobs by adopting their own rituals.

West washes his hands every night before he leaves, a symbol to himself that the hospital remain in its place, and home in another.

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Peckham sometimes dreams. After a car accident that left pianist Arnaldo Cohen’s wife with a collapsed lung recently, Peckham found himself dreaming of the incident.

“I take many vacations. Last night, I was dreaming crazy, work-related dreams,” Peckham said. “When I start reliving things, that’s when I load my wife in the car and head out.”

Others can’t help but live with it.

“I find myself very much in tears about it,” said John Cherrie of Ventura Missionary Church. “It’s a load you take as a pastor, you just don’t dump it off. I never forget about it.”

It also gives him a chance to see the world outside his own. If he loses sleep at night, it’s not because he’s stewing over his own problems.

“You forget about yourself real quick,” Cherrie said. “When I wake up at night, I’m not thinking about myself.”

This is why they do it: Because they love God, and feel called to serve. Because they feel a connection to people. Because it’s a privilege.

“Your hospital chaplain comes closest to people at their most vulnerable: beginning life, struggling to stay alive, and people dying,” Peckham said. “I’m there for the biggest emotions. It’s a profound honor.”

In the middle of the day, Peckham stops into Tom Lloyd’s room. He is a stroke victim who will soon head into rehab. His wife, Morna, sits by his side. Lloyd is a boisterous sort--dampened a bit by his illness--and a recently retired limo driver the nurses have taken to flirting with.

He and the chaplain chat about Clint Eastwood, Lloyd’s favorite passenger. They talk about Lloyd’s doctor. They smile over his progress--the day before he couldn’t even use his right arm.

Peckham asks him if he would like to pray.

And then he leans his head, with little ceremony, and begins.

If he weren’t bending his head, you might not even notice he wasn’t talking to you. He is close enough to God that he doesn’t have to shout.

“God, continue being with Tom,” Peckham says. “Thank you that he’s feeling so much better. We hope that Tom will feel great.”

Tom and Morna say, “Amen.”