Not long ago, many people who were dying were left alone. Doctors were taught to cure illness. When they could not, they often turned away. People in pain got too little medicine. Many died afraid and hurting, with no one to talk to.
One woman decided dying people deserved better.
A promise to a dying man
Cicely Saunders was born in London in 1918. She trained as a nurse during the Second World War. Then she worked as a social worker in a hospital, helping sick people and their families. In 1945 she became a Christian.
In 1948 she met a patient named David Tasma. He had escaped from Poland, and now he was dying of cancer in a London hospital. They talked for hours about what dying people need. When he died, he left her about five hundred pounds. He said he wanted to be a window in the place she would one day build.
She did not forget.
Becoming a doctor
Cicely saw that to change how dying people were cared for, she needed to be a doctor. In her thirties, she went back to school. She became a doctor in 1957.
She learned how to control pain well, giving medicine on time so people did not have to wait in agony. She also taught that a dying person can hurt in body, mind, family and spirit all at once. She called it "total pain," and she said all of it needs care.
St Christopher's
In 1967 she opened St Christopher's Hospice in south London. It was a place where dying people were kept comfortable, listened to and visited by their families. Gardens, flowers and friendly staff replaced cold wards. And there was a window, in honor of David Tasma.
Her ideas spread around the world. Today hospice care, comfort care for the very sick and dying, helps millions of people. Cicely died in 2005, at eighty-seven, in the hospice she founded.
Why she did it
Cicely believed every person matters to God, all the way to the end. Jesus counted visiting the sick as care for himself.
Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Matthew 25:36 · King James VersionThe original Greek
γυμνὸς καὶ περιεβάλετέ με, ἠσθένησα καὶ ἐπεσκέψασθέ με, ἐν φυλακῇ ἤμην καὶ ἤλθατε πρός με.
Found in Codex Vaticanus (about AD 325), Codex Sinaiticus (about AD 350).
What it means for us
Most of us are afraid of death and avoid people who are dying. That is very human. Cicely showed that sitting with someone at the end is one of the most loving things anyone can do.
If someone you love is near the end of life, you can be there, listen, and help them be comfortable. You can be the friend who stays. That is the same care she built a whole hospice to give.