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Hospice 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
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 were 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.
There is some practical advice too: how to make light of the inevitable bureaucracy; how to be guided by the patient's wishes; that simple companionship is often worth more than you could ever have imagined. Lindner brings his patients edible treats, helps them write last letters to loved ones, reads to them. Simple things on the surface but precious things underneath. And when Lindner's own daughter suffers a health crisis and his own life is thrown into turmoil, it's one of his own patients who provides much-needed succour. To me, it was proof positive that we reap what we sow in life.