Scarborough hospice volunteers take time to listen.
V.O.N. Hospice Service client Isobel McQuarrie, left, relaxes at home with her daughter Katherine Bigwood, right, and volunteer Yasmin Dhanji.
Staff photo/MIKE ADLER
After her father died, Yasmin Dhanji had questions she needed to answer.
Those questions, she says, were spiritual ones, "about my own mortality," about her lifetime "journey," about old age.
For some time, Dhanji volunteered at a Scarborough nursing home, Bendale Acres, but she read about the Hospice Scarborough program run by the Victorian Order of Nurses and decided to volunteer.
Over the 11 years since, her regular visits have given program clients friendly conversations they have greatly enjoyed, but Dhanji added they have also helped her.
"I've learned that I'm not afraid of death and I'm not afraid of aging. I'm inspired by the people that I visit," she said.
Isobel McQuarrie, one of the "wonderful people" Dhanji has befriended, has ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), but does not want to leave the home she's lived in for 48 years.
The house near Hwy. 401 and Warden Avenue, after all, has "my own bed, and my own food" and it's where McQuarrie's children and her grandchildren - all 11 of them - can come to see her, she said in her living room, where the chairs can angle steeply downwards to help McQuarrie rise.
It's also where Dhanji visits for 90 minutes each week.
"We sit and we talk and she doesn't want to eat. We talk about everything," including the news, Dhanji said.
Dhanji said she first met McQuarrie and her daughter, Katherine Bigwood, in July. "It's a short time that I've known you, but it feels like a long time."
The hospice program has existed for 14 years in Scarborough, but isn't run from there and many people in the area don't know about it, said Dharmika Christie, a co-ordinator for the program's pool of around 75 volunteers.
Each given 30 hours of initial training, the volunteers speak 18 languages between them and include retirees, nurses, teachers, even doctors - though no volunteer can give professional advice to a client, Christie said.
Overwhelmingly, volunteers have been women.
Some clients ask for people from the same ethnic group, or the same gender; VON Toronto tries its best to match them to what clients want, said Christie.
McQuarrie, though, is glad Dhanji comes to her home with a "different outlook" and from a different background. That's interesting, and McQuarrie said she learns things as a result,
She also said she hopes this article inspires more people to volunteer.
For her part, Bigwood said Dhanji's visits give her peace of mind when she is working. "It's the presence of somebody I know is checking in," she said.
Dhanji was also a regular visitor for Edward Lynch, a "constant for six or seven years in my dad's life," his daughter Jane Lynch said this month, recalling Dhanji continued visiting her father as he moved from an assisted-living home to long-term care and finally to a hospital during his last days. â?¨The elder Lynch had Parkinson's disease, which often gives sufferers "an impassive look" but "behind that face there's an active mind" and a good sense of humour, she said.
It made Jane Lynch feel better to see the former Agincourt resident, who died in March 2010, being given the intellectual stimulation he had sometimes lacked in assisted living, and to feel someone else was interested in her parent "as the human being you know them to be."
The conversations with Dhanji, she said, were a "little conduit into normal life, I think."â?¨Dhanji said she realized she and Edward Lynch could learn a lot from each other. "Physically, he had challenges but he had so many things to share."
Some people feel intimidated about volunteering for the hospice program, said Dhanji, who tells them the most important thing about it is being able to sit and listen.
"You should be a good listener more than anything else. You're not here to solve anybody's problems," she said, adding, "I don't look at the limitations (of the client), I look at the opportunities."
To inquire about the VON Hospice program in Scarborough, contact the client service coordinators at 647-788-3180, ext. 2383 or 2359, the volunteer development co-ordinator at 647-788-3180, ext. 2379 or write to Hospice.Scarborough@VON.ca