As the elderly population grows, I am sure that Chaplaincy for the elderly will form a vital component of the healthcare provision
My Mum took her final breaths on the morning of Sunday September 11, 2011. It was a bright and beautiful morning and again, Debbie was on hand to guide us through it.
Throughout the last couple of years of my Mother’s life Debbie has provided constant, unobtrusive love and support to the three of us. And along with the amazing care Mum received from all the Marlfield staff, my sister and I were imbued with the enthusiasm and energy to give my Mother that send-off we’d always imagined. So we went right through my Mum’s contact book and wrote to everyone we thought might like to hear the news and invited them to the funeral. And it was really quite amazing because we must have received over 100 letters from around the country documenting priceless and hitherto unknown details of my Mother’s life – some dating back to her childhood. Needless to say many of the elderly were too infirm to make the journey, but they enclosed most generous cheques and we raised hundreds of pounds for the fund for building a new courtyard facility at the home. We were also wonderfully surprised to find
that many were actually able to make the journey, so the church was quite full and ‘Praise my Soul’ did ring out over the rafters after all. My sister and I wrote extensive eulogies which were sent out to all those who had kindly responded to the news but were unable to attend, so cards of gratitude came flooding back. And I feel extremely satisfied, glad and thankful that Debbie’s presence had given us the strength to put our hearts and souls into writing the final page of my Mother’s story.
Although Debbie is sent by Christian congregations, working together under the umbrella of the Greater Alton Project, or GAP, in practice I experienced her service as a spiritual or existential coach. She recognises that not everyone believes in the hereafter or the traditional Christian view of the next life. Debbie is there to help you establish meaning in the final act, in your own way, and to visualise the 4th Act as only you can know how. The non-believer may be put off by the term Chaplaincy, but for me this role is one undertaken for the benefit of any individual in, or connected with the healthcare institutions, prisons, the military and so on who are undergoing some form of ‘sentence’ and by that I mean where it appears hope and meaning have been evacuated from one’s experience of living forever. A Chaplain to Older People is there to promote a person’s spiritual welfare. As such the Chaplain seeks to be a bearer of hope, and someone who breaks the cycle of fear.
Debbie with one of her patients 22 entrepreneurcountry
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