Takeaway
When patients share stories and metaphors they're often revealing how they make meaning of the illness experience. Listen closely to the ideas that are repeated to better understand the patient’s priorities.
Connecting with patients | July 15, 2026 | 4 min read
By Nettie Reynolds, MDiv, interfaith chaplain
I was the overnight hospital chaplain during my clinical residency when the Cubs won the World Series in 2016. Just before midnight, my pager sounded. An elderly patient couldn’t sleep and had asked to see the chaplain. It was November 2, Game 7 between the Cubs and Cleveland’s team (then known as the Indians). Chicago had waited 108 years for another World Series championship, and the city seemed to be holding its collective breath. As I walked toward his room, the television broadcast announced another rain delay. At 11:54 p.m., the white tarp rolled across the field.
A late-night visit
The patient was in his 80s with advanced heart failure. During previous visits, he’d always welcomed me warmly, but our conversations had been brief—he wasn’t someone who volunteered much about himself. When I walked into his room that night, the television cast a soft glow across the pale green hospital walls. I pulled up a chair beside his bed, and together we waited for the rain to stop.
Objects that anchor
It turned out he had been a Cubs fan his entire life. As we talked, I noticed a baseball sitting on the shelf beside his bed. I’d visited him before, but somehow, I’d never noticed it. Looking back, I wish I had. Patients and families often curate a hospital room with the objects that anchor them. Photographs. Prayer cards. Children’s drawings. A favorite blanket. A baseball. Those small possessions are rarely random—they often tell us something about a person’s identity before a conversation begins.
Sliding home
For the next half hour, we talked baseball. We talked about Ernie Banks, my love for Joe Maddon’s coaching, impossible seasons, loyal fans, a goat curse, heartbreak, and the hope of winning the series that survived year after year. Then, almost matter-of-factly, he looked at me.
“I think I’m sliding home.”
“What would it feel like to slide home?”
“No pain. And people cheering me on from the other side.”
It was one of those moments that needed no further explanation. We never spoke directly about dying, yet we both understood what the conversation had become.
We watched the Cubs win together in the small hospital room, he in his bed and I in the chair beside him, holding hands as the final outs were recorded. A championship that generations of Cubs fans had waited 108 years to witness unfolded before us. And then he died several days later.
The language he’d been speaking all along
His family asked me to pray with them at his bedside. As we stepped into the hallway afterward, one of the nurses smiled gently. “He finally made it home,” she said. “He’d been telling all of us for days, ‘I’m ready to go to the big game. I’m ready to slide home for good.'”
I looked at her, and everything suddenly made sense. I’d understood what he meant that night as we talked about baseball, but I hadn’t realized he’d been sharing that same language with nurses, physicians, and others on the care team. What I’d thought was a conversation we’d discovered together was, in fact, a language he’d been speaking all along to everyone.
Why repetition matters
I’ve thought about that patient many times over the years because he changed the way I listen. Near the end of life, patients often repeat more than stories. They return to familiar metaphors, ask the same unanswered questions, revisit important memories, or describe seeing someone who’s already died. Families may worry that these repetitions signal confusion, while clinicians naturally consider the many medical explanations that can contribute to them. Whatever the cause, I’ve learned that repetition also invites curiosity. Why this story? Why this memory? Why these words?
Rather than redirecting the conversation, I try to follow it. If a patient tells the same story again, I ask what they loved about that time in their life. If they describe someone waiting for them, I ask what that person means to them. The goal isn’t to decide whether an experience is medically, psychologically, or spiritually significant. The goal is to understand what it means to the person lying in the bed.
No single clinician hears the entire story
That conversation taught me another lesson as well. No one clinician hears the entire story. Nurses, physicians, therapists, aides, social workers, chaplains, and family members each witness different moments. Sometimes it’s only when we share what we’ve heard that a patient’s way of making meaning becomes visible. My patient had been telling all of us he was preparing to “slide home.” I simply happened to hear one chapter of a much larger conversation.
Nearly a decade has passed since that rainy November night. My husband and I now live in Chicago, where every baseball season brings another reason to hope. Each game takes me back to a quiet hospital room, a baseball resting on a shelf, and a patient who found the language for going home.
This piece expresses the views solely of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of any organization, including Johns Hopkins Medicine.