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Jump to navigationJump to searchHospice Voices: Lessons for Living at the End of Life by Eric Lindner (view source)
Revision as of 09:05, 23 September 2013
, 09:05, 23 September 2013no edit summary
Readers in the UK should note that ''hospice'' has a slightly different meaning stateside. Whilst in Britain the term hospice is mostly used to mean in-patient end-of-life facilities, in the US it refers to a wide range of palliative care. When Lindner says he is a hospice companion, he is mostly visiting patients in their own homes. There are also some mentions of the US health system - insurance, Medicare, etc - that don't really apply in the UK. Otherwise though, this book is universal, speaking to end-of-life situations generally, bearing witness to and honouring wonderful people who are no longer with us, and illuminating the work done by volunteers in the sector.
There are many wonderful things about ''Hospice Voices''. Most importantly, there are the patients themselves, who are wildly different but who are all vivid, interesting people whose passing is to be mourned. There is a man who spent his life spreading love and compassion in the Peace Corps. Another who shot down kamikaze pilots during WWII. A fearless but desperately ill woman who carries a 5lb gun that weighs almost as much as she does. A part Native American woman who loves to get a manicure. A man whose custom cowboy boots are his most treasured possession. An ex-teacher with Alzheimer's who once spent a precious summer enabling a terminally ill child to pass his end-of-year exams because he wanted to go to heaven as a success.
Then there's the honesty. Lindner isn't afraid to recall his failures as a volunteer. There were times he struggled to make a connection with the patients he was visiting. There are others where he made assumptions - a cardinal sin in hospice volunteering - about what would be best for someone else. And there is one instance of his crossing the line in a medical intervention - another no-no. It's not easy to do this work when sometimes what seems like the right thing to do is actually the wrong thing. But overriding all these worries and Catch-22s, you'll get a real sense of how fulfilling hospice volunteering can be. How enlightening it is to practise non-judgemental compassion. How the gifts your patients give you often outweigh the gift you've given them. And when Lindner feels that his own experience with a patient and a family member may not give the full picture, he makes room for a section from the relative. Everyone has a say in this book.
