On Revisiting the Hospital

(an editorial response)

I much appreciated Peter Gilmour's reflections on his hospital stay for prostate cancer. He accurately expresses the discomfort of living with the "maybes" that accompany such an experience. But maybe he has more maybes than he might otherwise have, by some decisions, or observations, he made with regard to his stay there. For instance, he indicates his early choice of privacy, which led him not to divulge his medical problem to most of his friends and acquaintances. He discloses his reasons for so doing. Maybe everyone, himself included, would have benefited more by his disclosing the situation to a larger group, whose support might have alleviated the uncertainties facing him.

Similarly, his decision not to receive the Eucharist during his hospital stay might have added to a sense of isolation (since most Catholics experience a sense of closeness to God in receiving communion) that in turn generated some of those maybes. Again, he gave a reason for this course of action--his concern about minimizing its import--but this reason needs better exposition than his example from Salinger provides, in the person of the priest, Waker, and his antics with the Eucharist--truly minimizing behavior.

Then, again, his observation about the mix of religious faiths among the hospital personnel who cared for him seems to have been part of the scenario surrounding his sense of "maybe-ness", to the extent that they apparently diluted the distinctive Catholic cast to his hospital experience, thereby weakening a potential source of certitude for him (the Catholic faith) in his surroundings, even though he did discover a sense of God's presence among them, as well as among his family and friends. Maybe he could have interpreted this openness of the hospital to such religious pluralism as an indication of its wisdom and foresight about the kinds of people best able to care for him, and thereby provided him comfort and confidence.

Yes, there are maybes in experiences such as Peter Gilmour describes. Maybes are not all bad, discomforting though they can be. But we all do well to intersperse a few certitudes, or at least probabilities, among them, especially when we are facing serious situations. Peter Gilmour positions us to think about this. We are grateful to him.