“Nobody ever said Gerard was dying. We just took a diagnosis, abided by the treatment and went ahead with that. It was a bewildering time.”
Ann Murray lost her husband to bowel cancer in 2008, after a series of complicated surgeries and a difficult treatment plan. "It's been seven years since I lost him and it's as raw now today as ever. Losing your partner is like having your heart torn out of your chest," she says.
She met Gerard in Canada almost 50 years ago. She was working as a nurse in a hospital in Toronto while he worked in Scotiabank. He was a native of Castlewellan, Co Down while she comes from Ballina, Co Mayo – to which they retired in 1996 after 30 years working on the other side of the Atlantic. They have two sons and two daughters, "all of them Canadians".
Caring for the elderly as a gerontology nurse for most of her career, Murray is acutely aware of the need for palliative care services and has always supported the Mayo Roscommon Hospice Foundation. Homecare nurses from the foundation attended Gerard in his final months.
Murray wonders how different the experience of a loved one dying could have been if her husband had been cared for in a hospice, where it is often easier to talk about death. In hospital they never spoke about Gerard dying, she says.
Quality of life
“Nobody uses the word ‘dying’. We never spoke about it. You follow the textbook: the diagnosis is this, therefore the treatment is this. But you must look at the person and the family and ask: is it worth it? What kind of quality of life is this person going to have if we do that? I feel the hospice is the place for that.
“The treatment was very, very hard for him. The surgeries were a disaster. It caused him great distress and discomfort. He didn’t want to die.”
Gerard passed away after a weekend trip around Northern Ireland on which he met all his relatives and friends.
“A bed in a hospital is one thing, but a hospice is an ethos,” says Murray. “The experience of the transition from life to death is made a little easier in a hospice setting. It doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom and sadness. You want peace and light and positivity.”
Murray is one of 150 Ballina locals in a group called Heroes for Hospice, who are running a fundraising musical called Beyond the Barricade in aid of the foundation. They have raised €30,000 this year.
Overwhelmed
Lavinia Gilmartin
, musical director of the show, which travels to Manchester later this month, says they have been overwhelmed by the support they have received.
The story is, she says, “inspired by the work of the hospice, a story of courage and fortitude – a typical plot of triumph over adversity with plenty of recognisable songs”.
Cynthia Clampett, chief executive of the foundation, says the people of Mayo and Roscommon have always been extremely supportive .
The musical is part of a number of fundraising efforts for the foundation, which recently announced it had been given planning permission to build a dedicated 14-bed specialist hospice unit in Castlebar.
With building expected to be completed by 2018, there are also plans for an eight-bed unit to be built on site at Roscommon County Hospital, pending planning permission.
After a wait of almost 23 years since the establishment of the foundation, the vision of a specialist hospice for the people of Mayo and Roscommon will soon become a reality.
The Dublin show of
Beyond the Barricade
will be held in Liberty Hall, on October 28th at 7.30pm and costs €20. Tickets are €20 and available at ctb.ie.
