“The Favorite” (Spring 2021 Intima) by clinician Amy Tubay is a story about having one. It’s a story about the defiant heart—how certain patients enter our affections in ways that are largely mysterious. That love—a love that overrides rules and regulations—isn't something we pay enough attention to in the health professions.
As a new chaplain, I became aware of my “favorites” and, at first, was tempted to allow my discomfort to neutralize those feelings. Through years of practice, I learned that the ethics that regulate professional behavior in the area of “appropriate detachment” can, in some cases, become barriers to human affection, intimacy and care.
My story “Another Look at Dying “ (Fall 2021 Intima) is also a love story. On its surface, it is a narrative about two women, roommates in a residential care facility, who became beloved friends and cared for one another at life’s end. Beneath that is a story about love’s miracles—how they arise, surprise and endure.
I met both women shortly after their arrival and early in my chaplaincy. I was struck by the intimacy and mutual concern that quickly developed between them. Both enjoyed reminiscing about their younger years and sharing word games. When Lorraine worried her oxygen tube might become dislodged, Regina reassured her and made sure the tube was in place. When Regina fretted about insufficient funds to remain at the care facility, Lorraine offered money to supplement.
I maintained compassionate boundaries, sometimes bringing my own lunch from home and sharing mealtimes with them, bringing cookies or listening and chuckling as they turned the pages of Lorraine’s wedding album. Over a period of months, I became a stable presence amid the daily uncertainties of their lives. I listened carefully. I held their deepest thoughts in confidence. I nurtured their desires to continue to live fully despite failing health.
And then a third story emerged.
When Lorraine and Regina were gone, I grieved. When I walked past their room, I still pictured them cozily hunched together—Lorraine in her wheelchair, Regina on the bed. I discovered I could successfully navigate the blurred line between “professional care” and genuine human need. I followed my spirit. Most valuable, I experienced trusting myself, with as much certainty as life allows, to go to the edges of love, to back up, to hold it, and to safeguard a willingness to do so again.
Flo Gelo is a medical humanities educator with over twenty-five years’ experience working with patients receiving palliative care. She has published numerous articles in professional journals about illness, death and dying. Gelo, who uses the visual arts as a teaching tool to enhance clinical skills in medical education, most recently employed images of narrative paintings to assist hospice patients to speak about the day-to-day realities of living while dying. She has also produced "The HeART of Empathy: Using the Visual Arts in Medical Education" selected by the Family Medicine Education Consortium (FMEC) as their 2009 Family Medicine Through the Visual Arts Award, as well as Emma’s Haircut, the story of a 32-year-old mother of two, having a shaving party when she undergoes chemotherapy for breast cancer.