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There are many reasons why people decide to volunteer. Here are the stories behind three local hospice volunteers:
Jackie Wilson always wanted to be a nurse when she grew up and, as soon as she was 18 years old she left Manchester to train at Charing Cross and Great Ormond Street hospitals in London, then made her way to Scotland to train as a midwife.
Jackie’s nursing career led her Down Under. She worked for four years in the Australian Outback with the Royal Flying Doctor Service then travelled to New Zealand, where she only intended staying a few months.
But then she met her husband, Alick (a Liverpudlian) – over a beer at an Auckland pub. They started a life together in New Zealand and Jackie worked at several hospitals in different roles before moving into palliative care.
She spent eight years as a relief registered nurse at North Shore’s hospice’s inpatient unit before retiring and she says it was being part of that holistic patient care at hospice that inspired her to volunteer for the organisation, after retirement.
She took up a role behind the counter at the Whangaparāoa Hospice Shop and says she loves her Monday morning shifts.
“It’s fun and we all get on so well and have a good chat with the customers. It gives me a lot of satisfaction.”
She also volunteers as a community visitor. Four years ago she faced her own cancer diagnosis and underwent chemotherapy and surgery. She says the experience only made her more empathetic in that role.
“I know exactly what patients are going through,” Jackie says.
Mychelle Mihailof has two special books – one tells the life story of her mother, Toni, and the other, that of her brother, Michael.
Both Toni and Michael died from motor neurone disease in 2016 and 2017, respectively, and their memoirs were written by a Harbour Hospice volunteer life story writer in the final months of their lives.
Mychelle often pulls them out to read and says it was the sense of peace these books brought to her mother and brother that inspired her to become a hospice life story writer too.
“With Michael in particular, even though his body was giving up on him he still felt he had to be around, that he had to give, that there was more he needed us to know. Taking down his story was a way of rounding off his life for him. He was able to find a way to acceptance, and to die feeling he’d passed everything on. For both he and Mum, retelling stories from their past helped them celebrate their lives as lives well lived.”
Before volunteering, Mychelle had worked as a coordinator for in-home early childhood provider, PORSE. But she retired after Michael became too ill to continue living in his Glenorchy home and he moved in with her and her family. Other family members and friends moved in too, and together they cared for Michael and their mother, who had lived on the corner of Mychelle’s street, over a period of two years with hospice support.
In the past five years Mychelle has recorded the life stories of at least 10 patients, and every story has been unique, she says.
“Sometimes when we start off the patient is a little bit hesitant. They’ll say, ‘I haven’t really done much, there’s nothing that stands out. It’s just been an ordinary life.’ So, I’ll say, ‘Okay, well, let’s just start at the beginning and we’ll work our way through – and absolutely beautiful moments come up.”
Every Wednesday Valma Pettit gets up early, puts on her gumboots and heads to Hibiscus Hospice in Red Beach, where she spends the next few hours working in the gardens.
Valma has volunteered as a gardener for hospice for the past 10 years. She started out as the only female in a group of five men. Her apartment had no garden, and as she is a very keen gardener, Valma hadn’t known what she was going to do about that until she saw a notice inviting locals to join the hospice gardening group.
“I thought I could do that, that would keep my hand in,” she says.
At that time, the hospice gardens were tended by several different sets of volunteers from the community.
“We each had an allocated area, and woe betide anybody who ventured outside their area,” Valma says. “But what we noticed was that the tennis club never came, they were too busy playing tennis. So, we ‘oozed’ into their territory, then we started oozing all over the place!”
Eventually, the numbers in Valma’s group began to dwindle.
“I needed more help, so I asked the members of the Ōrewa Garden Club that I belong to. And that’s how I have the great support that I have now.”
Valma is regularly joined by six or seven of her garden club friends. At times their numbers have swelled to 11 and Valma encourages them all to claim their own patches of garden so they can develop them and feel a sense of ownership.
She also encourages the group to work in pairs. “That way the time goes quickly, and it’s a happy environment.”
Valma says if she had her time again, she’d be a horticulturalist. “I just love being amongst nature, and I love creating. It’s productive and very good for your health. And when we’re at hospice, if we pass by a window and it suddenly bursts open and someone pops their head out to say hello, that’s what makes it all worthwhile.”
