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 realisation that I wanted to be where life matters most, which is when it is ending. I wanted to be one of those hospice volunteers.
My experience of death had been at a distance. I’d lost grandparents and cats. As a clergyman’s wife, I’d attended funerals of parishioners, tidied tombstones in the churchyard and contemplated my mortality from the pews during Lent. I had never seen a body. I’m frightened of the raw grief of others and I’m squeamish about blood. My volunteering roles have always been with children. I’m used to beginnings, not endings.
