29 June 2023
Maggie Cornish has volunteered for Harbour Hospice for 15 years as a life story writer. Last year she took on the role of coordinating Warkworth/Wellsford’s life story team. She has written many life stories in her time but the one she will never forget was the one she never got to finish.
When Maggie begins a patient’s life story the first question she asks is ‘who are you writing this for?’ “We once had a grandmother who wanted her grandchildren to know what life was like for her in her youth. Some people want their eulogy done. Some people, especially young mothers, want to leave picture books of the time they had with their children or write letters to them.”
But the story Maggie will never forget was the one she never got to finish. “I went to see this gentleman and he said the story was for his son. We had our first hour together and he went through various things - the time he'd spent in the Navy, the time he spent with his son growing up. It all seemed relatively straightforward, until he said he hadn't seen or talked to his son in 20 years.
“Well, he phoned me the next morning and he said, ‘I don't think I'll carry on with this. I think I'll get in touch with him.’ So he found him and they talked and talked and talked and then the son came to see him after 20 years of estrangement. I said, ‘I don't know if I'm allowed to say this to you, but I'm very proud of you.’”
Maggie is a registered nurse who had specialised in child psychiatry and family mental health. She was drawn to the life story volunteer role because she’d always had an interest in how people “got to where they are”. She says she initially saw the service as an “add-on” to the important work the clinical and family support teams were doing.
“But the more life stories I wrote the more I began to see how important the process of telling your story was for people. I saw how much people processed things through their life. Some of these things they'd been hanging on to for years. Now was their time to say it and we might never put it in the story, but they got it out. It's very cathartic.” Maggie believes Hospice IS an “inspired” organisation and that’s why she’s so proud to call herself a Harbour Hospice volunteer. When her father died in 1976 in a hospital in Canada hospice services had only just started to emerge. “So, Dad’s death was terrible. The medical teams were wanting to carry on with all these treatments, blood transfusions, antibiotics, and I wanted that too because I didn’t want him to die. But he, devoutly religious, had said he was ready to die.
“As the years have gone on, I have thought that was so unfair to him. Not long after his death I saw a docu-drama about an outpost nurse in Canada who was working with the Indian population. She was very much a believer in a home like setting with family around when you’re dying and, with comfort, letting the process take its course. I thought then 'that’s the way to do it’. And that's when the principles of Hospice care became such a good fit for me.”
Maggie was recognised for 15 years service at this year's Long Service Awards.
