I do that, Copa. I am a Hospice volunteer. I did a clinical in Hospice by choice as part of my training. I was too new a nurse, immediately after graduation, to have been able to stay steady state with all of my patients dying. But I continued to volunteer. I help families with the grief of it. We give them a safe place to explore what it means to lose someone we love ~ someone we cannot bear to lose.
I took the classes last year to begin Hospice volunteering again here, where we live in the summer. We have been leaving and returning and living elsewhere during the years after D H retired. I have not volunteered for those years. Last year, I decided to commit to volunteer work again.
I will be one of the volunteers the family can call on for the death watch. I've forgotten what that part of Hospice is called. That is what I will be doing. I have not contacted Hospice here yet. I will do that, soon.
Dying as a human being, fully aware and with time to cherish the days and the minutes and the families and to set our affairs in order is a beautiful gift, both to the one who is dying and to those they leave behind. It is a sweetness and a blessing to be there for them, to know how to help and to be present and to be aware, so aware, as all of it happens.
There is a memorial service twice yearly Copa, for those who have experienced a Hospice death within that year. The names are read aloud; candles are lit. Memories are reviewed, and love, and a sacred space is created and savored and we all come away changed.
If you were to call the Hospice where your mother died Copa, I am very sure they would allow you to participate in the memorial service they will do for those who have passed this year.
I have been one of the persons reading those names, Copa.
The ceremony of remembrance is healing in a way I can't begin to describe. There is closure in it, Copa. And there is love and acceptance and grief and gratitude and acknowledgement of our pain and confusion at what just is.
This is something for you in the future Copa, if you are not ready, now. Hospice specializes in complex grief. They are prepared to accept us where we are; to witness the pain and confusion and loss and to teach us how to walk through it.
To volunteer in Hospice has given me so much more than I have given.
Cedar
