Giving solace to the sick

By Mary Alice Garrett

This story originally appear August 10, 1989 in the News Journal of Wilmington, Delaware.

TALLEYVILLE - Ruth Kirkman used to avoid friends facing fatal illnesses. Today, she welcomes them.

The turnabout begain in 1981, the year Kirkman's father and two of her friends died and she and her husband both were facing possible malignant cancers.

"I'll never forget how many times I have avoided people in the supermarket," said Kirkman. Now, as a lay chaplain at the Medical Center of Delaware, Kirkman eagerly greets such people.

"I enjoy being with people in crisis," she said. "It gives me a lot of job satisfaction."

It was the deaths and her husband's delicate surgery that made the difference for Kirkman. "It made me realize how important it is to have someone with you when you're going through a crisis," she said.

Fortunately, both Burt Kirkman's brain tumor and her ovarian tumor turned out to be benign. Burt's 10-hour operation was performed by Dr. Peter Huang, who preserved his affected facial nerve, not severing it. Burt is good-natured about the residual effects. His face retains mobility, although, he says, "I can't blink or smile uniformly ... I can't whistle for the dog."

The Kirkmans were so grateful for the outcome, they organized a support group for families affected by such tumors, called acoustic neuromas.

It was during Burt's stay at Christiana Hospital that the couple met a pastoral care volunteer who made a lasting impression on them. Later, Kirkman met with the volunteer, Ethel Cooper. A year later, Kirkman enrolled in several hospital pastoral counseling courses herself.

She took additional courses in listening skills, death and dying, loss and grief, and worked as a pastoral care volunteer. In 1986, she joined the paid pastoral counseling staff part time. She works with adult patients in the hematology and oncology units.

"We're there to help them in any way -- to maintain the patients' spiritual well-being and that of their families, to help them deal with the trauma, deal with the loss and the crises they're going through. We're there for support -- not necessarily doing anything -- but by our presence."

Many of these patients are facing death, grappling with terminal illnesses and the unknown. Sometimes, however, there are "the joys of new birth and the positive results of tests," Kirkman said.

The pastoral staff of eight deals with people of all faiths. "We're not specialists and we don't seek converts," she said.

Kirkman once visited a Muslim patient who asked about her vocation. Before she could explain, he interrupted with, "Well, whatever you do, you do it very well."

Kirkman encourages seriously ill patients "to verbalize what they're feeling," not to put up a front. "You move them on," said Kirkman. "If someone cries, you assure them it's OK."

One of Kirkman's more memorable patients was David Dow, a CBS television correspondent who suffered a heart attack in Wilmington in December 1985 while covering the Reagan-Bush re-election campaign. Dow was hospitalized at Christiana.

"He felt there was a divine presence in the timing of the heart attack" because it occurred on the ground and not in the Bush helicopter, said Kirkman. He called it "a divine coincidence," a term Kirkman continues to use.

Kirkman also has worked with AIDS patients. "That is rough," she said. "It's better if they have a strong religious faith."

She often deals with people going through changes in their lives. "Whenever you have change, there's loss," she said. "Whenever there's loss, you grieve." Death is the obvious loss; others can involve health, money, control, body parts due to amputation, or a home, Kirkman said.

She empathizes with her subjects, she said. "I get really involved with the patient. I go through the same grieving process." Sometimes, she says, she asks herself, "Can I handle it?

"I have had to just consciously say, 'Lord I try to let go of it,' and ask him for strength.

"The job is not for everybody," Kirkman said. We've each been given different gifts and talents."

The Kirkmans recently celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary. Both are natives of Iowa; they have lived in Wilmington for 16 years. Burt is a business consultant for the Du Pont Co.'s Polymer Products Department.

The couple shares a hobby of collecting bells. The hobby began when Kirkman was growing up in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and her father, the late Rev. Herbert D. Temple, gave her an 1874 Sunday school bell. It and others stayed in Kirkman's attic until 20 years ago, when she decided to expand and display the collection. There are now more than 300 bells, ranging from a railroad dinner bell to a 3,000-year-old Japanese temple bell.

Kirkman has spoken to 110 organizations on bells and has become a regional officer in the American Bell Society, which has chapters in Australia and Japan.

"Bells have such folklore," Kirkman said. "China started making bells in the Bronze Age -- 2000 B.C."

Burt Kirkman delights in researching, polishing and mounting each new bell; Ruth Kirkman has an interesting story to go with each. Their Tavistock home is uniquely decorate with them.

The Kirkmans have two daughters, Janet Crewson of Cleveland and Sharon Kirkman of Greensboro, N.C; a son, Russell Kirkman of Wilmington; and two grandchildren, Julie and Andrew Crewson.

Kirkman's 90-year-old mother, Mildred Temple, lives in Cedar Falls. Said Kirkman, "She does what I do -- shepherds people around at her retirement home."