Captain Ron’s VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE:

August 2009

Last winter was particularly drab, cold and prolonged.  I wasn’t the only one to think that.  The National Weather Service said that the winter months were colder than the average.  March, for example, was 10 degrees below normal overall.  It was on one of those early March days, driving under grey skies into a chilling, gusty wind.  I happened to be in Richland, driving north on George Washington Way.  It was as though I was driving in a black and white movie; the color had seemingly gone out of everything.  Then on my left I saw the Bali Hai Hotel with its colorful sign beckoning weary travelers.  The very name of the hotel dates its construction to sometime in the 1950’s.  Borrowing the name of a fictional island from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific” the hotel invited people to take a break from their journey and escape to a tropical island paradise.

James Hilton’s 1933 classic, Lost Horizon, may have served as the inspiration for the island.  In the book Hilton presents the world with the likewise fictional ‘Shangri La.’  It’s not an island, however, but a mountain retreat in the pristine air of the Himalayas, but warm and sunny.  Closer to our time is the 1972 Kenny Loggins song, “Vahevala.”  So convincing was the song that many thought Vahevala was an actual island.  Loggins says that he simply liked the sound of the word, which he invented, and which was inspired by actually sailing in the Caribbean Sea.  Kind of like the Viking version of heaven, known as “Valhalla,” but warmer.

Each of these, an author, a rock music composer and a Broadway play writing duo had one thing in mind: taking their audiences away from their own drab, gusty lives and transporting them to a place of warmth, love, peace and joy.  We sometimes call that escape. 

Entertainment is big business today because the need for escape is real.  People come home from a long day of work and escape into a good book.  Kids endure a hard week of school and escape to the movies Friday night.  Families endure months of a daily routine and
escape on a grand vacation.

Hospice patients have the same need to escape.  Some are still capable of making one more trip to visit family, or one more venture to the lake to go fishing.  Some can only escape in their minds.  For anyone whose circumstances limit how much one can physically escape daily reality, it is especially important to find ways of traveling away mentally.  Some Hospice volunteers bring photos or travel videos to patients.

Most of us have experienced times in our lives when we were in just the right place at the right time. Weather conditions were ideal.  We were doing what we wanted to do with those we most wanted to do it with.

This well of memories provides a wonderful resource for Hospice patients.  Maybe the disease has progressed to the point where they won’t check off any more items on their 100 things to do before I die ‘bucket list.’  What they can do, however, is travel in their minds or memories to a place that brings peace and comfort for awhile.

As a chaplain I have used a technique called Guided Imagery, in which the patient is narrated from their physically limiting place to a mental awareness of somewhere else.  I learned the technique during a retreat at a monastery many years ago.  The friar who instructed me suggested finding ways to involve the senses.  It doesn’t mean I need to go out and pick a bouquet of flowers and put them under someone’s nose. Merely the mentioning of the scent, along with narrating a description of the meadow in springtime, will help bring those memories into the present.

Some think that Hospice patients want to talk about dying.  Some do but many do not.  They want to remember life, to celebrate life, to live as fully as possible until the flower fades and the curtain closes for the last time.  Hospice is a wonderful concept and we at Lower Valley Hospice are a collection of unique individuals with lots of creative gifts offering a wide array of techniques to help people enjoy one more visit to Shangri La, even if they can’t leave their beds.

Rev. Ron Jetter, Executive Director
Lower Valley Hospice and Palliative Care

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