Ruby Laughren has dedicated her life to caring for others. A registered nurse, she worked in Geriatrics at Deer Lodge Centre for twenty-one years and, following her retirement, began volunteering with Hospice Palliative Care Manitoba – a resource that she had accessed numerous times for staff and families during her career at the bedside.
Having been drawn to Geriatrics because of her love of working with the elderly and veterans in her community, the shift to working with those at end of life as a volunteer was a natural one. She has volunteered in a number of capacities at HPCM including peer support, Memory Tree, and Hike for Hospice, but her primary role has always been End-of-Life volunteer visiting. Since the beginning of her volunteer career with HPCM she has helped ease the transition for twelve end-of-life clients with love, companionship, and a listening ear. Hers is a contribution that did not go unnoticed and at HPCM’s 2010 Conference, she was presented with the HPCM Companion of Hospice Award. In a nomination letter for the award, the daughter-in-law of one of Ruby’s clients called Ruby their family’s angel – a woman who was their mother’s companion but soon became family. Ruby “did whatever she could to make Mom P.’s requests a reality” and “naturally went beyond any form of human kindness I’d ever seen”. She “is the finest example of what love is.”
Ruby’s experience with palliative care began at a very young age when she helped care for her little brother who her family ultimately lost to brain cancer. Ruby was just nine years old at the time. She would sit with him for hours, talking and playing cards. It is this love and companionship that she later brought to her end-of-life clients. When she begins working with a new client she encourages them to write a “To Do” list of things they would like to do before they are no longer able to go out – a bucket list long before the movie “The Bucket List” was ever released. She then does everything she can to make their wishes a reality. She has taken clients to visit their first home, out for lunch to a special restaurant, to take a final Tai Chi class, and even to the zoo to say goodbye to their favorite animals. In her small ways she brings joy and meaning to the last days and weeks of her clients’ lives.
One of Ruby’s most well known clients, Doris, with whom she starred in a United way video, was initially resistant to having a volunteer visitor, thinking that no one would want to spend time with her because of her dependence on oxygen and decreased mobility. Doris was concerned that a volunteer visitor would try to talk to her about death and dying before she was ready. Ruby was quick to put these fears to rest, letting Doris know that she would be leaving the topics of conversation up to her. When and if she was ready to talk about death she was welcome to – and she soon did, openly and without fear. Doris and Ruby shared many lovely afternoons, going for lunch to her favorite places. And when Ruby and Doris were featured in the United Way video, Doris was honoured. Her son spoke of what this “30 seconds of fame…with Ruby” had meant to Doris at her celebration of life service, after she passed away a few weeks later.
“Knowing that you have made a difference” in someone’s life is the most rewarding part of volunteering according to Ruby. You can make a difference in so many different ways. For some people it is as simple as listening to what they have to say, for another client of Ruby’s it was helping her put together a memory book with pictures and mementos that helped tell the story of her life, so that after she was gone her young grandchildren could “know her” as a person, not just as the fragile patient she had grown to be. “There was so much pleasure in seeing her talk about the pictures and tell the story around each of them so the grandkids would know this about her when they could read for themselves,” remembers Ruby. Helping those who are dying find meaning and joy in their last days, is a powerful calling; one that Ruby encourages others to follow. “Know that you can make a difference in a dying person’s life” advises Ruby, “Be there to listen… it’s the best gift you can give someone. Let them say what they need to say. Sometimes that, in itself, can be a gift.”