VOLUNTEER SUPPORT GROUP

MONDAY, MAY 1; 5:00-6:30 PM

Please save the date for our May 1st Volunteer Support Group!  ALL volunteers who have completed the COVID Safety Precautions Training or attended the 3-day October 2022 Training are encouraged to attend. These meetings provide in-service education to enhance specific skills, knowledge, and competencies. Come share your patient-family experiences and insights. Light refreshments provided.  (Kauai Hospice Conference Room).

ANTICIPATORY GRIEF: GIVING A NAME TO THE FEELING

By Patricia Montoya (04/03/2023)

"After losing my brother and my mom to cancer, I went on a quest to understand a feeling that I could not name. I was confused about how I could already feel despair when the people I love were still with me. For me, anticipatory grief is that feeling when I know something horrible is going to happen; I just don’t know how to explain it, because it yet has not happened. Anticipatory grief also encompasses those feelings of not being understood, because I was not directly affected by illness. Over the years I’ve learned about this challenging feeling and how to cope with it." Continue reading Patricia's helpful lessons shared on The Conversation Project blog.

ARTICLE: HELPING CREATE A MEANINGFUL EULOGY

By Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

Planning a meaningful, personalized funeral is one of the most important tasks you will ever undertake. Think of the funeral as a gift to the person who died. It is your chance to think about and express the value of the life that was lived. When personalized, the eulogy (pronounced EWE-luh-jee) is perhaps the most memorable and healing element of the funeral ceremony. This article will help you choose the right person to give the eulogy as well as offer tips for writing and presenting the eulogy. Read the article here.

ARTICLE: WHAT BEING A HOSPICE VOLUNTEER TAUGHT ME ABOUT DEATH AND LIFE

By Anna Tims, The Guardian (March 5, 2023)

"My introduction to death came in a traffic jam. I turned on the radio and heard a woman describe her father’s final days in a hospice. His end, she said, was a strangely warming memory because of the hospice volunteers who entered the pain of strangers and held their hands as they faced the unknown. In her grief, she explained, she’d encountered humanity at its best. I forgot my frustration at the static traffic as I listened. The prospect of a missed train and crowding deadlines was unimportant, seen through the lens of loss. It was an instant realization that I wanted to be where life matters most, which is when it is ending. I wanted to be one of those hospice volunteers." Continue reading. Mahalo Ken Jopling, RN for sharing this story!

FAREWELL FELLOWSHIP BOOK CLUB

Your Death & Grief Virtual Book Club

Jade Adgate is a grief advocate, a death educator, and a voracious reader. Her website, Farewell Fellowship and The Farewell Library was created to increase death literacy and grief awareness through a love of reading. She explains: "The Farewell Library is my curated space to advocate for death and grief literacy. I love to read and write and I use this platform to review death and grief-focused books and resources. From Death Education profession books to memoirs of the dying and grieving, and even popular fiction with heavy themes of death and/or grief, I cover it all." The Farewell Library’s Virtual Book Club meets on the last Tuesday of each month via Zoom at 7 pm CT (2:00 pm Hawaii time). Click here to learn more...

DOCUMENTARY FILM: JACK HAS A PLAN

(Released 2022)

Jack Has a Plan is a thoughtful, humorous, moving, humanity-filled film about one man’s approach to the end of life. It is film-maker Bradley Berman's story about his good friend Jack Tuller who, in his early 30's, was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor and given 6 months to live. However, he lived for 25 years, giving him a unique experience of mortality. The film's goal is to engage audiences with a universal story that invites reflection on how each of us wants to live out our final days. Although medical aid in dying is integral to the plot, the film is more concerned about living than dying—especially the need for family and friends to honor the wishes of a loved one going through a life-and-death situation. Watch the movie trailer here...

GOOD QUOTES: ON LISTENING

JULIAN OF NORWICH (1342-1416)

“The sorrowing, the sick, the unwanted, the lonely, both young and old, rich and poor, all come to my window. No one listens, they tell me, and so I listen and tell them what they have just told me. And, I sit in silence, listening, letting them grieve. ‘Julian, you are wise,’ they say, ‘You have been gifted with understanding.’ All I did was listen."

Born in the Middle Ages Julian of Norwich, also known as Juliana of Norwich, the Lady Julian, Dame Julian or Mother Julian, was an English mystic, theologian and anchoress. An anchoress freely chose to be confined in a cell so that she could pray and read, committing her life to God. They were usually sealed in a cell adjoining the village church to ensure they remained safe, and could hear Mass and receive the Eucharist.