That Time a Bartender Ministered to Me.

When God pulled up a barstool

Working in hospice is tough.
And one day it caught with me.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Wiping tears from my eyes so I could see where I was driving, I made my way back towards the hospice office. The sun was beaming brightly in the sky above, and I was frankly right pissed at it. Its warm, exuberant beams felt like an insult to my grief, clashing with everything I felt inside. It wasn’t that death in this line of work was particularly rare, nor was it to have multiple patients pass away in one afternoon. But there was always a weight when it did happen; a stillness, a momentary pause. Death often felt like drops falling into my emotional reservoir — some drops bigger, some smaller — until at last the brim was reached and the whole thing just ran on over.

I decided as I neared not to go back to the office but to pull off about a mile and a half north, near a small outlet mall that held a variety of boutique and apparel shops, a coin appraisal store, and a fitness center. I figured I’d take a moment to breathe, really breathe, and remind myself that oxygen was still moving in and out of my lungs. That I was still here.

I stepped out of my car at the far western tip of the parking lot, closed my eyes, and with my index and middle fingers gently found my carotid pulse, beating softly under the surface of my skin near my neck. It’s something I have done instinctively since I witnessed my first end-of-life case in 2019.

The room was chaos. Nurses raced in and out, administering epinephrine and amiodarone to a young, coding man as a mechanical LUCAS (Lund University Cardiac Assist System) machine pounded rhythmically on his chest in violent CPR, breaking his ribs. I stood there, helpless, whispering Lord, have mercy, as his skin slowly turned blue and life slipped away. As the charge nurse called the final TOD (time of death) and his spouse collapsed in grief next to him, I remember unthinkingly placing my hand to my heart to see if mine was still beating, tethered to the living, a ritual I have honored ever since.

---

I must say, I have always found it incredibly odd snapping back to regular life after a particularly difficult shift. In many ways, it feels like a slap in the face from the world itself, where you’ve just stared into the abyss, and all it does is stare back, cold and indifferent. People meander this way and that on their usual daily strolls, unaware of the grief that lingers just miles away, unwilling to face a reality that might too easily become their own. There is a disconnect, a tear between you and them as you wander the same spaces and rub shoulders yet feel galaxies apart, in a whole other cosmos riddled with mortality and demise.

Many will never see it.

Until, of course, it is far too late and they too must reckon with terminal illness, sloughing frailty, and the steady approach of Death.

It takes most by surprise, hiding in plain sight lest they have the eyes to see, granted by a single encounter.

When one, who is living, must look into the face of Death who stands in the room waiting to take someone else, it changes a man. Gives them perspective. Gives them vigor. To run or to hide or to fight it thoroughly depends, but it does indeed change them.

One can never unsee death.

---

I called my boss. She must have heard an ache in the tone of my voice, because she made extra effort to hold onto each of my words, giving me space to talk about it.

In that moment, however, I did not wish to talk about it.

“You did what you could, and that’s all you could do,” she said.

Though inside, deep inside, I wished I had done more. That I was more effective. That I could have shook ‘em back to life to pray for their weary departing souls. To meet them at the gates of eternity to hand God their access pass while I turned to go back to work.

I couldn’t.

Instead I sat at bedside for both in their final moments. Feeling my own breath catch in my throat as apnea set in and their breathing growing slower, more spaced until, at last, it ceased.

I have heard it said and have said numerous times myself that presence is the most effective ministry. That it is far better to listen than to speak, to hold a hand instead of try to fix, to understand instead of intervene.

But when someone is actively dying in front of you, it takes far too much restraint to hold back and sit idle. Of course, there are times where there are opportunities to speak and to share. Instances of prayerful intervention and a spiritual crescendo “come-to-Jesus” moment. Yet those moments are few and far between.

More often, it’s silent prayers and unspoken pleas,
Holding hands and bending knees.
Gentle hymns and sacred stillness,
Holy tears till they, at last, drift to eternity.

I happened to stroll past a small brewery standing idly at the corner of the lot, a blinking Open sign hanging near the glass door. A peculiar patio stretched out into the parking lot, a handful of wooden tables and folding chairs arranged inside a makeshift gate that claimed four or five parking spaces as its own. It looked both temporary and lived-in, like it wasn’t supposed to be there, but had chosen to settle anyway.

And I wish I could say I knew why I decided to let my feet carry me in, pulling me closer, despite my rational mind knowing it was only 2 p.m. in the afternoon. I had no intention of drinking away my sorrow or numbing my pain in the bottom of a beer glass, I’ve never been like that. In fact, I’ve never been one to drink in spontaneity, or really at all, for that matter. Alcohol was never the focal the point or agent of relief.

The space was empty and relatively quiet aside from a soft clinking of glass as the bartender removed pints from the dishwasher, carefully polishing the residue marks off of them with a microfiber towel. There were no TVs or any other source of artificial noise, just a small Bluetooth speaker perched on a nearby shelf. A disorderly stack of board games and paperback novels jutted out from the shelves beneath it. She looked up at me behind octagon-shaped lenses, smiling warmly as I sat down on a barstool.

“How’s it goin’?” she said, plopping a coaster on the rail, her eyes studying my face as I wondered what on God’s green earth I was doing here.

“Erm. Well, it’s going alright,” I muttered. “Though I guess you could say I’ve had better days.” I tried to fake interest in the menu, to order something quick, anything, so she’d talk about the beer instead of silently weighing my mood.

It worked, briefly.

I ordered a small locally brewed hazy IPA that foamed as small bubbles danced on the head of the brew. She proceeded to tell me all about the craft of how the owner made it, something of a science, it seemed.

Then she leaned in.

“What do you do for work?”

“Oh, me? I’m a hospice chaplain.”

Her eyes held me tighter, as if trying to read what I wasn’t saying. “My step-dad was a chaplain too, at the jails. Took quite a toll on him over the years, though he enjoyed it thoroughly. How has work been going?”

I considered a reply, again looking for an easy out. It didn’t come. It couldn’t. “Look, I’m not sure why I’m here. You don’t need to hear about my problems, it’s just part of the job.”

At that, she set down the towel, pulled up a stool behind the bar, and sat across from me. I’ll never forget her words.

“You get paid to listen and carry other people’s grief every day. Today, I’m here to carry yours.”

---

That day, as I shared the weight of my sorrow, God met me in a bar —
tending to my soul through the kindness of a stranger,
in the most unlikely of places.

She paid for my drink, though it sat untouched for over an hour.
Instead, I poured out my grief,
my pain,
the heaviness I’d been carrying alone.

I stood to leave, reflecting.

Sometimes God doesn’t meet us in the holy places or in displays of divine extravagance. Sometimes He meets us in the slums, in the dark corners of our lives where we ache and struggle and hurt. Never a shout, always a whisper. A reminder that He is near, even if it means He pulls up a barstool and wraps His comfort in the words of a stranger. He is always near, a mere breath away, ever willing to meet us where we are, and carry what we can no longer hold.