Rev. Bob Managbanag serves as a chaplain with Roze Room Hospice.
It was 8:45 in the morning when I walked into the scene. As a hospice spiritual counselor, I am often called to help diffuse critical incidents. She was lying on her bedroom floor… pale… eyes half open. She was so young. Her first seizure ten months ago forever changed whatever life she enjoyed. She was a vibrant beautiful woman, a film and television actress so full of life and energy. Now she looked so aged and decrepit, behaving like a slobbering toddler.
This second seizure was her last. The hospice nurse was on the floor confirming what I already knew. Her distraught husband was pacing back and forth (it felt like running). He was crying like a child who just had his favorite toy forcibly taken from him. He didn’t believe in anything spiritual or religious. He was a Hollywood producer. In fact, when his young actress-wife first came under hospice care, he accepted my support as a spiritual counselor under one condition. There would be no talk of religion, theology, or anything spiritual!
He saw me, came up, and hugged me tightly. He wasn’t letting me go. He was weeping intensely.
“Tell me where she is, Bob! Please, tell me where she is!”
His pain was so intense I couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say. So I prayed quietly, deeply.
“Lord, give me the right words to say.”
Then I felt it. It came from deep within me like a volcano suddenly erupting. The Lord’s voice was clear. Out of my mouth it came, so sweetly and gently as I held this broken hurting shell of a man.
“SHE’S HOME.”
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