Benefield: Chaplains volunteer to bear witness to others’ darkest moments

It was October 2017 when Angela Perkins first saw them.

She was driving to work at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa when she noticed members of the Sonoma County Law Enforcement Chaplaincy Service gathering near the burned-out remains of Journey’s End mobile home park. It was in the wake of the deadly Tubbs wildfire that killed two residents of the park and destroyed 116 of the 160 homes there.

The chaplains were on site to console the grief-stricken in the immediate aftermath of tragedy.

“I just felt a pull,” Perkins said. “I thought to myself, ‘I want to do that.’”

The county’s chaplain program sends highly trained volunteers to death notifications, suicides, crime scenes, car crashes — the worst moments of people’s lives. On the surface, the instructions seem minimal: Simply be with people. Comfort them as you can, whether it’s in silence or with words.

The program motto is simply: “Being There.”

The work is described by those who do it as heart-wrenching and difficult, yet deeply rewarding.

“There is beauty in it,” said Rita Constantini, a volunteer for the past seven years.

“When we are out on the scene, we are really being with people on the worst day of their lives,” she said. “It’s intense, but that kindness really matters.”

‘There is no right thing to say’

Constantini is stepping into the role of executive director Jan. 1 after the retirement of longtime leader Warren Hays. And that leadership change comes amid a global pandemic that shuttered the 2020 training academy and thinned the ranks of volunteer chaplains.

“With COVID our numbers shrunk a good bit,” Constantini said. The current roster is 24 volunteers, each of whom is asked to commit to two 24-hour shifts per month.

The program is looking for more volunteers to sign up for the 2022 academy that starts Jan. 18. It’s a three-hour session once a week for 26 weeks. It can be grueling, but it’s meant to prepare volunteers for the array of situations and emotions they may encounter on a scene.

“Not everyone makes it through the academy,” she said. “It’s a challenging environment. We try to show them all that in the academy, so they are not shocked when they go out into the field.”

Perkins, for one, has never second-guessed the feeling that pulled on her four years ago to sign up.

“Honestly, it’s the most rewarding thing. I wouldn’t even call it work,” Perkins said.

But don’t mistake it for easy.

Chaplains are most often called in by law enforcement. Sometimes it’s to help assist an elderly person who has lost a spouse. Sometimes it is to show up to a car wreck or crime scene. Sometimes the request is to deliver a death notification.

“We may walk up to the house together,” Constantini said of chaplains and responding officers. “We say things like ‘Your son was in a car accident today and he died.’ You speak with compassion but with real clarity.”

And after that moment, the purpose is to both provide solace to the grieving, but also to provide space to investigators and first responders to continue their work.

“We take that emotion out of it for the officers so they can continue on,” Perkins said.

And there are tools chaplains use, listening mostly, but no road map. Each situation is different.

“There is no right thing to say,” Perkins said. “Sometimes it’s sitting in uncomfortable silence, just kind of sensing what they need. Sometimes it’s putting a hand on their back to let them know, ‘I’m here as long as you need.’”

Constantini said that while the moment can be extremely difficult, the connection can be beautiful.

“People reveal their soul to you. Everything is stripped away in this moment. It’s almost like the rest of the world stops and you have this moment together,” Constantini said.

‘It’s different for everyone’

Once through the academy — a 26-week commitment — chaplains are asked to commit to two 24-hour shifts per month.

It means being on call, and that can mean taking separate cars to events in case you are called. It means being ready to drop what you are doing, including work, and immerse yourself in the worst moment of someone’s life.

For chaplain Jenny Williams, it means showing up to her day job at a masonry contractor in her chaplain’s uniform some days.

“I felt that it was something I was supposed to be doing,” she said of the work. “Grieving is like a thumbprint. It’s different for everyone.”

“I just don’t think that people should ever be alone in the hardest moment of their life,” she said. “It’s just such a place, no one should have to sit there and do that alone.”

The program is called a chaplaincy, but Constantini described it as “not a religious organization.”

“We lead with compassion,” she said. “We set all of our religious, political, legal agendas aside and show up and be present.”

On each shift, the on-call chaplain has a backup. That person is able to fill in in an emergency but also to listen if the on-call chaplain needs to talk.

“If I felt like a call out was something I needed to talk about, I would definitely call my backup,” Williams said.

And even chaplains with years of experience say no two calls are exactly alike.

“Sometimes it’s three or four hours, trying to get their support system around them and trying to get people to come for them,” Constantini said. “You stay with them until the time is right.”

Williams calls it “reading the room.”

“We follow the flow of what the circumstances are,” she said. “We don’t interrupt that by any means.”

And they stay until it feels like the time to leave.

“You just know when it’s time to go,” she said.

For Constantini, a U.S. Army veteran, it can be hard to put into words why she is drawn to this work, other than she describes herself as someone who feels “called to serve.”

But she remembers one call, where she consoled a grieving woman who had just lost her husband. It was a wrenching visit.

But the woman, in her darkest moment, recognized what Constantini offered and thanked her for being willing to be there.

“I don’t know why you do this work,” Constantini recalled her saying, “but I’m so glad you do.”

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.