“None of us here will escape our date with death,” First Nations Elder Gene Harry said, emphasizing his words as he beat a drum with an eagle wing.
Young and old, First Nations, Métis and Caucasian – 175 people from two significant Sunshine Coast cultures came together on June 22 for the Sunshine Coast Hospice Society’s forum on Cultural Connections.
Harry talked about his childhood, sitting at the bedside of both his parents as they were dying, and the profound impact that grief had on him – a grief that was so deep and dark that it led him down a road of addiction, imprisonment and multiple suicide attempts.
A sage Elder recognized that Harry, surviving despite himself, had a greater purpose, that his grandfather’s wisdom lived on in him, and that he needed a chance to share his gifts of storytelling, healing and holding presence in the community when his people are dying.
“My role is to be with them in their darkness until they can find the light again,” Harry said.
While dying in a hospice bed is a foreign idea to him as a First Nations man, he said he wasn’t sure he wanted his children and grandchildren to experience what he went through when his parents died.
Donna Shugar, vice-president of Sunshine Coast Hospice Society, said, “Our local hospice beds are for everyone, not ‘our community,’ or ‘their community.’”
The bigger issue is that there are only two hospice beds on the Sunshine Coast, and there is always a waiting list. However, Denis Fafard, president, added that hospice volunteers companion people in residential care facilities, hospital and people’s homes and support those who are grieving the death of someone close to them.
Doris Barwich, executive director of the BC Centre for Palliative Care, talked about the importance of supporting people to die in the way they want to die. She told the story of her grandmother, who was visiting in Canada when she became deathly ill, and was determined to die on German soil. The plane landed, she asked her son if they were on German soil, he nodded and she breathed her last breath – there on the airplane.
“Palliative care focuses on the person and their family, their needs and their goals of care from the time of diagnosis. More, better and earlier integration of a palliative approach leads to better quality of care,” Barwich said.
She talked about groups who decide to build a “compassionate community” to support those nearby who are living with frailties and serious illnesses – whether a neighbourhood, a condo strata or a faith community.
Barwich affirmed that this is a time of significant cultural and institutional change in relation to end of life issues.
John and Nancy Denham, the evening’s emcees, talked about this collaborative event being another step of the Reconciliation process.
After the event, as people continued the conversation over refreshments, many described it as “historic.”
Hospice volunteer Heather Conn said, “I appreciated Gene Harry’s willingness to share the light and shadow of his own journey, which conveyed an authentic, soulful appreciation for life on the continuum of death, which none of us escapes.”
– Submitted by Bernadette Richards
