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Thursday, July 30, 2015

All The Lonely People

Tommy Steel's statue of Eleanor Rigby, Liverpool
 by Kristina Newport

As hospice and palliative medicine practitioners, we have the opportunity to witness the lives and deaths of people from all walks of life. Many people we care for die surrounded by loved ones who are full of memories, pain and grief. Others, however, die alone, or with relationships too strained to bring value. When we care for these people, we learn who they are and become their witnesses. We hear their stories and secrets, as Lizzy Miles MSW discussed in a recent Pallimed post. We witness their end. And we remember.

Uberto Pasolini’s 2015 movie, Still Life, illustrates the life of one person who was serious about remembering. The main character, John May, is a government worker whose job it is to find family members of people who died alone. He works meticulously, exhausting all paths to find someone who cares. If he fails at this task, he shows his own respect by planning and attending funeral services no one else attends. He keeps his own photo album and remembers people he never knew in life.

"Sad Lady" ~Stella Newport, 4 years
I’ve often thought that I should keep a similar record of the patients I’ve met who have died. When I started fellowship, I kept a notebook of names. It started collecting dust by month 2. In practice, I’ve jotted down notes without regularity. Over the years, unique cases stand out, but specific names and stories fade.

The risk of increased numbers of people dying alone has the potential to increase as more people reach their elder years alone. Maria Carney, MD completed a literature review revealing increasing numbers of elderly US citizens without children, nicknamed “elder orphans”. A similar phenomenon is documented in the UK, with estimates that by 2030, two million pensioners in Britain will have no adult children. Both articles discuss the rising need for personal and medical care but they also raise the question: who will remember them?

This is hardly a new concept. We even have a soundtrack, nicely provided by the Beatles in their 1966 song Eleanor Rigby. Although the idea is old, it feels like a valuable and timely concept to consider. What does it mean for us, as providers and as people, to carry these people with us, or not? Particularly when we hold stories no when else knows, with no one to pass them onto? I wonder, what do other providers do to remember? To acknowledge? Is it our job to do the remembering, like John May did? Does that benefit anyone other than the remember-er? In a recent conversation with a hospice social worker, she pointed out the value in getting to know her patients, if for no other reason but that the patient will feel they will be remembered.

 

Kristina Newport MD (@kbnewport) practices Hospice and Palliative Medicine in Lancaster, PA where she also spends time running after her children, 4 and 6.

Photo Credit: Tommy Steel's Staue of Elanor Rigby via Wikimedia
Illustration Credit: Sad People by Stella Newport, all rights reserved

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