Volunteers provide companionship for patients nearing the end of their lives. 
Martie Blodget volunteers for the organization No One Dies Alone where she sits with people in their last moments before death.
Martie Blodget appreciates the cyclical weather patterns of the Pacific Northwest. She finds the near-constant rain to be calming, cleansing, and predictable. She often bikes along the Willamette River trails, riding through the rain and the early morning fog. When she needs time to herself, she takes her kayak to Smith River to see the birdlife. She finds solace in the sights and smells around her. Most nights she cooks dinner with her husband in their quaint, comfortable home surrounded by pictures of their six grandchildren.
No one would ever suspect she is waiting for death.
Blodget is a volunteer for No One Dies Alone, a program first implemented ten years ago at Sacred Heart Medical Center University District in Eugene, Oregon. No One Dies Alone (NODA) is a volunteer organization that provides companions to dying patients who would otherwise be alone. Volunteers can serve as a surrogate family?watching over patients, making sure they are comfortable, alerting the staff if they need assistance, and providing a sense of companionship at the end of life. Those involved with NODA believe this support is a basic human right and a necessity in life?s final moments.
??????????? ?There are only two things that people inevitably do,? says Sandra Clarke, a former Sacred Heart staff nurse. ?They are born, and they die. You do not come into this world alone, and you shouldn?t have to leave it that way.?
For Clarke, the program is of great personal importance. Seventeen years ago, Clarke was working when an elderly gentleman nearing the end of his life requested a favor: he asked her to sit with him and hold his hand as he died. Touched by his request, she agreed, but was forced to leave the room in order to tend to her other patients.
When she returned to the man?s room an hour later, he had passed with his hand outstretched on the bed. The man, who had outlived all of his relatives, died alone.
?It really resonated with me how unjust it was, that someone asked something so simple of me and I couldn?t do it,? Clarke says.
Inspired by her story, Director of Spiritual Care Bob Sherry and Program Director Carleen McCormack formed NODA seven years later.
?People who have no family and people who have huge families do this?it touches everyone,? Clarke says. ?And it has definitely helped with my guilt. Every time I volunteer it makes me feel like yes this is right, this is the way it should be.?
Though it began with a group of only ten volunteers, the program just celebrated its ten-year anniversary. The organization now has a volunteer base of over sixty.
The training process for volunteers is extensive. In order to participate in NODA, applicants must volunteer for a minimum of three months in some other capacity for the hospital and complete a rigorous eight-hour training program.
?[We train] people for how to really be present at the bedside for someone,? McCormack says. ?We really stress that there be no real agendas, particularly religious agendas, at the bedside. It?s one human being, being there for another.? After completion, volunteers sign up for shifts during times they are available and receive calls from a vigil coordinator when needed.
?We want [volunteers] to get to know us; we want to get to know them,? McCormack says. ?It?s a very intimate personal type of volunteerism to be part of No One Dies Alone. You?re one-on-one at a patient?s bedside. We want to make sure that people are prepared for that.?
Martie Blodget?s past experience as a volunteer with Sacred Heart?s Hospice program, which provides end-of-life care, gave her just this sort of preparation when she started working with NODA nine years ago.
?I was very gung-ho [when I started] so I said I was available 24/7,? Blodget says. ?Then you start getting calls. And it?s a little scary at first.?
On Blodget?s first call, she arrived at the hospital late in the evening. She expected her patient, an elderly man, to be in a drug-induced comatose state. Blodget was shocked to find he was perfectly lucid?he even asked her to sing Gilbert and Sullivan songs. She says she?ll never forget that call.
?I said, ?This guy wants to sing some Gilbert and Sullivan? I know a few,? Blodget says. ?So we sang together, and he professed that he had such a wonderful time with all these people coming to be with him. And he died the next day very peacefully.?
Although others might find the experience upsetting, Blodget felt remarkably at peace when she returned home.
?I was so delighted that I could be there for him,? Blodget says. ?I mean, what are we there for? We?re there to act as surrogate family. So that?s my full focus ? definitely on ?let?s get this person dying as quickly and as comfortably as possible.??
Blodget?s second experience with NODA was very different. Her patient, a woman who had just had her ventilator removed, died within minutes of her arrival. Still, Blodget found the experience moving.
?It was a really beautiful experience,? Blodget says. ?Whatever that energy force is in us, I really felt like I could almost see that leave her body and go right out into a tree. I felt a sense of calm?I felt a sense of energy leaving a body that was worthless.?
McCormack says these kinds of experiences are common amongst volunteers, although emotional connections between volunteers and patients are much rarer than many expect. Because volunteers have no personal history with the patient, a deep emotional reaction is not common, as the volunteers? focus is to help dying patients pass on from this life.
While some may be unable to fathom feeling calm detachment in the face of death, Blodget says this is largely due to society?s concept of death itself.
?[Society?s] association is that death is loss, and for most of us, our family, and our friends, that?s exactly what it is,? Blodget says. ?But if we could actually step away and watch the dying process without the emotion, it?s a beautiful experience, it?s a beautiful process. It?s such a natural process to watch it happen.?
This realization has caused Blodget to become comfortable with death and its inevitability. So much so, in fact, that she already has plans for her own.
?I told my family that when my time comes, what I want them to do is bundle me up really well, somehow get me in a lawn chair and get me outside because nature means everything to me,? Blodget says. ?My view on death [has changed].
It is that I?m not afraid to die, but I am afraid not to live.?
McCormack also believes people should cherish death.
?It?s a privilege, really, to be present for a very sacred time in a person?s life?the passing from one life to the next,? McCormack says. ?People are not born alone, and we feel that people should have a presence when they die. That?s what this program is really about.?
Source: http://www.fluxstories.com/2012/02/no-one-dies-alone/
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