Becoming an End-of-Life Companion, Part 1: Starting My Training in Berlin

Yesterday I started an 8-month training to become an end-of-life companion at a hospice in Berlin. End-of-life companion (Sterbebegleiter) basically means that I will visit people at the end of their lives, in their homes or at the hospice, and simply spend time with them and their families, offering emotional support.

I decided to share this journey publicly, hoping it might motivate some of you to volunteer at your local hospice too, because help is needed. But I also want to share some of the knowledge I'm learning about caring for people at the end of their lives.

On day 1 of our training, we were introduced to our trainers and got to meet our 11 peers. Here are my impressions, thoughts, and learnings from this very first day.

❧ Modern hospice care was invented by women, namely (but not only) by Cicely Saunders and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and is still run by women today: all our trainers, as well as ten of the twelve of us volunteers, are women. So women don't only take care of birth, they also take care of dying.

❧ Hospice care is about "adding life to days, even when we can't add days to life" (Cicely Saunders).

❧ I learned the concept of total pain, meaning that the pain of a dying person has physical, psychological, social, and spiritual components that interact with one another. Unfortunately, psychological, social, and spiritual pain are often overlooked when caring for a dying person.

❧ Non-medical hospice care, like psychological, emotional, and spiritual support, is almost always provided by volunteers.

❧ 80 to 90 percent of people would choose to die at home, which is why outpatient hospice care is becoming more and more important.

❧ When we sat down at the beginning of the session, each of us volunteers found a different quote at our seat, together with some snacks. Mine translates as "Freedom and joy is about letting go, not about collecting and preserving." In the context of hospice care, this quote takes on a completely new dimension for me.

❧ One of our trainers reminded me a lot, and I mean a lot, of my aunt, who passed away almost two years ago. I really had to pull myself together not to just hug her. Since saying goodbye to my aunt at her hospital bed is one of the reasons I'm in this program now, it dawned on me that I'm in the middle of a cosmic joke, and it's beautiful.

After our first day of training, I really feel I've come to the right place. It will be an incredible journey with very special people, and a lot to learn about dying, death, and also myself. And I am forever grateful that my aunt will be by my side throughout this journey.