Volunteering 75 minutes somewhere new

      Last week I fulfilled one of the suggestions I like most for my 75x75 project: to volunteer somewhere new for 75 minutes. (Dave Dobbs and Jen Thoennes both suggested this item.) I thought a lot about where I would like to put that time: a food kitchen, answering phones for the Jefferson Public Radio on-air fundraiser, trail maintenance for the Applegate Trails Association…. And then, last August, partly in response to my book, At the Far End of Life: My Parents' Aging – and Then My Own, I was invited to tour Medford's new hospice facility, the Holmes Park House. 

(I wrote about the Holmes Park House at dianacoogle.blogspot.com on August 10.) I was so impressed with the beautiful facility and the compassionate and friendly staff – and I feel so strongly about easing the process of dying – that I decided, by suggestion of Sue Carroll, the volunteer coordinator, to be a volunteer reader at the Holmes Park House. Sue said I could read to the residents in their rooms or do readings for residents and their families as well as staff and volunteers in the living room or library.

The beautiful library at the Holmes Park House

      Last week I did my first reading at the Holmes Park House, in the living room, to six staff members and volunteers. Although the hospice is a place where people come to die, so that death is a frequent occurrence, having eight deaths in the week preceding my visit had left the personnel reeling. That sudden emptiness, from ten residents to two (now three; another has moved in), leant a poignancy to the essays I was reading and determined, to an extent, which ones I chose. 

      I read from two of my books, Wisdom of the Heart, a "metaphysical journey through life," and Living with All My Senses, my book about living close to nature in the house I built deep in the Siskiyou Mountains. I didn't have a program but chose essays spontaneously, led by the conversation. When Sue told me about the tradition, at the Holmes Park House, of putting a rose in a vase on the vestibule table to honor the passing of one of their residents (the vase was full of roses that day), I read "The Peace Rose, the Still Mountain, and the Heart of the House" from Wisdom of the Heart. The essay about touch in that same book led to a discussion about the importance of touch to people who are dying: other senses diminish, so touch becomes a great communicator (something I should keep in mind for readings to residents). That discussion led to an essay from Living with All My Senses about synesthesia, which ends with an image of a flight of geese with an albino goose in its midst: "Keeping up wingbeat for wingbeat in the rhythmic pulse of flight, it was like a negative of its neighbors, like a placeholder. It must be like that to have a beloved companion die: an emptiness in the shape of that person where that person had once always been."

      One of the best things about my 75x75 project is the effects of doing the various items. I learn something new every time I do one, or doing one leads to something bigger and longer lasting than doing it just that one time. That 75-minute reading at the Holmes Park House has encouraged me to put in more volunteer hours there. Next time, I look forward to reading to the residents, hoping to bring some pleasure to the individuals who are experiencing those last days of life.