Monday, 7/14/97 Children’s Day For the last 20 years, Sister
Mary Benedict Day has dedicated herself to helping comfort sick,
dying patients at the UCLA Medical Center.
By Matthew Schmid Daily Bruin Senior Staff If parents are
blessed to have just one healthy child, then Sister Mary Benedict
Day has been blessed a thousand-fold. She tells the story of a
woman on a public bus who asked her if she had any children. "Some
piece of me wanted to say ‘yes, about 5,000,’" she recalls. Sister
Mary has comforted patients for the last 20 years, mostly
critically ill and dying children, in the Pastoral Care Department
of the UCLA Medical Center. It is a department which she helped
found. Nearly 80 years old, she is retiring this week. Facing a
myriad of assorted requests from her co-workers, she jokes that she
is "all things to all people." If she understood the extent to
which that is true, she would probably not admit it. "She would be
there for me, as a friend," explains Martha Garcia, who met Sister
Mary upon waking from a four-month coma at the Med Center. When she
came to, she found that both of her arms had been amputated at the
elbow, and both of her legs above the knee. "She was there to
support me, and to let me know that I didn’t get sick because God
was punishing me," Garcia says. "(Without Sister Mary) I would have
blamed myself more," she continues. Garcia graduated from high
school in 1996 and now attends Cerritos Community College. She is
able to walk with the assistance of prostheses on her legs, and
electrodes allow her partial maneuverability of prostheses on her
arms. "I’ve never seen such courage in my life," Sister Mary says
of Garcia. "We had a little bit in common," she adds, gesturing to
her own prosthetic on her left hand. "(Garcia) said ‘she taught me
that you can do things if you want to.’" Sister Mary remembers her
religious life in three chapters: classroom teaching, special
education and hospital ministry. While the plot has shifted in
Sister Mary’s nearly 80 years, one theme, of selflessness,
resounds. Since her days as a British high school student, she knew
she wanted to combine teaching with a religious life. She admires
St. Benedict, whose namesake she took upon profession in 1937, for
his insistence "on deep prayer and work." Sister Mary spent the
first part of her religious life teaching grade school in San
Francisco and Los Angeles, then began a career in special education
at St. Paul the Apostle’s Church in West Los Angeles. In 1955
Sister Mary became associated with the Child Study Center of St.
John’s hospital in Santa Monica. There she remained for 20 years
until she began her relationship with UCLA in 1975. There was a
need at the Medical Center for a more structured Pastoral Care
office to provide emotional support for patients. The department
began in earnest in 1979, as more volunteers recognized the need to
minister to the faith of those patients who faced such challenging,
and often limited, futures. By 1982, enough volunteers had joined
the department so that Sister Mary was able to concentrate her
efforts on pediatrics. "We are always to be compassionate," she
says of her order, the Daughters of Joseph and Mary. "If there’s
any place that I’ve really been able to fulfill that requirement,
it’s here." It is difficult to pinpoint what is more impressive
about Sister Mary: what she does or the manner in which she does
it. "She is a motivator," Elizabeth Boyd, Assistant Director of
Pastoral Care, says about Sister Mary. "She is very collegial,
supportive and self-effacing. She doesn’t come across as a great
expert, yet she is." When Heather Davis’ 8-month-old daughter Remy
was diagnosed with a brain tumor, she was nervous to hear that a
nun would be coming to visit her. "I was not even a religious
person at that point," she said. Sister Mary quickly put her
worries to rest. "None of the encounter was religious. She provided
such a level of comfort and confidence … all the things that
seemed strange, she demystified," Davis explained. "She meets you
exactly where you are." The same is true of Sister Mary’s
interactions with her colleagues. "She would rather work with
people as a peer … as someone who works alongside," Boyd says. In
training students to minister to the children and their families,
Boyd notes that Sister Mary "does a marvelous job of helping the
students to understand the dignity of their work." Sister Mary is
able to find solace where most see only tragedy. "She comes in
every morning, without fail, with a smile on her face. There’s an
awful lot of sadness here. She is aware of that sadness, but she
has the virtue of fortitude and endurance," Boyd says. Sister Mary
is well-equipped to cope with the many children who do not survive.
"There are miracles and there are tragedies here," she explains.
But she is able learn from, and become stronger because of, all of
them. "Dying children are very special," she explains. "So many of
them have been so brave. "Children have so much more knowledge than
we think they have. Sometimes they manage to face, with the grace
of God, what they know is inevitable with extraordinary strength,"
Sister Mary says. "They’re not bitter. "I get tremendous courage
from it. I feel like ‘If they can be like this, I can be like
that,’" she says. Garcia was particularly struck by Sister Mary’s
ability to use that courage to help others. "All the love she has
inside of her, her faith in the Lord, she shares everything,"
Garcia says. The fourth chapter of Sister Mary’s religious life is
about to begin. "We send her on with a mixture of joy, greatfulness
and sadness. We love her very much," Boyd says. She will moving to
a retreat center in Palos Verdes. There is a section of the center
devoted to very ill and elderly sisters. She will be, as Elizabeth
Boyd put it, "helping the old nuns." GENEVIEVE LIANG/Daily Bruin
Sister Mary Benedict Day has dedicated the last 20 years to
comforting critically ill and dying children and their families at
the UCLA Medical Center.