When Colin Doherty fell ill with flu symptoms at Christmas 2016, he tried to keep it to himself – but his wife, Elizabeth, knew things weren’t quite right.
‘He was ex-army, so he just got on with things. By January he still wasn’t better so we went to the doctor, where he was told he had bronchitis and was given antibiotics,’ she remembers.
However, Colin still didn’t recover, and a month later he was diagnosed with an aggressive type of cancer.
‘He was dead within eight weeks’, Elizabeth says of her husband of 32 years.
After his diagnosis, she had tried to care for him at home but when the pain got too much, Colin, was admitted to the Sue Ryder St John’s Hospice, Moggerhanger, near their Bedfordshire home.
‘At first, I thought he was just there to get his pain under control, but on day two, I turned to one of the nurses and said: “I’m not taking my husband home, am I?” After that I never left his side.
‘I was in shock, and just getting through each day. It all happened so quickly. I didn’t get to take it all in. He didn’t want me to leave him so they looked after him, and I was there to hold his hand. I really don’t know what I would have done without them – I really don’t think I would have been able to cope, because it was so traumatic”, Elizabeth tells Metro.
Colin spent eight heartbreaking days in the hospice in 2017 before passing away at the age of 74.
Her first Christmas without him was a quiet one, remembers Elizabeth. She went to her sisters for dinner but then went home alone: ‘I didn’t want any decorations up or anything. I just wanted to sit quietly and reflect.’
In the following months, as a shocked and bereft Elizabeth readjusted to life without her husband, she did some fundraising for the hospice and went to drop it in as a token of gratitude.
‘I mentioned that I would like to volunteer there and within a week, I had filled in the paperwork, been interviewed and started on reception that July,’ she says.
Elizabeth now volunteers at the hospice four days a week, greeting guests and family, answering the phone and supporting staff in their difficult and vital role. She also runs grief sessions, helping others adjust to loss, and organises fundraising events.
This year, as for the past eight, Elizabeth will spend Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day at the 10-room hospice, helping families navigate the unimaginable.
Speaking over Zoom from a back office she laughs: ‘I’m here more than I am at home. But that’s okay – it’s like a big family.’
‘When anybody comes through the door, the receptionist is the first person they see and we direct visitors, help people sign in and look after patients as they come in.
‘If you haven’t had any dealings with a hospice, I don’t think you will quite understand. You’ve got to walk that path to understand what it’s like. For me it’s just payback because of how well they looked after Colin.
‘I want to look after visitors when they come in because I’ve been in that position. It can be quite daunting, and you’re really vulnerable. So I just calm them and put them at ease.’
Some patients are scared to enter, in which case Elizabeth’s help is invaluable.
‘One wouldn’t get out of the car because he was frightened, so his wife came and spoke to me. I went and introduced myself, told him I would make him a nice cup of tea, and said: “Now look. I’m going to put you in a lovely room all to yourself and you’re going to be treated like a king. Anything you want, you can have.” We took him up and later his wife came and said: “Once he got up there, he said – this is quite nice this. It’s really lovely.”
Visitors need help too, as many arrive understandably distraught, while others are angry. ‘That’s what grief is,’ explains Elizabeth. ‘So we’re there to help make them feel relaxed and that they are not on their own.
‘If they are angry or irritable, you just accept it and try to talk to them, keeping them calm and letting them know we are there to talk. In fact, we learn more from the visitors about their family than their own family, because families don’t talk to one another about death because they don’t want to upset them. It’s a rollercoaster and we are there to get rid of all the anxiety.’
Over the years, Elizabeth has helped organise last-minute weddings, with flowers, cakes and decorative tea cups, and helped pets coming in to see patients. She welcomes the therapy ponies who wear little booties as they go up the rooms, and over Christmas she will decorate the space to make it as festive and special as possible. Staff will wear festive hats, play music where appropriate and ensure all visitors feel like it is a home-away-from-home.
‘We will go around and take photographs and chat to everyone. We don’t want them sitting and thinking that this is their last Christmas together, we want them to smile and be happy. Because a lot of people feel guilty if they laugh when they are grieving, but you have to make memories. We don’t want them sitting there crying all the time.
‘Three years ago we had an elderly gentleman whose wife was a patient and we got to know him really well. On Christmas Day, he wanted to do something special so he bought some decorations for his wife, a little tree and we decorated her room.
‘Now every year at Christmas he comes to see me, brings flowers and puts a little message on our memory tree and sits in the garden for a little while. It was an honour to help him with his loss and it is lovely that he comes back to see us. He says he feels at home here because it is so nice and peaceful.’
Working in the hospice has helped Elizabeth process her own grief, and she has made friends for life. She still meets Tracy – the nurse who looked after Colin in his final days – even though she has since retired, and Elizabeth never feels lonely.
‘It’s like I have a second adopted family. Sometimes the work is very difficult. When you finish you have to try to cut off from it, but you can’t always – because these people are always on your mind,’ she explains.
‘But I am glad to be able to tell people I have been through what they are going through, and even though they don’t know how they will cope, they find a way. They don’t believe it at the time, but I can prove to them that you do cope. Helping other people has helped me in my own grief. And if I didn’t volunteer, I don’t know where I would be today.’
‘When you lose someone, suddenly you’ve got lots of people around you. But once the funeral is over, everybody goes back to life, because they’ve all got their lives to live and then all of a sudden you’re on your own. And sometimes that’s when it hits you.
‘I could be sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, going into town and just wandering around the shops just to do something. But I’m here now, and I’m making a difference, not only to myself but to everybody that walks through that door.’
This Christmas, Elizabeth will visit the couple’s 57-year-old son in Wales only once all her shifts are done. While on Christmas night, after a busy shift at the hospice, she will go home, light a candle and raise a glass to Colin in a quiet moment of reflection.
‘I sit there and I talk to him all the time. He’s a mischief maker. He turns my lights on and off. But that’s a comfort to me; because I know he’s there. He’s just gone into another room. That’s how I look at it.’
The charity Sue Ryder offers a range of free online grief support, including a bereavement community and self-help platform called the‘Grief Guide’.
