"This Do In Remembrance of Me"" Communion and Breaking Bread as a Way of Debriefing Broken Bodies in Patient Deaths
Danielle Ellis, MD, MTS, Massachusetts General Hospital
I was finishing my first year of residency when I lost a patient on the operating room table for the first time. However inevitable and expected a patient’s death is, the experience of and even participation in it remains unsettling for healthcare practitioners, particularly when the death or circumstances surrounding it are traumatic. After leaving the operating room that evening, what seemed a mindless amble towards the café so that I could discuss the events and their meaning with the team over food materialized into a purposeful, albeit subconscious, framework for the debriefing process, one simultaneously theoretical, theological, and practical. There was symbolism undergirding the act of sitting down over a piece of bread, inviting the team into a reflective moment of silence, and then to conversation about the significance of a life finished; indeed, we had carried out a sort of communion. I argue that the sacrament of communion has much to offer practitioners as they seek to make sense of the walk through the valley of the shadow of a patient’s death.
In the Protestant tradition as compared to the Catholic tradition, the eucharist is done as remembrance of sacrifice (rather than as a sacrifice proper). In framing a debrief through the lens of communion, there is a remembrance of the broken body of the patient who has died, of their community who grieves, and of the practitioner’s somatic memory of the experience of a traumatic death.1 A recalling of the historical event of Christ’s broken body brings into the present moment the transforming truth that just as there was resurrection and restoration after death then, so too might we have hope that both our patients’ and our own broken bodies will be restored and renewed. The consecration of the elements is a unique privilege of those ordained to do so;2 similarly, all members of a team, but particularly those practitioners of faith, ought to see themselves as permitted and even ordained to “set apart” a time and space to gather for this occasion. Finally, the very essence of communion is fellowship;3 that communion cannot be carried out absent community an indication that there is renewal found in the fellowship of those who have lived together through the challenging experience of patient deaths.
Practitioners are often brought to the proverbial table when patients die, bearing witness to a body broken and blood spilled. These experiences are impactful and complex but may be imbued with greater meaning for practitioners of faith when we consider that the communion table bears striking similarity to the stretcher or the operating room table. So too might modeling the subsequent debrief after the sacrament itself – the consecration of bread, broken in fellowship with one another – create a space for remembrance of the patient and his community, and for the practitioner and his team, being reminded that even after the deepest of wounds, there is hope for restoration and being made new.
1. O’Donnell K. Broken Bodies: The Eucharist, Mary and the Body in Trauma Theology. London: SCM Press; 2018.
2. Hall DE. Altar and table: A phenomenology of the surgeon-priest. Yale J Biol Med. 2008;81(4):193-198. /pmc/articles/PMC2605310/. Accessed April 21, 2021.
3. Zimmermann J. Bonhoeffer’s Theological Anthropology and the Greater Tradition, Part II. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christ Humanism. June 2019:79-112. doi:10.1093/OSO/9780198832560.003.0003
In the Protestant tradition as compared to the Catholic tradition, the eucharist is done as remembrance of sacrifice (rather than as a sacrifice proper). In framing a debrief through the lens of communion, there is a remembrance of the broken body of the patient who has died, of their community who grieves, and of the practitioner’s somatic memory of the experience of a traumatic death.1 A recalling of the historical event of Christ’s broken body brings into the present moment the transforming truth that just as there was resurrection and restoration after death then, so too might we have hope that both our patients’ and our own broken bodies will be restored and renewed. The consecration of the elements is a unique privilege of those ordained to do so;2 similarly, all members of a team, but particularly those practitioners of faith, ought to see themselves as permitted and even ordained to “set apart” a time and space to gather for this occasion. Finally, the very essence of communion is fellowship;3 that communion cannot be carried out absent community an indication that there is renewal found in the fellowship of those who have lived together through the challenging experience of patient deaths.
Practitioners are often brought to the proverbial table when patients die, bearing witness to a body broken and blood spilled. These experiences are impactful and complex but may be imbued with greater meaning for practitioners of faith when we consider that the communion table bears striking similarity to the stretcher or the operating room table. So too might modeling the subsequent debrief after the sacrament itself – the consecration of bread, broken in fellowship with one another – create a space for remembrance of the patient and his community, and for the practitioner and his team, being reminded that even after the deepest of wounds, there is hope for restoration and being made new.
1. O’Donnell K. Broken Bodies: The Eucharist, Mary and the Body in Trauma Theology. London: SCM Press; 2018.
2. Hall DE. Altar and table: A phenomenology of the surgeon-priest. Yale J Biol Med. 2008;81(4):193-198. /pmc/articles/PMC2605310/. Accessed April 21, 2021.
3. Zimmermann J. Bonhoeffer’s Theological Anthropology and the Greater Tradition, Part II. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christ Humanism. June 2019:79-112. doi:10.1093/OSO/9780198832560.003.0003