"He's not sick. It's worse. He's discouraged." – from the film, "It's A Wonderful Life" (right, 1946)
The spot on her lung must be cancer, we all thought. Our Chief Nursing Officer had smoked for decades. We were all certain the end was near. Her doctor thought so too.
She asked for our prayers. Dozens of us gathered in the chapel at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus and poured out our deepest hopes to God - our wish that this great and compassionate life would be spared. But, most of us, including me, were pessimistic.
Against the odds, the tumor was benign. The news gets better. All of this happened nearly twenty years ago and my dear friend, Marian Hamm, survives to this day. She is one of the best examples I know of the power of faith, hope & Love.
Marian's will is unsurpassed. Her spirit is divine.
Listen to her compassion: "There never has been a good day in a hospital," she wrote to me when she retired from Riverside Methodist Hospital in 1995. "Someone is always in pain. One person can't take a deep breath. Another can't move for fear of hurting."
How well she describes the physical agonies that afflict each of us when the world casts us into illness or an accident tears away our sense of well being. Marian understands something deeper, as she said in the closing line of a poem she wrote to me:
"…if we were to score/ all kinds of suffering/ on a scale of one to ten/ the loss of hope would win."
As a nurse and nurse leader all of her working life, Marian saw everything. Working together at Riverside Hospital in Toledo and then at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Marian, along with our friend and fellow leader Tracy Wimberly, and I saw every kind of agony.
The three of us knew what mattered most. When patients lose hope, they lose their lives.
Why are purpose and meaning so important as energies of Love? Purpose and meaning fuel hope.
A taproot is the center through which all the other roots are nourished. Hope is the taproot of Love. It is the energy that is most vital to the quality of our lives.
With hope, we flourish. Without it, we wither.
The finest caregivers in America understand the importance of hope in healing, as well as in curing. The least effective caregivers think medicine is only about fixing.
Marian Hamm inspired the thousands of nurses she led by loving them. In so doing, she gave them, purpose, meaning and hope. Her leadership turned on her ability to balance being tender-hearted as well as tough-minded.
At the end of a letter she sent to me in 1995 are words I will always treasure. "I liked having you walk into the middle of my life," she wrote, "strewing flowers, tossing balloons, turning on all the lights…"
What a gift to receive such an eloquent tribute. For flowers, balloons, and lights are great symbols of hope. But, it was Marian who spread all these presents before me, Tracy and so many others. She "strews flowers" to this day for her large family and many friends.
Marian is now seventy-six and stricken with emphysema. I find myself thinking once again that she must be in her last days. Then, I remember. She may be sick, but she is not discouraged.
Marian understands the healing power of prayer. She knows God's Love. She will, to her dying breath, nurture the enormous energy we call hope. She is a beacon of Love for us all.
-Rev. Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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