After hearing thousands of last words, this hospital chaplain has advice for the living

Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.

J.S. Park has heard thousands of deathbed confessions, wishes and regrets as an interfaith chaplain at Tampa General Hospital.

"Very often at the edge of mortality or injury or illness – patients, people, us – we are emotionally vulnerable and we begin to open up about things that may have been kept long dormant," Park told CTVNews.ca via video call from Tampa, Fla. "I would say, 98 per cent of the time they will tell me the type of person that they had wished that they could have become, what they wish they could have done."

For nearly a decade, Park has tended to the needs of patients and their loved ones at the 1,040-bed hospital. For every single trauma, death and code blue medical emergency, Park and other hospital chaplains are on-hand to offer spiritual support, grief counsel and assist with end-of-life decision-making

"We see the hardest cases, the hardest types of injuries and illnesses: we get gunshot wounds, fire, fall, stabbing, stroke, drowning, all kinds of things," Park explained. "As a hospital chaplain, I act as a non-judgmental, non-anxious, comforting presence."

Released this week, his new book "As Long as You Need" documents his journey and what he has learned about loss.

"It's part memoir, part hospital stories and part guide through grief," Park said. "The book is trying to give permission for people to express grief in all the ways that it emerges, whether that's screaming or shouting, dancing, singing, rolling on the floor, or numbness, fatigue, shutdown, cognitive fog, not being able to cry at all."

Parks says it's also important, as the book's title announces, to take as long as you need to grieve.