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PROLOGUE
"I don't want to die," our daughter Jane said, when
she learned
at the age of twenty-five that she had cancer. But in the months
which followed she proved that dying need not be the dread ex-
perience most of us imagine. Far from being the defeat it is usu-
ally thought to be, her death was a kind of victory—a battle won
against pain and terror. It was a shared triumph for Jane and for
those who worked to help her, and especially for a new British
approach to the care of the dying which is comparatively un-
known to Americans, but is spreading in the United States with
remarkable speed.
We hesitated when it was first suggested that she
should go to
a hospice. We dared not risk experimenting, at her life's end,
with new approaches to dying. But we soon found that there
was nothing experimental about the hospice which took her in.
It was part of Britain's National Health Service,
whose facilities
are available free of charge to all patients. The hospice was lo-
cated on the grounds of one of Oxford University's teaching
hospitals. Jane would be in good hands.
Afraid of pain like all of us, Jane had a horror
of the nothing-
ness that she believed death to be, a conviction that neither sci-
ence nor religion could do anything for her. But Jane's arrival at
the hospice was a turning point; it enabled her to carry out the
most difficult act of her life with ease and tranquillity. What
might have been an appalling and shattering experience was
made as easy as possible both for her and for us. She met her
end surrounded by love, with all emotional debts paid and the
pattern of her life complete. For us the memory is not one of
pain and anguish but of her calm smile and peace of mind. She
was ready for what she knew must come, accepting it with a
serenity that belied her early fears.
This is what the hospice did for Jane, and for us—for
it treats
the family as a unit—and what it can do for all the people who
turn to it for help. She urged us to write about the hospice so
that others might benefit from our experience. "There should be
more hospices; everyone should know about them," she said.
She hoped that the pain and fear so many of us dread might be
alleviated as hers had been.
When we told Jane's story to our friends, they responded
by
relating to us their own experiences with dying relatives and
friends, and often these would be accounts of terrible physical
and mental distress—of loneliness, fear and rejection in hospitals
that had no facilities or time for the dying. They spoke of the sad-
ness and guilt that build up when words are left unsaid until it is
too late. "It was different for you," they said. "Jane must have
been an extraordinary person." We were uneasily aware of the
impression of heroic saintliness our account of Jane's last days
might convey. Jane was no paragon, and our friends knew it.
But should we write about this for strangers? Should we tell
them of the family stress and friction which preceded our dis-
covery of the hospice? We reminded ourselves that every family
is subject to its own tensions when someone dies,
and that it
might help others to know how ours were resolved.
Then someone said, "You should write about it just
as you've
told me." And that's what we did.
The article we wrote appeared first in the Washington
Post
and the London Guardian, and then in many other newspapers
round the world. We were overwhelmed by the response: more
than ten thousand letters from readers who wanted further in-
formation on what hospices do, where they can be found, how
they could be established; about Jane, and what made it possible
for her to cope as she did; and about our own experience as a family.
We went back to England to work on the book. We had
lived in Washington for nearly ten years, spending only the
summers in England, where Jane had remained to attend uni-
versity and then to become a teacher. Her older brother Richard
had gone to America on a scholarship and had stayed on. We
made our home in Washington because Victor, who was writing
a syndicated column for the Washington Post, needed to be
there. Now he put the column aside, and Rosemary gave up the
pottery that had been her main occupation since the children
grew up. We talked to the hospice doctors and staff, who gave
us their recollections of Jane's stay there and of their conversa-
tions with her. We spoke to Jane's friends. We relived the last
five months of Jane's illness. It wasn't easy. But whenever we
struck a bad patch, we would say to each other: Remember the
hospice. And then we were ready to write.
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