After finishing my spiritual volunteer training at a nursing home and rehabilitation center, my chaplain left me with one last remark. He told me that, as a volunteer, I was an outsider with agency. Unlike the residents of the center, I was able to walk out the doors at the end of the day and not have to think about the people I had met there nor how the rest of their week went. The residents were not able to do that. Some would leave the center once they finished recovering. Others spent their last days there. Most of them faced challenges they weren’t able to leave, no matter where they went.

 

In the past few months, I have also come to understand how the loved ones who care for those residents have their own struggles. I started seeing this with my own mother. Oceans away, my grandmother has been slowly approaching the end of her life, and she, my mother, and the rest of the family have been preparing for it. From watching my mother and working as a spiritual volunteer, I’ve learned that the end of life is something that the individual and the people caring for them experience together.

 

However, I've also noticed the range of emotions, decisions, and challenges that come with caring for a loved one at the end of their life. Seeing my mother take care of my grandmother has made me more aware of how I too will someday be taking care of people at the end of life, either as a loved one, a medical professional, or both. Because of this, I yearned for a better understanding of the experiences of my mother, her family, and the families I have met through my spiritual volunteer work. At the same time, I wanted to find a way to give guidance and comfort to those caring for a loved one at the end of their life, like my mother. This project was an opportunity to accomplish both of these goals.

 

The overall mission of palliative care, or end-of-life care, is clear: to ensure that people can live their final days as well. This could look like one picture and be something completely different to someone else. So instead of only compiling information and resources, I asked people to tell me their stories of about palliative care. My hope was that hearing from individual experiences would bring many different topics to light, some that may not be found in a general guide. This plan led to insightful interviews, where we discussed a large range of ideas: the importance of having conversations about the end together, presence, creating support systems, cherishing the small joys of everyday life, to name a few.Those whom I approached ended up being people I knew, most of whom I have known for almost my whole life. I believe that this familiarity allowed our conversations to dive deep, and I am immensely grateful to them for sharing their stories with me.

 

That said, while these are stories are about these people, they are told through my lens. Before beginning this project, I felt like an outsider in the whole conversation end-of-life care. Now that I have reached the end project, I still think that I am, in I have not gone through any of the experiences that these people have gone through. However, the interviews, the conversations I have had my parents and mentor, and the overall process of creating this project have helped better understand what it is like to be in that circumstance. It has been a journey.

 

I hope that, as you walk through some if not all of these essays with us, there is something that you can take away with you. If you are currently taking care of a loved one or have in the past, know that you are not alone.