Clinical chaplain sees death from other side

Stacy J. Willis

Thursday, Oct. 25, 2001 | 9:55 a.m.

Mostly she thought I don't want to die.

There were years of working in a hospice and watching others die; years of working in a mortuary and conducting funerals. She had been, in her 56 years, up close to death. Known it. Gotten somehow comfortable with it. She had held the hands of the dying. She had tried to help survivors make sense of it.

But last spring, when the Rev. Mary Bredlau, a chaplain, was diagnosed with breast cancer, her relationship with death -- in fact with God -- was upended.

"At first I was so scared I couldn't pray," she said. "I hung up the phone and ran into my husband's arms and wept, and said, 'I don't want to die.' "

Today Bredlau is sitting behind her desk in her office, talking about the fact that this is National Pastoral Care week, a week meant to call attention to the role of clergy in clinical situations -- as care providers, not as patients.

There are about a dozen chaplains in Clark County who are certified in clinical pastoral care -- a degree that requires more than 400 hours of education and prepares pastors to support people of any faith in any trauma.

The group of chaplains met this week to discuss the growing importance of spiritual care in the health care and death care industries after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But the story Bredlau tells puts her not at a bedside, but smashed in a mammogram contraption, and then boxed in an MRI machine and then laid out on gurneys with IVs in her arm.

She had had no symptoms. No sluggishness. One doctor said there was no lump. But Bredlau took her care into her own hands, got second and third opinions, and as a result, discovered the cancer.

"I've learned so many things throughout this," she says. "You have to be pro-active in your care. You can't just sit back and let God take care of it alone."

Her faith and her hours of clinical pastoral education came back to her as she proceeded through the process: lumpectomy, chemotherapy, radiation.

Bredlau said that after the initial fear, she developed a renewed "closeness with God -- and started praying for her doctors."

"I've felt God right here inside me going through this with me," she said. "And I learned that the support of others is so important. Just to be there, to listen.

"I don't believe in the holy cliches, that 'God doesn't give you more than you can handle,' or 'This happens for a reason.' I don't believe God gave me cancer, or gives anyone cancer or AIDs or tumbling World Trade Center towers," Bredlau, who was raised a Catholic but converted to Episcopalianism to become a priest, said.

"But after the disease or the tragedy has happened, God says, 'What are we going to do about this together?' "

Today Bredlau proudly announces herself a "cancer survivor," and has been asked by U.S. Oncology, a network of cancer survivors around the country, to attend the "Life Beyond Cancer" program in Tucson, Ariz., to share her spiritual and physical lessons.

"I know I was a good priest and a sensitive chaplain prior to this, but now I feel that when I meet with people I come with an added dimension of knowing what it's like on the other side," she said.