Reflecting on Harvested Lessons
by Loren Talbot
The turning of a calendar year naturally brings many of us to do a “mini life review.” Being 2025, this time brought out some reflections of the past quinquennial. What unfolded was a few of the harvested lessons I was gifted while working in this space.
Every Hospice Is Different
When I first started volunteering with hospice in 2020, I had made an assumption that I would feel part of a committed team of volunteers. That as a group we would glean lessons from each other and have ongoing continuing education. My volunteer “training” was me reading a manual in a breakroom and then choosing from a list one of the many facilities that I could go visit in the region. The volunteer coordinator drove me the first day to the one she picked from the list, and after that I never saw her again nor another volunteer. I made my visits and reported time spent with patients online. Then COVID came, and I was soon unable to visit this facility; being a nonessential worker, I settled into working from home.
When I was approved to go back, I decided that I would try to volunteer at a different hospice. While this one was further away, it had a doula team and an inpatient facility as well as community services, from in-home visits to public bereavement groups. It was staffed by a volunteer coordinator who was deeply invested in the program and in creating community among the volunteers themselves. Our monthly volunteer meetings are always sprinkled with continuing education, and the collaborative and caring environment supports the doulas on the team. While this particular location is a model hospice, it was valuable for me to realize how different the care looked, not only for patients, but also for volunteer and staff teams.
My Bed Is My Prison
One of the first dying people I supported was a former nurse who had worked with incarcerated folks. While we now both lived in the adjoining state, we realized in conversations that we knew people in common and that she had spent time at one of my favorite places. I share this because it created a unique bond as she and I embarked on our time spent together. Her partner had died in their shared room at the facility just a week before we met, and her side of her room was lush with plants and paintings all over the wall. Her partner’s side was bare and awaiting the next person to fill the place.
She was unable to leave her bed and knew the end of her life was near. She spoke of how her bed was a “six-by-three-foot cell” and her only way to get out was through mind travel. One particular adventure she took herself on was reliving a train ride through Europe. She would share these meditative adventures with me, and I learned what it was like to watch someone die whose mind was so coherent while their body was no longer able to respond. We said goodbye over the phone during COVID. I, in my car, thanking her for the lessons she shared with me, and she with the phone in her hand she could barely lift.
I’m Walking Out of Here
This year brought an interaction with an exciting and vibrant individual who would express how she would be walking out of hospice soon. While her diagnosis was terminal, each interaction we had would be full of energy and conversations around how all this was temporary. She thought it was audacious that she was offered the services of an end-of-life doula, asking me, “If I could believe such a thing?” (To which I fully disclosed that I was a doula too, but was showing up in a volunteer capacity with her.) Her resolve was so strong that I myself started to believe that upon my next visit she wouldn’t be there, but at home with her daughter planting in the garden or on a road trip.
That was not the case. After such a robust and independent period, she quickly settled into an actively dying phase following some end-of-life projects. As she lay in bed one of the last times I saw her, she shared the acceptance of her death. This conversation would never have been possible just days before. Whether it was an internal realization or the support she received from others, I left that visit realizing how nothing is fixed. That while she may not have “walked out” as planned, she left with her own vision of what lay ahead and an anticipation for what was to come.
I See You and You See Me
In the space where I facilitate a grief group for kids, I regularly leave our evenings together with expanded knowledge on processing a close death. There are so many valuable stories here, but I hold these very tightly for obvious reasons. The ability for each participant to recognize that they are not the only one with a close death is invaluable. I witness the tenacity and grit from each of the kids in my group and see their ability to discuss loss. And that is really what this is all about.
Each of us has the ability and capacity to support one another. Each doula I have ever met is deeply committed to humanity, to connection, and to strengthening the bonds that universally unite us. Whether it is the space of just discussing death, being actively present during those final weeks, or showing up for one another through the most challenging times in our lives, let us ride into the new year with a renewed sense of community and ability to hold each other up.