Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen. Welcome. I'm so glad you've joined me for this episode. Please connect with Bleeding Daylight on Facebook and Instagram. Links and other episodes are at bleedingdaylight.net. Please share this and other episodes with others. It's a strange phrase, but have you ever heard of someone dying well? What does it mean?
While we have a tendency to avoid the topic of death, we know that it's somewhere on the horizon for us all. Today's guest helps people walk that journey well. When we're young, we often feel invincible. As the years creep up, our thoughts can sometimes turn to what lies beyond this life. But when we reach a certain age, or if we receive a bad diagnosis at any age, the knowledge that our days on this planet are numbered can cause us to consider our own mortality.
William Sofield has walked alongside many people as they've navigated those difficult days. He has served in hospital chaplaincy and currently works as a hospice chaplain. I'm pleased to have him as a guest on Bleeding Daylight today. William, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Rodney. It's so good to be here with you. In your work, both in hospital and hospice chaplaincy, you're with people at some of the most pivotal moments in their lives.
Now, as heavy as I'm sure that that can be, it must be an enormous privilege for you as well. You're exactly right about that. It's a great honor to be with people at, like you say, the pivotal moments of their life. Sometimes it can be a little bit surreal for me, as I'm almost every day with someone at really the worst part of their life ever. But for me, it's an ordinary day. And so it is a little bit surreal.
When I meet up with people later on in life, they remember me very, very well, but I often don't remember them. Because it was an ordinary day for me, but it is an honor every single time. And often you're not just dealing with those who are going through whatever it might be, but it's their loved ones as well. So you're having to give comfort to both, let's say, a patient or a client as well as the loved ones that surround them. Oh, absolutely.
Especially in hospice care, many times my patients are not able to speak because they're so far along in the dying process. If they're actively dying and they're just laying in bed sleeping, then many times I go and make a visit with someone and it's really their loved one. It's the husband, the wife, the son, the daughter, the brother, the sister that I'm really talking to and ministering to.
And that can be an interesting time because there's a part of us that even though we know that death comes to all of us, we want to deny that. And I'm sure that you've found loved ones who are just holding on and want you to give them the hope that their loved one is going to make it through. And you're having to navigate with them and say, that's not going to happen this time. Yeah, that's right. I believe in God. I'm a Christian minister.
And so I do believe in a God that gives miracles, but they're called miracles for a reason. They don't happen that often. Certainly I have honestly prayed for people and God has answered prayer miraculously. And I've seen some pretty amazing things, but far more often than not, people don't get the miracle that they're hoping for. But often I will say to people, there's a miracle coming one way or the other. Either God's going to heal you or he's going to heal you in the next life.
The idea of the resurrection and the hope that we have in heaven, that is a miracle in and of itself. It's maybe not the one that we want, but there still can be hope there. Now, understanding that those times of praying for someone and seeing that miraculous healing, it can be the outlier. Maybe you can still share maybe one or two instances where you've seen someone absolutely rally from something that doctors said, this is not going to happen.
Yeah, I've absolutely seen patients come on to hospice care where doctors are saying there's hope for a cure and they do so much better and they start to heal when they're in hospice care, so much so that we have to discharge them from hospice care because they're doing so well. They're not dying anymore. And I've seen folks go on to live for years and years after that. It's an interesting profession to be a part of. It sure is. To enter into someone's life. It absolutely is. Complete strangers.
Tell me, what was it that drew you to that line of work? That's a great question. I kind of just stumbled onto it when I graduated from seminary with a master's degree of divinity. I was looking for a church that would employ me as a pastor and no church wanted me, I guess. And so I looked and I found an internship in a hospital chaplaincy program. I just fell in love with it, and it's something I've been doing ever since. I wasn't really looking for it, but the Lord led me to it for sure.
Tell me about those early days because I'm sure that all the training does not prepare you for the moment that you're suddenly in a hospital situation with someone who is injured, someone who is perhaps dying or whatever the case may be, and you'll suddenly have to make it up as you go along. You're exactly right about that. When I graduated from seminary, I had a master's of divinity. Now I could translate Greek and Hebrew. I knew my church history and theology and all those kinds of things.
But when I went and sat with a patient who was dying or had just died with the family there, they didn't really care how much Greek I knew or how much Hebrew I knew. They wanted something completely different. I remember in those early days, I would go in to see patients in a nursing home on a regular basis that was connected to my hospital.
I would go into a locked ward where the patients all there had some sort of dementia, advanced dementia enough that they needed to be locked so that they didn't hurt themselves or others. I remember trying to minister to those folks, people who didn't remember even who they were or how to tie their shoes or how to get dressed. Some of them weren't even able to understand how to use the toilet. These are adults, older adults. Then the question is, how do you minister the gospel to them?
Nothing in my academic training had led me to that. It was really, really difficult. Thankfully, I had some great mentors to help encourage me and point me in the right direction along the way. Now I can see that there's great value in study. There's great value in going to a seminary or to have that kind of education. Of course. But there's something that really brings that alive when you're faced in situations where people, as you say, don't care about your studies.
They don't care what you can do with Greek. That's right. They just want to know what's happening. I'm sure it must have grown your faith too. It sure did. Let me tell you a story about that same situation where I was going into a locked ward at a nursing home. What I was doing there is to lead an evening prayer service through the Book of Common Prayer. I would go into their little living room area. There were about 25 patients or so. The staff would arrange the chairs in a big circle there.
I would sit in one of those chairs. Residents would sit around. I would pass out the Books of Common Prayer. We would go through the prayers. There was one lady who would always sit right next to me. I did this Monday through Friday for a long time. She would sit right next to me. She would be muttering under her breath. All these patients have dementia. She would be muttering under her breath all kinds of mean things, not very loud, but under her breath. You kids, stop that. Get off of my lawn.
Stop throwing those eggs. Just muttering. Some of it was profane even. She would do this through the entire prayer service, as I'm reading through the Psalms and reading through the prayers of the day and that kind of thing, until we got to the Lord's Prayer. When I would begin the Lord's Prayer, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, she would say it word for word, right with everyone else.
As soon as we stopped, she would start her muttering again, until we got to the Apostles' Creed. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. She was word for word with us through the entire thing. Then as soon as that was over, she would start muttering again. Everybody just kind of knew that's who she was. Months into this, one of the staff members said to me, this is her favorite time of every day.
On Saturday and Sunday, when you're not here, she comes and sits in this chair waiting for you. They told me that she had been a Lutheran missionary for most of her life. She never married. Her mind was broken, but this was a way she could still connect with her Savior and still express her love for the Lord. It was a great honor for me to help her to do that.
It's interesting having to navigate that minefield almost of trying to find what it is that is going to trigger something for someone whose mind isn't working as it used to and to find those hooks. What are some of the other things that you find that actually connect people back to who they once were? For a lot of my patients, singing is a big, big deal.
I don't have the greatest singing voice, but when I go into homes or nursing homes or wherever people are, many of them are bedbound or they're homebound, not able to get out anymore. I sing old hymns with them. Sometimes they just ask me to sing and sing and sing and not stop. It's just wonderful. I remember one man, he didn't really want me to sing. He wanted me to read the Bible. So I picked up his Bible that he had marked up over years and years and years of study.
He was blind now and couldn't read it, so he asked me to read it. I would just read his Bible, and I would go for 20, 30, 40 minutes. He always wanted me to read more. I just find different ways to help try and connect people back to their faith. For many people, there is that memory, and for some, it's way back. For some, it's something that happened in their childhood or in their early days, and you're reconnecting them to that.
But I'm sure that also in this sort of environment, you're encountering people that have never been a person of faith. How do you start to minister to them at that point in their life? Boy, that's a great question. When I think about the ministry of Jesus and as I follow Him trying to minister in His name, what I see Jesus doing and what I think He wants me and all of us to do is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted.
That's what I see Jesus doing, and so many of my patients, almost all of them, they're really afflicted, and they need the comfort of Jesus. When I come in, what I'm looking for is, how can I bring the comfort of the gospel? I completely expect that when I go in and see someone, God is already at work in their life, no matter who they are. God is looking for them. He's searching for them. He's calling to them, and He has been working with them for their entire lives.
So I'm looking to see, where is God at work here bringing restoration and bringing healing to whatever's broken in their life? I want to join with that. Now, that requires me to listen a whole lot, to listen to their stories and to listen to what's going on, where the pain points are in their life. What I mean by that is, I don't always start with the same place with everybody.
Where is this person, and how do I help them to get from where they are one step forward in their spiritual journey, or two steps, or three steps? But not everyone is starting in the same place, and so it requires a lot of listening. That's what I see Jesus doing as well. What it does as well is, it makes it a little bit more difficult, because you're having to find a different starting point for each person.
But at the same time, knowing that Jesus has already been at work in their life, it must take a huge weight off your shoulders, knowing that, actually, I'm just walking alongside not only this person, but alongside the work of Jesus through the Holy Spirit in this person's life. You're exactly right about that.
Sometimes I will walk in, especially for my hospice patients, and there'll be a family member, a younger person, who will meet me at the door or before I go in to see the patient, and they'll say, my grandfather has never accepted Jesus in his life, and I need you to go in there and save him. I say to them, I can't save anybody.
I'm happy to talk to anybody about Jesus, but I can't save anybody, and I will do whatever I can to help people see Jesus and to take the next step, whatever that is on their spiritual journey. If God is going to save them, maybe I can help with that. I would love to be able to help with that, but God's going to do what He's going to do, and I'm just going to be a faithful witness to Him and to try and join along with whatever He's doing.
We know that there are essentials to the faith, and we're not going to back away from that. But at the same time, we know that God works in different ways to what we might imagine. How difficult is it sometimes in dealing with loved ones like that who say, you just go in, get them to say the sinner's prayer, and you're done, to let them see that actually God may be working in a different way, and I'm just having to cooperate with what Jesus is already doing in their life?
Yeah, when I tell people that I can't save anybody, I can talk to people about Jesus, but I can't force Jesus on anyone. Generally, they can be sad about that, but I think they have to admit, I'm not Jesus. They've tried to do that, and maybe it has been unsuccessful for them as well. All of us have to make that choice. You're right. There are things that we believe about this life and faith in Jesus in the afterlife.
I'm with you 100% there, and I am happy to testify to Jesus, to anyone, anywhere, and especially to those who are nearing the very, very end of their life. But it's between them and Jesus as to what they do with it. I have heard that many people, once they are reaching the end of their life, it's not really a resignation to that, but it's an acknowledgement and an understanding that this is where things are going to go, and they will accept that.
Yet, many of their loved ones are not really at that point of accepting that yet. I guess that can be a difficult road to navigate when you're actually helping loved ones understand there is no journey back from this, and I want you to be comfortable with that and helping them to accept that as well. Yeah, you're exactly right.
Many times I have talked with patients, and they are comfortable, if I can put it that way, with the fact that they're going to die very soon, but their loved ones are not at all. In fact, the scenario that you just presented, that is common, a loved one saying, can you please go in and make sure that this person is saved?
Sometimes I'll go in and the person says, oh, yes, I love Jesus, but I don't believe in this particular esoteric doctrine that my son wants me to believe in, or something like that. The person who's dying is comfortable with their dying. It's the person who is standing by that really isn't. Honestly, it goes the other way as well. Sometimes people who are dying are not ready to die, and that's another thing that I love to help with. How can I help you to get ready for what's coming up?
Every person you deal with is different. Every patient, every loved one, and you're having to listen, but I believe that something that underpins the way you work in that difference is you have a theory or theology of spiritual care at the end of life. Talk to me about that. I really think that part of what it means to be spiritual is that we are connected.
All of us have some sort of connection to God, to those around us, our loved ones, our family and friends, connection to ourselves, and connection to the world. Part of what it means to be spiritual is to have good connections in these various ways. As I provide spiritual care to people, one of the things I am looking for always is where do people feel disconnected? Do they feel disconnected from God? Do they feel disconnected from their wife or husband or children or grandchildren?
Do they feel disconnected from themselves? Often people do. Or do they feel disconnected from some hobby or some cause in the world that's important to them? The work that I try to do is to help people to heal connections where they're really missing. Some people are willing to let me help them do that and others, not so much. We hear the phrase dying well, and we talk about people who that person died well.
Can you explain from your perspective what that seems to mean when you're seeing someone who has come to accept the fact that they're not going to be around forever and that they're able to die well? What does that mean? Yeah. To die well, I think, is to be connected in those ways. Or at least I can say, if you are well connected to God, to your loved ones, to yourself, then when death comes, it will be a good death, especially as you are looking for the hope of heaven.
I met a man who came into our hospice care. He lived at home. He was about 85 years old. His body was filled with cancer, and his heart was failing as well. He had been an active deacon in his small Baptist church for more than 50 years. And when I met him, he was laying in bed. He was bedbound in his home. He had never finished the eighth grade in school because his family, when he was young, needed him to work on the farm.
As an adult, he worked on the farm, and then they sold the farm, and he worked in a factory, actually, for most of his life. And I sat with him and his dear wife. She would change his diapers every day and sing to him the old gospel songs. I visited him a bunch of times, and he loved to hear me pray for him, and he actually would pray for me as well.
One of the things that he said many times to me, though, he said, I'm ready to see Jesus, but I'm not ready to leave my family and my church friends. One of the times that I went over to see him, he was telling me about his parents and how they had gone on and how much he missed them. And his old pastor had died as well, and he and his old pastor had been great fishing buddies, and he loved to go fishing with him a whole bunch.
His wife was there part of that conversation, and she said, I'm kind of jealous that you're going to see our friends in heaven before I get to see them again. I said, is there any message that you would want to give to your husband? Because he probably will see those friends again before you do, and you can have him pass on a message, and he will see them soon. And she started crying and gave him a message for a couple of her friends that he would see in heaven.
Well, another visit that I was with him, he was talking about his grandchildren. He had pictures surrounding his bed of his grandchildren, and he pointed to one of the pictures, a little five-year-old boy. He said, this is my youngest grandchild. He said, I never got to teach him how to fish because when I got sick, he was too young. I've taught all of my kids how to fish.
That got me to thinking, and I gathered our hospice team together, and one Monday morning, shortly after that, we gave him some extra medicine, and we got him a special wheelchair with a safety harness, and we loaded him up in a special vehicle and took him out to a dock where there was a large pond.
His five-year-old grandson came and sat on his lap, and they got a fishing pole, and he taught the little boy how to put a hook into a worm and put the bobber on there and the sinker and cast out, and they caught a little fish, a little sunfish. The rest of the family were all taking pictures, and the whole thing didn't last for very long because he got tired very, very fast. They took him back home, put him to bed.
He slept for about three days straight because he was just exhausted from all that. The following Sunday, his little church, which had grown very small by that time, decided to have their worship service at his house. He was in bed for the worship service, and it was in his living room. He did his best to sing the hymns, and he listened to the Bible reading and to the prayer and to the preaching.
His wife told me about this afterwards, that he was so happy to see people younger than him who were going to carry on the gospel after he died. At the very end of that worship service, he pronounced the benediction at the end of the worship service, like he always did when he was younger. He died that same day, that evening. That, Rodney, is a good death, where he is connected to his family, to his grandson, to the rest of his family, to his church family.
He is ready to see Jesus, and he is ready to say goodbye, and he did. It was beautiful, and that's why he was able to die. That's a good death. That's a good death, and that's a great story. I'm wondering, I guess that raises another question for me, and that is with that five-year-old little boy who gets the opportunity to learn how to fish. And when we see someone passing on, there are so many people involved.
There are generally the person who's passing on, there are their children, and then grandchildren, and sometimes great grandchildren. How do we navigate across all of those generations? For instance, how do we help the loved one, the son or daughter, actually then explain what's going on with grandma or granddad to that five-year-old, to that seven-year-old, to the younger children? How do we have good discussions about death in our community? Because it seems to be something we don't do well.
You're right, Rodney. Lots of people do not do this well. I will say there are a lot of great resources out there. There are children's books that explain death well. There are various activities.
One of my favorite activities that I help children with when I go into homes, it's very simple, is I take a piece of modeling clay and I help the children, I direct the children, or I have their parents do it is even better, to go over to their loved one who is dying and have the loved one who's dying put their thumbprint in the modeling clay. And then they can take that clay and bake it in the oven so that it hardens.
And then it's a little memento that that child can have where they can place their own thumb in grandmother or grandfather's thumbprint, and they can remember that person all the way through their lives. That's one way for some children that need that kind of tangible reminder or tangible thing to do, an art project sort of. That can be very helpful to them. Books, coloring, there's lots of songs and explanations.
Sometimes people have the inclination or the idea that it's good to exclude children from hard things like this. And I think there probably are a few things that they need to be excluded from. But generally, I think that we need to bring them in as much as possible to be a part of the family in age-appropriate ways. It can be scary and it can be difficult, but it's just as scary and difficult to be excluded from something important that's happening in the family.
Have there been times when you've helped someone through a difficult time like this in losing a loved one, and you've seen them maybe even some years later, and there's been a lasting impact of that time for them in your connection with them? Yes. It's funny that you should say that. Earlier today, my hospice company, we put together a service of remembrance, and we invited family members from people who died over the last year. It was a very large group of people.
Earlier today, there were a number of people, family members, who came and gave me hugs and thanked me so much for the work that I was doing with them. There was one man I can remember who was dying, and he had refused to have me come and see him. That's okay. People can refuse the chaplain. I understand that. After many months, he seemed to be going through the active phase of dying. He had stopped eating. He had stopped drinking. He stopped talking.
He was laying in bed, just really barely moving, and he lingered that way for actually weeks. His stepdaughter asked me to come and visit, wondering if he had some sort of spiritual distress. He was the sort of person that we would have expected would have died by now, based on what was going on with his physical body. When I was talking with her, I learned that this man had been pretty abusive to his son when he was younger, when they were younger.
His son had moved away about 20 years ago and never looked back. There was hurt on both sides there. It was a falling out that they had. While I was there in the home with this man, who was probably going to die any moment, I called the son on the phone, and I explained the situation. The son said, Chaplain, I'm so glad you called. I've been trying to muster the courage to call my dad. I have so much to say to him, but do you think maybe it's too late?
I said to him, it might be too late, but I tell you what I can do. I can hold the phone to his ear. He's right here in the room with me. He's not going to speak, I don't expect, but he might be able to hear you. Hearing is the last thing to leave us in the end. So what I did is I held my phone to the patient's ear, and I listened in as this son said something along the lines of, Dad, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for all those things that I said.
I want you to know that you have a grandson, and he's three years old now, and I gave him your name. I tell him about how hard you worked for our family and your courage in the war. I know that you feel bad about what you've done, and I want you to know that I forgive you, and I love you. I found Jesus, and he has given me the strength to forgive you. I watched as a tear rolled down my patient's face. It was the only way that he could respond.
It was pretty obvious to me that that's what he was waiting for, because I found out shortly after I left, it was about an hour after that conversation that he died. What he needed was a chaplain to die in peace and to heal that broken relationship. And it was sometime later, it was about a year and a half later that I ran into that man, and he gave me a big hug, and he said, Thank you so much for helping to make that happen. He had had so much peace.
He felt like he was waiting way too late, but then I gave him that opportunity, and it was pretty clear to me that his dad was able to hear and understand and accept what his son was saying, and it made a humongous difference in his life. And I imagine that that is a lesson to all of us, to not leave things undone, to not leave those words unsaid, that we don't have to wait until someone is in their final days to resolve things.
And I suppose that you've seen that all too often when that does come too late. And so we should be looking to keep short accounts with our loved ones. Yeah, you're exactly right about that. There have been way too many times when people harbor bitterness. I've got a lot of good stories, happy stories of good deaths like those that I've just told, but I've also got stories of really bad deaths as well, where people just will not forgive, and they just hold on to grievances.
It can be really awful. And those things build and build and build, and keeping short accounts is the best way to live. It's the way Jesus taught us. What would be your final word of advice for anyone who's listening at the moment who is walking alongside a loved one who doesn't have that many days left? I would say, I hope that you have hospice care that can help you to treat the medical issues, but death is far more physical than it is medical, and it's far more spiritual than it is physical.
As long as your loved one is comfortable and relaxed, your main job is to connect with them. Your main job is to hold their hand, and to sing to them, and to listen to them, and to speak to them, and to cherish these last days. One of the things I often tell folks in this situation is that research tells us that there are five statements that need to be said to help with the connection at the very end, and they are these, I forgive you, do you forgive me, I love you, thank you, and goodbye.
And often, those are the hardest things to say, but they are the most important. Yeah, I can tell that some of those things will be easier depending on the relationship, but yeah, some hard things, and yet some ways that we can help a loved one die well, and help us move on well once they're gone, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. People who have had those conversations and have said those things, it's much easier to move on.
William, I want to thank you so much for the work that you're doing. I want to thank you for the stories that you've shared, and thank you especially for spending some time today on Bleeding Daylight. If people want to connect with you, where's the easiest place for them to find you? Well, I have a podcast with my pastor. It's the Hopper Podcast, and you can search for that for wherever you find podcasts, and it is not so much about hospice care.
It's just conversations about difficult things in life, and we also are pretty silly at times when silliness is called for, and we're very serious when it's serious, important topics as well. But that's the Hopper Podcast. And I will put links to the Hopper Podcast in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net. I've had a listen. I know that people will enjoy it.
As you say, this is not down the same lines as what we've been talking about today, but it is some valuable stuff and a lot of fun stuff as well, so I will definitely make sure that people have a link to that. William, thank you so much for your time today on Bleeding Daylight. Oh, it's been a pleasure to talk with you, Rodney. The Lord bless you. Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight. Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
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