"I didn't realize I could stay in
touch with my hospice volunteer for a year after my husband
died. It was so reassuring just knowing she could be there
for me from time to time. I would like to do the same for
someone else in the future."
Hospice/Palliative Care Community Education
& Volunteer Training
*Please note, the training program in Nelson is now full. Applications are no longer being accepted for the Nelson area.
East Shore and Kaslo Hospice will be offering training in the Spring of 2012.
HOSPICE VOLUNTEER TRAINING is offered on an "as needed basis" and future training dates for all areas are posted on this website as they become available.
SAMPLE OUTLINE of past sessions:
Introduction
to Hospice/Palliative care Letting Go & The Practice of Mindfulness
Caring for the Cancer Patient
Palliative Care and Alzheimer's/Dementia
Grief & Loss
Being With Dying
Our Volunteers Speak
Hospice Volunteer Training My father, as a United
Church minister, held together the process of grieving and funerals
for thousands of people over his 40 active years. During the 15 years I lived at home, funerals (as
well as weddings) were part of the Saturday routine. Combined
with baptisms they filled out the 'hatched, matched, and dispatched'
part of his work. The funerals were difficult for me, especially
the two suicides and a murder I attended as a young teenager. I
avoided funerals until I was asked to give the eulogy at my grandmother's
funeral. I was moved by the heartfelt grief of my father
and aunts for the loss of their mother.
It wasn't until
Lyn Hazelton was living with cancer for four years that issues
of my own mortality began to surface. She,
more than anyone I have known, was open about her hopes, her fears,
and the daily struggle to embrace life.
When I spent time
with her over that last Christmas, she was still working as a consultant
to the last of over 250 businesses she had helped start. Almost
completely immobilized in her bed in the St. James Cottage Hospice,
she managed a steady stream of friends and acquaintances who volunteered
to support her and help her complete her work. She held
a wonderful party to thank them. That hospice in a park
overlooking the Fraser River was a beautifully designed homelike
facility. She received a quality of care that exceeded anything
I could have provided if she had come home to Crawford Bay as she
had planned before her health suddenly deteriorated. When
I attended the celebration of her life two months later, the common
theme was gratitude for her gift of sharing her experience of living
with a terminal illness and the struggles of facing her death. Through
her art, her music, and the challenging intensity of her conversations
she brought us into her experience and helped us each face the
reality of our own inevitable fate.
At that time I resolved to learn more so
that I, too, could easy the passing of others and be able to
embrace my own final journey. Initially,
I signed up to attend the hospice volunteer training a find out
what services are available locally. I was surprised to
discover that, even without a hospice facility in our community,
there appears to be excellent, if not abundant, home support services. The
people I met, both participants and trainers, were wonderful. We
listened, we shared, we learned and came away with a deeper understanding
of the events and issues accompanying the process of dying, death,
and, for surviving family and friends, loss, grief, and recovery.
It has inspired me to become a hospice volunteer
and, while not called on for that, to work with others in the community
to expand the services for care of our community's elders.
Living
here, we enjoy a remarkably high quality of life and I, with
the help of my hospice friends, want to make the most of it right
up until my last sigh.