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Inspired: Laura Read, Hospice Worker and Creator Gives Flight to her Dream by Laura Read Introduction: Laura Read lives in Maine, and is busy creating Maine’s first free standing Hospice, Hope Garden, Inc. One of her hobbies is flying and she donates flights to silent auctions to raise money for York County Child Abuse and Neglect Council, E-Quest and various public schools. She also uses her plane to transport her Hospice Board members to meetings in the state capital. Here she tells her story of inspiration to provide Hospice service. I think like most people, I got involved in Hospice after witnessing the power of human connection and how much it matters that someone is sitting next to you during your last weeks of life. I was with my mother-in-law through chemotherapy and at the end of her life. Edith was only interested in the comfort of those around her and she worried about the stress she was causing my father-in-law. We were lucky to have him, as everyone else in the family was weighed down with work and young children. When Edith stopped taking her medication and then lapsed into a coma I called Hospice. We were too late to use the services, however, because she died very quickly after that. What a luxury it would have been to have a Hospice volunteer, a home health aid and a Hospice nurse to take the pressure off of my father-in-law. I find it takes tremendous courage to stay in a deteriorating situation like the one our family had. Communication breaks down; fatigue and worry take over, and the physical effort to manage someone who can’t move can be overwhelming. Sometimes though, a profound experience begins to happen as social barriers dissolve. It can manifest as experiencing the power of God, the bond of love, the meaning of life, the power of human touch and perhaps the startling realization that communication happens without speaking. After Edith died, I wondered what happens to people who have no family to care for them. I started to travel to see what other countries had to offer. In London I visited St. Christopher’s Hospice founded by Cicely Saunders. She had a vision of a place where people could die with dignity, surrounded by family and treated by specialists in end-of-life care. In 1967, she set the standard for Hospice as it is today. When I visited in March of 1998, I found they already embrace the alternative therapies of aromatherapy, art and claywork, massage, meditation and music therapy. They have a wonderful room where one can sit in front of the fire and have tea. While I was there, I met a young man with AIDS who told me that he had never been loved before living at St. Christopher’s Hospice. A year later I traveled to Cuba and had the opportunity to visit a children’s hospital/hospice. I brought balloons, soap, ballpoint pens, whistles and chewing gum and the children loved them. The children, most of whom had severe asthma, were in beds that crowded the open air rooms of the hospital. Cuba’s older generation is extremely active and when they near the end of life, they tend to stay in their homes until they die. I talked to a college student in Havana who told me that his family was taking care of his dying grandfather at home. He was surprised to think his grandfather could be cared for anywhere else. Since then, I have studied freestanding Hospice centers in Canada, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina and New Hampshire. Maine is one of the few states that still does not have a place for end-of-life patients to receive hospice care outside the home. In November of 2000, I brought together 75 people who were interested in building a hospice. From that event, we formed Hope Garden Inc. a nonprofit effort to build a ten-bed hospice home in Southern Maine. We have had tremendous support from Southern Maine Medical Center, Southern Maine Health and Homecare and the Visiting Nurse Service. With this and volunteer efforts, we hope to have the building up and running in the near future. We hope that our experience will help to pave the way for others who wish to start a Hospice in their area. return to top
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