Using her superpower to bring comfort

Delores Linback is a housekeeper at IU Health Arnett Hospital. Her superpower is crocheting and knitting. Recently while on family and medical leave (FMLA), she crocheted two prayer shawls for the intensive care unit (ICU).

Linback loves to crochet and knit. It is a skill she learned from her mom. Everyone in the family has a sofa blanket or two. Linback’s mom also made quilts. The family recently learned that their mom had made a quilt for each child before her passing. There was one unfinished quilt which Linback is determined to learn quilting and finish it in her honor.

Linback mentioned her superpowers during a casual conversation with Cheryl Suter, volunteer coordinator at IU Health Arnett Hospital, and learned of the need for prayer shawls. She quit working on that sofa blanket and started crocheting prayer shawls.

According to the accompanying card, the purpose of a prayer shawl is, “May this shawl be . . . encircling, warming and comforting. May this mantle be a safe haven . . . A place of security and wellbeing . . . Sustaining and embracing in good times as well as difficult ones. May the one who receives this shawl be cradled in hope, kept in joy, graced with peace and wrapped in love.”

Linback’s prayer shawls made their way to the ICU.

“An elderly husband and wife were both admitted in the ICU with COVID-19 in rooms next to each other. But unable to visit each other. The husband died from his symptoms and his wife survived. They were a very religious couple, so the team presented the wife with one of Delores’s homemade prayer shawls to comfort her in her time of loss. The patient has made her way out of the ICU, into the progressive care unit and just yesterday was downgraded to acute care. She is healing well and has taken the prayer shawl with her along the way,” shared Wendy Parsak, a clinical nurse in the ICU.

Bringing comfort to our patients is a superpower indeed.

Linback is also loved by hospital team members for her easy-going manner. “I can absolutely say some great things about Delores, I adore her. She is always so personable and warm and every time I see her, she jokes with me and says hello. I just love her to pieces,” added Brandon Carwile, regional director of experience design application.

Linback has returned to work. The sofa blanket is complete, she is still learning to quilt and has more prayer shawls in the works.