I read Being Mortal a few years ago, and reading it was one of the main reasons I wanted to start volunteering with Ascend, to gather my own information to form opinions on end-of-life care. Even before reading this thought-provoking book, I had often held long philosophical debates late into the night with friends whose views on end-of-life care differed sharply from mine. I strongly believed in supporting the patients’ goals and promoting quality of life over duration, a principle which did not reconcile well with the viewpoints of those who believed life was a God-given right, so everything that could be done to prolong it, should be done. Thanks to these experiences, hospice volunteering jumped out to me as a chance to gain first-hand understanding about a subject that I have thought about extensively.
Reading the testimonials about the meaningful relationships former volunteers posted made me even more excited, with the hope that I, too, would be able to gain wisdom from talking about the patients’ lives and perspective on death from the dying. Not only did the writers of these testimonials learn from the patients and the patients’ perspectives on death, but they also learned how to cope with death themselves when their patients finally reached that last step. It made it sound like I would also become wise about the ways of death after a year of working with the patients.
I felt very different once I started volunteering. Since the facility housing the patients I visited was dedicated to Alzheimer’s and dementia care, none of our patients ever remembered me or the other volunteers. Each week, it felt like we were starting over, introducing ourselves again and again. Not a visit went by when our conversations didn’t circle back to the same topics we had already talked about, multiple times.
These experiences led me to sympathize more and more with the facility’s staff, who often seemed disgruntled to be wheeling patients from room to room, folding their laundry, and cleaning up after patients when they made a mess. If talking with the patients for a few hours a week was frustrating for me, spending 40 hours a week with them couldn’t make it easier.
Then I read another book, in which the physician author remarked something along the lines of, “You can’t sympathize with the staff too much, because then you stop sympathizing with the patients.” That line really struck me, because I realized I was approaching the situation with a completely incorrect mindset. The important part of volunteering wasn’t my frustration with not having deep conversations with the patients every week, but the value lay in the momentary joy brought to the patients by the mere presence of volunteers like us. The patients were so full of gratitude, repeatedly thanking us for “making time for old people,” that I realized how wrong it is to focus on the little annoyances when they are necessary for being a positive in the life of someone with relatively low quality of life. Giving care is not about the giver, but the receiver.