Lori Armstrong (LA) and Janet Lutz (JL)
JL: One of the things we do is, we go around and bless the hands of all the people who work in the hospital. I go around and find the people in the basement and the people who are cleaning the toilets and people who are serving the food. And, when I go around finding people, wherever they are, they’re often startled and then really touched by it, as am I. And, in the basement of the hospital, in a windowless room, they pack the surgical instruments before surgery. Each surgery has a list of all the instruments they need. And at the top of the list is the patient’s name, and the technician is given this list and it’s up to her, or to him, to pack these instruments and take them up to the OR for the particular surgery. One of the women told me that as she packed these instruments, and she knew the patient’s name, she would pray for that patient. And that she had been doing that for forty years. And, I thought, no one knows that she’s doing this. Here she is, a person who has been working at that hospital for longer than most of us, who is doing this incredibly important job, that has to be done precisely and carefully, as she’s doing this she’s praying for the patients she will never meet and the patients that she’ll never see, she’ll never know the outcome, she only knows that she’s helping to make their surgery possible. And, then I found out that most of them did it. You know, people work really hard and are so essential, but often not seen by patients and families. They just assume these people are all doing their work and they don’t realize how rich their, their lives are and how rich their stories are.
LA: What would you say to your colleagues that you’re leaving behind?
JL: Carefully tend to those kinds of moments. To not brush them off, to let them happen. To not be so busy that you miss it. Sometimes just sitting and listening to somebody else is very, very important.
