‘I don’t know if you want to call that a calling or not, but people would say, “That would just be perfect for you.”

Josie Rodriguez has seen life and death played out many times. She has held many hands and heard many stories in the past two years in her work as a lay chaplain at Mercy Hospital. The 45-year-old Rodriguez ministers to patients in the surgical ward and in the family birth unit. Although not an ordained chaplain, she can perform baptisms, offer communion and bless patients who may have given birth to a stillborn child or one with a terminal illness. Primarily, Rodriguez says, she is there to help facilitate the spiritual needs of the patients and their family members. A wife and mother of three sons, Rodriguez sees her chaplaincy as a natural extension of her family experience. Times staff writer Caroline Lemke interviewed Rodriguez at the hospital, and Vince Compagnone photographed her.

Everybody has some spirituality, and my purpose is to try to help them find that strength, those resources, that spirituality within them to help deal with the problems they are going through at the time.

And there’s certainly a lot of counseling as a chaplain. Listening skills are very important. . . . I see a lot of patients who are presurgical, so they’re frightened. They don’t know what’s going to happen in surgery. They need to talk to somebody. I see patients who have just had a diagnosis that’s very, very frightening. I see mothers who have lost their babies, women who are potentially going to lose their babies, but maybe they have not delivered yet.

I can honestly say to a mother, “I’ve been where you are. I know what you’re going through because I lost four babies myself.” Once upon a time in my training, I went to help a young mother who had lost her baby. I was with this family, and I was about ready to say a prayer with the family and everything was fine, I was really very much with that family psychologically. And I left the room after everything was said and done and went to the nurse’s station and just wept. I just realized that I was really weeping for myself at that moment because I was not allowed to 18 or 19 years ago, that was not encouraged at that time. You were not encouraged to hold your baby. You were not encouraged to talk about it. There was no social support at all, nothing.

So I did it alone, and I realize that that mother helped facilitate healing in me because I cried, but I’ve not cried since. I feel like that was a healing moment for me.

I don’t just see Catholic patients. I might see something like 45 patients, not in one day, but they’re all different religions and some with no faith, no particular religion that they have been brought up in. I really like that. I have a memory of seeing a young couple, they had a miscarriage, they lost their baby, and they were Muslim, and I asked the father, in his own language, in his own religion, to pray his own prayer. I was just there to help facilitate that. That to me is what it’s all about. I’m not there to proselytize.

I taught speech reading to the hard of hearing for many years and wanted to do something different. I’ve always felt comfortable in hospital settings, but I wasn’t sure what that all meant. So I did a little bit of searching, took some classes in pre-nursing. Through a little brochure I get through the mail, I noticed that chaplaincy was open to lay women and I thought that was pretty exciting. I went very slowly at first, asking more people about it. It seemed like I was constantly being affirmed in that. I don’t know if you want to call that a calling or not, but people would say, “That would just be perfect for you.”

It’s a good feeling to know that people trust me and that, when I am in a conversation with a family member or with a patient that they have that environment where they can be themselves. I think it’s exciting to have people to be able to share their stories or know that someone is listening. Because, more than anything, especially in a hospital, to feel alone, I think, is an awful feeling. I try to let them know that they are not alone and that I’m with them if they need anything. I’ll be there for them. Just knowing that sometimes makes them feel better.