The Hospice Love Phenomena

With regards to the topic “Thinking Of Those Special Few”, I found your insight to be very illuminating, Plum 1. 

As a hospice resident support volunteer, I have noticed this “LOVE PHENOMENA”, over and over again.  I have a hard time explaining this phenomena, because it operates at a multitude of levels:

• Between residents and their family and friends
• Between residents and the dedicated staff of caregivers
• Between residents and the volunteers

The common denominator, of course, are the residents.  Someone once told me that we have two childhoods and one adulthood.  As children, we tend to be very open and honest without the need for facades or pretensions.  During the middle years we are, to say the least, complicated. 

At the end of our lives, we regain the simplicity that once was our birthright.  The facades and pretensions have outlived their usefulness.  We shed them as a snake sheds its skin.

Once they are shed, we are then open to give and receive love just as innocently and purely as when we were babes.

Yes, the aged and infirm are vulnerable and need to be cared for, up to and including feeding, bathing, changing of undergarments, hand holding and comforting.  They unwittingly elicit from us, a tender and loving response.  On a subconscious level, it regenerates the love we experience when caring for our own children and/or grandchildren.

This “LOVE PHENOMENA”, is not a one-way love.  And, as you describe, Plum 1, in your own words you say, “they now clearly and spontaneously spread the energy of gratitude and love with even greater intensity (I love you!) It is as though they are claiming this most basic and needed energy of the world.

Whenever I enter our hospice, I feel this LOVE.  It is palpable.  It radiates from the walls and ceiling.  It is as though, as people pass through the doors, they are enveloped in so much LOVE that they cannot take it all with them.  That which remains, melds with all the other great LOVES that lovingly linger.  And there it is, Plum 1, an anecdotal example of what you call, “this most basic and needed energy of the world”.

I feel blessed to experience this LOVE in this wondrous environment.  As a bonus, this LOVE stays with me and enhances all of the other loves in my life.

The concept of “giving one measure, and being rewarded a thousand-fold” always seemed to be hyperbole – that is until I started volunteering at hospice.  The small things that we do in service seem but “one measure”.  The love that emanates and enfolds us from that small measure given, is the thousand-fold reward.

-      eKim