July 29, 2011
Prayer and presence in Jasper
Volunteers offer time so ‘no one dies alone’ in hospital
Lucy Estabrook is a volunteer in the Prayer and Presence program at Memorial Hospital and Health Care Center in Jasper. Above, she demonstrates a cart containing a CD player as well as prayer books and leaflets which she uses when she visits dying patients. Behind her is a handmade quilt that was made by a volunteer and will be given to a patient in the program. (Message photo by Mary Ann Hughes) Click for a larger version.
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
What Lucy Estabrook is doing in 2011 is a natural extension of what happened to her in 2003.
That year, she had a near-death experience. Now, she is an active volunteer with the Prayer and Presence program at Memorial Hospital and Health Care Center in Jasper — sitting and praying with dying patients as they “release their souls to God.”
Back in 2003, she had a blood clot in her brain. “My family was called, and the doctors gave me no chance.”
But the doctors were wrong, and she “didn’t die.”
During her near-death experience, there were no bright lights. There was a “wonderful sense of positive energy, an awareness. I could feel it. I liked it. It was peaceful and calm.”
As she recuperated, “everyone said I had a purpose, and I looked for a purpose for about six years.” She thought she would, in her words “help someone here on earth,” but instead she was drawn to “help people who are dying.”
She works at the hospital in Information Systems, and when she heard of the Prayer and Presence program back in 2009 “I knew right away that was going to be my purpose.”
She and about 30 other volunteers attended training sessions in 2010, and this January they began to sit with dying patients who didn’t have family members who could be with them at the hospital.
Little Company of Mary Sister M. Adrian Davis is the board chairperson of the hospital. Her order, which conducts the facility, was founded by Venerable Mary Potter; it is dedicated to the physical care of the poor, the sick, the suffering and the dying, and to constant prayer for the suffering and dying of the world.
That care and concern for the dying was why she brought the Prayer and Presence program to the Jasper facility.
Benedictine Sister Rose Mary Rexing is the executive director of Mission Integration. She said volunteers go through a screening process, and attend six two-hour sessions which cover a variety of topics designed to help them when they are at the bedside of a dying patient.
The sessions include the topics “The Grieving Process,” “Physical, Spiritual and Emotional Aspects of being with the dying, family issues, respecting different faiths,” and “The Art of Listening in a Healing Way.”
Sister Rose Mary emphasized that “it’s important that we don’t replace the family,” but are there for patients who are alone.
Sister Adrian explained, “We certainly hope this is a time of spiritual growth for individuals and perhaps their families.” Sister Rose Mary added, “and for the volunteers.”
Ray Snowden, president and CEO, believes the program has “deeply touched” the hospital staff, and “speaks to the legacy of the Little Company of Mary” and the mission of the hospital. “I love the fact that we are doing it.”
Sister Rose Mary said the program “helps us realize we are all connected. When you sit with someone who is dying, you realize we are all part of the human family. We are all here together.”
The volunteers stay in the patients’ rooms around the clock, usually each staying for about four hours at a time.
Estabrook says, “It’s a quiet, peaceful time — when you are praying, when you are sitting there.” Sometimes the volunteers will read the psalms to the patients or pray the “Our Father.”
It’s not a time for evangelization, everyone agrees, but a time to “respect wherever that person may be.”
Estabrook said she spends her time in the patients’ rooms “knowing that person is going to heaven. You have to have a positive attitude about dying to do it,” she said of the program.
“I feel good that I can be a part of it.”
In the future, the program may be expanded to have volunteers sit with cancer patients who are receiving treatment in the hospital, Sister Rose Mary said. It could also be developed with a parish nurse in the Jasper area, training volunteers to sit with parishioners in their homes.
A training session for Prayer and Presence volunteers begins Aug. 23. For additional information, contact Sister Rose Mary Rexing at 812-481-0198.