The name’s been done to Death
After years of hospice work, Mary Death has heard all the jokes about her name. ‘‘It’s been done to death,’’ she said. Over more than two decades, 68-yearold Death has worked as a nurse and a nursing director at four hospices from Blenheim to London.
For the past several years, she’s been director of nursing at Lower Hutt’s Te Omanga Hospice. She absolutely loves her work and has done ever since the day she joined Mary Potter Hospice as a trainee nurse.
While there, the medical director told her his theory of why people worked in palliative care.
‘‘People get attracted to hospice work because they have had their own grief and they know what helped them.’’
Her grief came from losing 2-year-old son Myles, killed when he chased a ball in front of a car in the late 1970s.
Most of the hospice staff were over the age of 50, and she would be surprised if many of them had not experienced some sort of loss.
‘‘People put their foot through the door and you’re in the right place. For me, I loved the fact I had the freedom to make a difference,’’ Death said. ‘‘When you get to the end of your life, it’s the little things that make a difference.’’
She said she would help people tick off what was on their bucket list. ‘‘If you ask a dying person what they want, it’s not to travel the world, it’s for a lemon Popsicle.’’
A big part of hospice work was not just looking after a patient’s physical needs, but their spiritual needs, too.
For example, the sea was important to her and when her time came, she’d like to die by the sea. For other patients, the flowers that came on their trays might be the most important thing in their day.
During her career working in hospices, Death has written poetry inspired by what she has seen and experienced. ‘‘My patients were my muse.’’ Some of her poems are private, others she shares with patients or staff. Retirement was coming up and she had been toying with a project to keep her busy.
She wanted to connect with hospices around the country and ask for them to provide something creative to add to a book.