Volunteer opens heart to his faith after healing cardiac …

For nearly 20 years, Alex Silva has trained hospice volunteers on how to ease the fears and the suffering of the dying. And every Thursday afternoon, he visits heart surgery patients to offer comfort, words of advice and, when asked, the occasional prayer.

The 50-year-old Mira Mesa resident said he believes God has given him a mission to help the sick and the dying. But it wasnt always that way. When the Riverside native acknowledged his homosexuality as a younger man, he fell away from the Catholic Church. But after coming face to face with the specter of his own death three years ago and seeing Gods hand in his recovery, he has reconciled with his faith.

My journey was about learning to love who I was and knowing that God has had his hand on my shoulder my entire life, Silva said. But it took a while for me to realize it. Its crystal clear to me now that he put me here to help people who are dying and to care for others. I cant tell you how humble that makes me.

Silva is the longtime volunteer services manager for Vitas Healthcare, where he supervises the recruitment, training, support and assignment of hospice aides. He is also a volunteer for Mended Hearts of San Diego, a support group for heart patients and their caregivers. On Thursday afternoons, he spends a couple of hours meeting with recovering patients in the cardiac ward at Sharp Memorial Hospital in Kearny Mesa. Besides offering educational and support information, Silva shares tips and insights on his own slow, but complete, recovery from valve replacement surgery in January 2016.

(Howard Lipin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

In all the time Ive been going there, Ive only had two patients say, Im OK, I dont need any help, Silva said. Instead, Ive had so many people who broke down crying with me. Theyre scared for their lives. Scared at what limitations theyll have. Worried about their children. Its surprising to me how much encouragement people get when they see someone who has been through what theyre going through and come out the other end OK.

A whispering heart

Just a few months after Silva was born, a pediatrician suspected the infant boy had a hole in his heart but an angiogram came back negative. But by puberty, he was diagnosed with a heart murmur so strong that every time he came in for a hospital checkup, the cardiologist would call in all his medical students to listen to Silvas heartbeat because the murmur was so pronounced.

Finally, at age 25, Silva underwent a more extensive echocardiogram that showed he had a bicuspid aortic valve, or a deformed leaky valve that would eventually need replacement. That was around the same time Silva moved to San Diego and fell in love with his now-husband, John Shaw, who he married in 2008 during the brief five-month window when same-sex marriage licenses were issued in California before the passage of Proposition 8. That law was overriden when the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged gay marriage as a constitutional right in 2013.

Silva was brought up in the Catholic Church and attended Mass for many years, but its anti-gay teachings made him feel increasingly unwelcome. Eventually, he stopped going to church. His husband, Shaw, had also grown away from his faith as an adult. Then, seven years ago, major life changes put them both on a path back to faith and health.

Shaw embraced sobriety and with that came a renewed spirituality. Silva also began re-exploring his faith and, after years of denial about his heart health, he joined a fitness bootcamp gym. He lost 45 pounds, gained muscle mass and started competing in obstacle course races. Yet despite his improved physical health, his heart valve continued to deteriorate.

Four months after a cardiologist warned Silva in 2015 that hed need heart surgery soon, he collapsed during a fitness run and fell face first into a tree planter on the street. He woke up in the emergency room at Sharp Memorial to learn he was scheduled to undergo surgery to implant a mechanical heart valve three days later.

Silva said he put on a brave face for his husband, family and friends who visited his hospital room that week, but the night before the surgery, when he was alone, he broke down and began bargaining with God for his life.

I lost it, he said. I had never cried that hard before. Never in my mind did I not see myself on the other side coming through the surgery, but I still lost it that night.

The warm light

Moments like this, when people are facing an uncertain life outcome, can often result in a profound moment of clarity, according to Ricardo Marquez, associate director of the Office for Family Life and Spirituality at the Catholic Diocese of San Diego. Before joining the diocese staff, Marquez worked as a chaplain in a hospital intensive care unit where he dealt with up to five patient deaths a day.

Marquez said that people who have made their preparations for death or the afterlife, if they believe in one, are less scared and lonely at crisis moments and in their final hours. For many, this is when faith can become a balm for the spirit.

Its amazing how in that window of seconds, when people can take in a moment when theyre close to death, that they have the gift to see what life is about, he said. When we go through these types of experiences, we all go to the fundamental things of life.

Silvas miraculous moment came just before and just after the surgery. After saying goodbye to his family before the operation, a nurse pulled a privacy curtain around his bed decorated on the inside with a snowy mountainscape and a field of wildflowers.

I remember laughing to myself and saying, thats Gods beauty right there. How sweet of them to put that final image in my head, he said.

Days later, Silvas mother surprised him by telling him that when he first woke up after surgery, he told her hed had a vision. He had no memory of the conversation, but it had moved her deeply because his vision seemed heavenly in nature.

She said I told her I was in the most beautiful place with this bright warm light with a beautiful mountain and a meadow of wildflowers. I didnt want to leave, but I thought about her so I came back, he said. What was the light? I cant tell you. It was a warm place and I thought I saw snow. My mom told me, It wasnt the curtain where you were.

(Howard Lipin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

While recovering at Sharp, Silva was visited by a volunteer from Mended Hearts, which brought him great comfort. As soon as he was cleared to drive five weeks later, he attended a Mended Hearts group meeting. Having the support of fellow heart patients helped him deal with the sustained pain from the surgery, the lack of sleep it caused and the unexpected depression that refused to lift for many months.

Six months after joining Mended Hearts, Silva went back to Sharp as a volunteer for the organization. Jill Bene, the former president of the Mended Hearts of San Diego chapter, said Silva was a welcome addition to the patient outreach program.

Hes a wonderful guy and a wonderful speaker, she said. Hes calm and very pleasant to be around and Im sure hes helping a lot of patients and their families at the hospital.

Marquez also volunteers at Sharp. He met Silva two weeks ago when they were both at the hospital visiting patients and staff.

We had a deep conversation that day and when I looked into his face, I saw a joyful man, smiling with a lot of energy and passion for what he was doing, Marquez said of Silva.

The path to faith

Marquez said people like Silva represent the Catholic Churchs teaching that humans were put on this earth to serve, love and take care of one another. While the churchs official position against homosexual acts has not changed, Marquez said the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has encouraged a pastoral, rather than doctrinal, path in counseling gay Catholics who are struggling with their faith.

We want to make bridges, he said. We dont want to create walls.

Silva said his best exercise of faith is in the work he does day in and day out. First, its the satisfaction of meeting and training hospice volunteers whose only paycheck is the emotional reward of doing good for those at the end of life. And second, its the moments of connection he feels during his 10- to 45-minute visits with patients at Sharp.

Every time I walk into that hospital, thats the one place where I find myself again, he said. I feel the hand of God touching me as I go through and work with these people.

To learn more about hospice volunteer opportunities with Vitas Healthcare, visit vitas.com/volunteer. To learn more about Mended Hearts of San Diego, visit sdmh.org.

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Volunteer opens heart to his faith after healing cardiac ...