24 February 2025
Our community of regular givers provide a vital source of regular income for Harbour Hospice, enabling our team to plan for and meet the community’s growing needs. We call them our Hospice Hearts. Here, Hospice Heart Karin Kolbe explains why she began giving regularly two years ago.
Every month on a Tuesday Karin Kolbe drops into Harbour Hospice with an envelope. Tucked inside is a donation and a handwritten message thanking the team for their compassion and support.
Karin started this monthly vigil in 2023 after her husband, Jan, died in Harbour Hospice care. She says it’s her way of thanking hospice for taking such good are of Jan, and it allows her to keep a connection with the place that brought her husband great comfort in his final months.
“When I go into Hospice I just feel the peace there. Everyone is so sweet and kind.”
Karin remembers Jan as a man who loved people, and who enjoyed his interactions with the hospice team as much as he had his interactions with family and friends. He loved his job as a salesman, was a keen fisherman and had taken great care of his family.
Jan and Karin had both grown up in South Africa and met in their early twenties while on holiday in Durban. They got engaged after only 38 days, with Karin saying that, for both, it was love at first sight.
What Karin loved most about her husband of 54 years was that he was a very good dancer. “When I was young it was my life to dance, and the night we met we were out dancing with a group of young people. When he asked me to dance, I jumped up before he could change his mind. I told my friend, ‘I'm going to dance with this man all night.’ Not realising it would be for the rest of my life.”
The couple married just seven months later and went on to have four children. They emigrated to New Zealand in 2013, and their family grew to include six grandchildren.
In 2020 Jan was diagnosed with cancer. He received treatment and returned to good health, but six months later the cancer came back.
Harbour Hospice became involved in Jan’s care in early 2022, with Jan receiving regular visits from hospice’s community nursing team. Karin would also ring hospice’s 24-hour line for help when she wasn’t sure what to do as his main carer.
“The nurses were just wonderful,” she says. “Their patience and the love they give is absolutely amazing.”
When Jan started to become more unwell he went into hospice’s Inpatient Unit (IPU) for a week’s respite care. Karin says, “He really enjoyed it there and he loved talking and joking with the nurses. It was great for me, too, because I knew he was in good hands.
“I remember the day he left. All the doctors and nurses came out to say goodbye. They said, ‘We'll see you in six months,’ (when Jan was next booked in for respite). And I thought, ‘Wow, these people are just so kind.’”
While under hospice care Jan also received counselling from a hospice counsellor and Karin says it helped him come to terms with dying.
“Before the counselling he had always said he wanted to stay with me, and he had all these things he wanted to do. For me to learn that he was ready to go to God, it felt as though the whole world just lifted off my shoulders.”
Three months before Jan was scheduled to return for his second respite visit his health began deteriorating rapidly. He went into Hospice’s IPU for end-of-life care and died on 2 September 2022 with his wife and children by his side.
Karin misses Jan terribly and says she finds it comforting to be able to go back to hospice regularly with donations. “For me it’s still having that connection,” she says. “I live five minutes away from my children, my church, my library, all the shops I like. And I’m five minutes from the place where Jan found peace and was taken such good care of.”
The heart of Harbour Hospice is its people – its staff, volunteers and you. Become a Hospice Heart today and join our special group of supporters who enable Harbour Hospice to plan for and ensure that local families will continue to have access to the palliative care they need.
