Hospice Movement

Yesterday, Dave and I accompanied Dad to the Isabel Hospice annual service of remembrance and thanksgiving, which this year was being held at St Michael’s Church in Bishop’s Stortford, my home town. The Isabel Hospice is in Welwyn Garden City and is where Mum spent the last few difficult days of her life. She had also attended a couple of support sessions at their day-care centre in Bishop’s Stortford, where aromatherapy massages and art therapy classes were on offer. She found such group support quite a strain psychologically as she didn’t like to be reminded of the illness that she was suffering from and the future she faced – or didn’t face, as it turned out.
Mum was originally admitted to the hospice in late March for a few days of respite care. She had been knocked for six by radiotherapy sessions on her eyes and brain and had become quite jaundiced by the cancer growing again in her liver. She was becoming noticeably weaker as each day went by. Once admitted to the hospice, sadly this decline continued and she went rapidly downhill, surviving for only ten days. But the hospice did everything they could to ease Mum’s suffering by offering a caring, supportive environment – not only for her but for us as well. The facilities were outstanding, the staff infinitely patient and wonderful, and the atmosphere calm and restful. There were friendly, comfortable lounges and a peaceful garden for us to sit in when the intensity of being in a room watching somebody die became too much for us to bear. For all they did, I gave profound thanks yesterday afternoon.
And watching somebody die wasn’t the Hollywood movie ending that you might envisage, with everyone sitting around holding hands, saying their farewells and telling the person dying how much you had loved them during their life and all that they had meant to you. Perhaps you can only do that when someone has lived a long and happy life and is ready to go. Mum wasn’t. She was very distressed, frightened, and terribly ill. She got upset when too many people came to visit her and didn’t even seem to want her close family around, not her husband, her children or her sister. She would not and could not accept that she was dying and whenever we tried to say anything meaningful or emotional, the words choked in our tear-filled throats as the reality was just too harsh to face. The time for important, significant conversations had passed – right now, all we could do was tend to Mum’s needs as she struggled to retain her dignity as her body and all its functions failed her. The hospice of course did their utmost to assist her in this process.
So many cancer patients die in agony and entirely morphine dependent, and I am at least grateful that Mum wasn’t in any pain and passed away drug-free, suddenly one morning. Being Mum and always keen to be early for everything, she went far sooner than any doctor had predicted, which sadly meant that we weren’t with her. I was buying sandwiches in Marks and Spencer’s in Welwyn at the time and felt wracked with guilt that I could have been involved in such a bloody useless, mundane activity as Mum left this earth. But nurses in the hospice told me that even if we had sat by her bedside in vigil for 24 hours a day, she still would have picked the sole minute to die that we nipped out to the toilet or to make a phone call. They said that people so often prefer to go alone.
The hospice deal every day with people dying terrible deaths, but its staff remain loyal, devoted and cheerful despite it all. When we were shown the books of remembrance at the memorial service yesterday, there must have been over 100 names for April 2005 alone. Some would have been much older than Mum, at the end of long and fruitful lives, having seen their children, their grandchildren and even great-grandchildren grow up around them. Others would have been younger and even more tragic losses. When I asked a nurse how she coped with working there, she said, “I love my job. I love having the time to spend with the families and the dying, which I would never be able to do in a hospital. We are a great team here. But last week, a woman died aged only 31, leaving three-year-old twins. And that was a hard day.” We know that another person died at almost exactly the same time that morning as Mum – and, strangely, also on their wedding anniversary, as Mum had done. At least Dad knew that it wasn’t just him that these cruel things happened to. We were aware of other families around us in the hospice as we visited each day; we saw tears and hugs, and long, drawn-out, unbearable waiting. There was some solace in knowing that we weren’t alone. And yesterday at the service, seeing others in grief, I perhaps felt sadder for them than I did for myself. Or maybe it was because I was seeing my own emotions reflected that it was so upsetting, empathising completely with how others must be feeling. An extremely dignified-looking man in his late ‘60s or early ‘70s sat in the pew in front of us, alone. During a hymn he broke down completely, and my tears flowed with his own. I do not know he had lost or when, but I guessed it could only have been a wife that he had been utterly devoted to.
So long may the hospice movement continue. When a disease has robbed you of everything and there is no return to the life you have known and loved, to at least be allowed to retain a sense of grace and beauty in your final moments is the best gift anyone can offer you. The Isabel Hospice did this for my mum, and helped me in the process to accept that death is as natural a part of life as birth.
REBECCA