Reflecting on my experiences as a volunteer with Ascend Hospice, I am moved by a vast range of emotions and sentiments: namely, grief for the patients I can no longer visit, gratitude for the stories I have had the privilege of unearthing, and compassion for the patients and families facing difficult decisions and experiences in the end-of-life journey. This past school year, I had the opportunity to volunteer at the same care facility for both semesters, furthering my relationships with multiple patients and forming meaningful, long-term friendships with the patients, staff, and my fellow volunteers.<\/p>\n
One patient I have grown particularly close to over the past year is named Flora<\/em> (pseudonym for anonymity). In our visits with Flora<\/em> during my first semester volunteering, my fellow volunteers and I laughed with her at the wild tales she would recount and the witty jokes she would frequently amuse us and her friends with. At the end of one session, she thanked us profusely for taking time out to see her and for making her feel young again. Yet I felt like Flora<\/em> had given me so much more than I had given her; her genuine interest in our lives and eagerness to share more about her life undoubtedly helped and encouraged me in weeks I was facing difficult situations back at school or at home.<\/p>\n For most weeks, the couple hours I spent at hospice were the highlight of my day. While my beginning conversations with Flora<\/em> were typically upbeat and one-dimensional, involving silly stories about her old pets, daughters, or the like, I noticed a shift in the anecdotes she chose to share with me after several months of visiting her as a volunteer. Flora<\/em> began revealing to me narratives about her mother and father, whom she said had recently passed, as well as her concerns about their deaths and her feelings of grief following their passing. During one visit, I had the opportunity to speak with one of Flora\u2019s<\/em> daughters, who informed me that her parents had passed long ago, but that Flora<\/em> had been increasingly recounting stories of them. My fellow volunteers and I appreciated Flora\u2019s<\/em> openness, listening to her expressions of grief, comforting her, and acknowledging the validity of her feelings. My time with Flora<\/em> allowed me to realize that while death can be frightening, it also holds beauty. Death is unifying by bringing people closer together and compelling meaningful relationships and shared experiences.<\/p>\n One of the reasons I felt compelled to join Ascend Hospice as a volunteer is my late grandfather, who lived with dementia several years before his passing. During the last years of his life, I was extremely young, still in elementary school. When visiting my grandfather in the care facility, I can remember feeling apprehensive and scared that my own family was not able to recognize who I was. I was wholly unequipped to grapple with ideas of end-of-life care and death. Over a decade later, having volunteered with Ascend Hospice for a year, I feel more prepared to at least think about and discuss death in a purposeful way\u2014not to fear death, but rather appreciate the compassion, sorrow, and substantial experiences it inspires. While I hoped to pursue a career in medicine before I became a hospice volunteer, I am now considering specialties in neurology or geriatric medicine, specialties where I can engage with meaningful end-of-life journeys for people like Flora<\/em> and my late grandfather.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reflecting on my experiences as a volunteer with Ascend Hospice, I am moved by a vast range of emotions and sentiments: namely, grief for the patients I can no longer visit, gratitude for the stories I have had the privilege of unearthing, and compassion for the patients and families facing difficult decisions and experiences in … Continue reading “The End-of-Life Journey as a Companion”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"school":[7],"program_year":[31],"class_list":["post-1415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hospice","school-princeton","program_year-31"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1415"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1563,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415\/revisions\/1563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1415"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=1415"},{"taxonomy":"program_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_year?post=1415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}