Maryel Rodgers sat beside a stranger
named Grace. The woman lay still “under a purple fleece blanket sprinkled with
brightly colored hearts and edged with broad fringes,” recalled Rodgers. “Her
graying hair spilled across the pillow. Her breath was firm and steady. She
seemed to be unaware of the commotion of the busy hospital unit.”
From a poster on the door, Rodgers
learned that Grace enjoyed dancing and oldies music. She had a husband and
daughter. Grace looked about Rodgers’ own age, and she softly began to speak to
the woman about what they might have had in common. Eventually, she had to
leave.
“How do I say goodbye? I am looking at
you, robed in that soft blanket of royal purple and I think of the woman in the
Gospel story who was eager to touch the fringes of Jesus’ garment,” Rodgers wrote
in her journal, which was later published in an Ignatian Volunteer Corps
newsletter. “Let me now touch the fringes of your garment as you move into
eternity. Thank you for your company.”
Rodgers, a parishioner of Our Lady,
Queen of Peace Church in Arlington, was one of the first Ignatian volunteers to
spend time with a patient in their last moments as part of the No One Dies
Alone program at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington. For the past two
years, when someone in the hospital is dying without family or friends nearby,
volunteers have come to spend a few hours by their bedside.
The national program began in 2001 with
an Oregon nurse named Sandra Clarke. One day as she started her shift, a dying
man asked if she could sit with him for a while. She promised she’d return
after she checked on her other patients. When she came back, the man had died.
His passing inspired her to begin No One Dies Alone.
Beth Orrell, a palliative care nurse at Georgetown,
and her coworker, Dr. Robin Gross, started the program there. “I feel very strongly about patient advocacy
and I have a tender spot for the vulnerable patient,” said Orrell. “Georgetown
as an institution really values the dignity of every human life. In my work I’m
able to uphold that value and it gives me great satisfaction.” The pair called
on different churches and groups to volunteer.
The team of about 15 volunteers
initially went through training to learn about the dying process, both the
physical signs and the spiritual aspects, said Orrell. There is a regular
support group to help the volunteers process the many emotions that can
accompany witnessing death. The volunteers usually have a sense of how to be most
helpful to the dying person, said Orrell. Some will play music or read poetry
or sacred texts. Sometimes they’ll hold the patient’s hand.
“I think all of them have learned about
themselves and who they are, and I think being able to give a deep human
connection is a very satisfying thing,” she said. Each believes in the simple
but profound act of accompanying the dying.
The majority of the patients are not
alert or awake, said Orrell. Some are weak from having endured a draining
illness; some are hooked up to machines. As the outward signs of their humanity
diminish, having someone stand watch can restore a bit of the humanity that’s obscured
in the dying process, said Orrell.
“The volunteers give back to the staff
in addition to the patients. They bring a fresh perspective in terms of us
ensuring the patients’ comfort,” she said. “They remind us of the patients’
humanity. It’s always a good thing.”
Some of the patients have outlived
family and friends, or have loved ones that live too far away or are too busy
to stay at the hospital for long periods of time. In one unusual circumstance,
a man was dying of cancer and his wife was in the Intensive Care Unit due to a
stress-induced break down. A No One Dies Alone volunteer split her time between
the husband and wife. “Families are incredibly grateful that the patient is not
alone,” said Orrell.
“I
just think that human presence is so important at the end of someone’s life,” she
said. “People are not alone when they’re born and they should not be alone when
they die.”