Life, death and a hospice bird hide

The wild carries us forward

My friend met a gentleman in a hospice bird hide once. She walked in there to camp out with her lunch one day, and his binoculars were trained on the large pond out front, his gaze following the orange belly of a kingfisher darting between the reeds. She apologised for interrupting him.

‘Come. Sit,’ he said quietly, breathlessness clinging to the edges of his instruction. They sat together and watched the bird’s iridescent body moving against the stillness of the water. ‘Not a bad way to pass the time, eh?’

I’ve worked in two different hospices throughout my career. One, set more centrally in a bustling community, has inpatient rooms that each back on to a beautiful large courtyard. In winter, evergreen foliage brings vibrancy and fragrance to the grey, with plump robins tame enough to be fed from small plates on window ledges. In spring, its timber planters brim with bluebells, cobalt clusters straining towards the sun-drenched sky. Potted trees fatten with new leaves and birds nest in the roof rafters, tiny beaks peeking over the edge, chirruping hello to the dawning day. Outside the hospice entrance, bench-specked pathways weave through a manicured lawn, large beds bursting with vibrant wildflowers. There’s a supermarket just a few minutes walk away; a busy road somewhere beyond the border. You wouldn’t know it. The garden is a sanctuary within urban chaos. An exhale.

One of my favourite memories of my time working there is of a bbq enjoyed by a young family in that very garden, the sticky summer air embroidered with laughter and smoke. The mother, Sarah, had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour, caught far too late. It had doubled in size over a period of nine weeks.

Fascinated by archaeology, and with a love of hiking, Sarah was not a woman who enjoyed being indoors. Her final wish was to enjoy a bbq outside with all of her family. Her hospice bed had been wheeled to the front lawn, and she sat propped up against its pillows, eating a burger drenched in plastic cheese; sipping sparkling wine from a flute. I saw her roll her sleeves up to feel the stifling heat on her forearms, hollow cheeks tipped to the kiss of the sun. Her adored children ran barefoot across the grass, making monsters of oak trees and fairies of fuchsias. Later, as ashen storm clouds slumped across the horizon, I watched from the window as everyone ran back inside. Nurses and porters frantically wheeled the bed to the safety of the ward. The children giggled in its wake. When the rain started and wind began to whip the walls, Sarah appeared in the garden again, cradled in her husband’s arms, water pooling on the palms of her hands as she stretched them out to catch raindrops. Her relief and elation were palpable. I was told she wanted to feel it one last time. To be at its mercy.

Another time, a mallard and her ducklings had somehow found their way into the courtyard, perhaps enticed by the soothing trickle of its central water feature. They waddled through the garden in a bumbling procession, tiny webbed feet padding softly against the stone. The mother led the way, her head held high, while the ducklings, spun from caramel fluff, bobbed along behind her, their movements clumsy but determined. The babies would veer off-course now and then: one pecking at a fallen petal, another pausing to inspect a dandelion seed. Once their curiosity was satisfied, they’d scurry back into line.

Inside, the hospice stirred in a way I hadn’t seen before. Patients sat up in bed or moved to their french doors, eyes wide with delight at the windows. I, too, found myself gathered with others in silent communion, watching as new life warbled its way through the world. It was comforting for everyone: this precious beginning. Nature - steady, enduring and beautiful - carrying on. Small birds simply stepping forward, with innate trust in the path before them.

The second hospice I worked at prides itself on being more of a rural retreat, set within 22 glorious acres, a landscape of sprawling patchwork green spilling beyond its windows. A woodland fringes the grounds, where the bird hide sits by its pond, and a winding path cuts through deep clusters of trees, their canopy so full that the sky appears only in slivers. There’s a paddock, too, where two donkeys wander slow circles, their almond eyes reflecting something impossibly deep. Animals just know, I think. People wander to the fence to spend time with them, stroking the coarse fur between their ears. They press small chunks of carrot between their teeth by way of thanks for listening to the truths they may not have spoken elsewhere.

One summer at this hospice, a wedding was hosted for a couple in their twenties, the groom resident on the ward after a rare cancer had spread throughout his body. Sadly, the groom wasn’t well enough to marry outside of the hospice, but a dedicated team of nurses and volunteers pulled together to create the most magical day possible for him and his wife. As I was leaving that day, I witnessed the couple and a crowd of their guests gathered on the grass outside, bubbles teasing champagne flutes as they looked out towards the paddock and the fields beyond. The sky had delivered on a spectacular sunset: the last embers of daylight smudged in molten orange along the horizon, long honeyed shadows embracing the crowd. When I spoke to him in the days after, the groom said he’d been terrified that the confines of his illness would feel even more acute on his wedding day. That the sense of what could have been would strip joy from the occasion. But, as he stood out on the terrace in the cool balm of the summer’s night, looking out at the stunning palette of the day’s end, he felt something he hadn’t for weeks. Free. Peaceful. Happy. There is a bench dedicated to him on the terrace now, where those that loved him can sit and reminisce, eyes widened toward scalloped wings as they imagine him soaring above, laughing in the boundless blue.

Later that year, in winter, we cared for an elderly lady who loved photography. I would often see her exploring the grounds in her wheelchair, her and her husband bundled up in thick coats; a chunky, old-school camera strapped to her chest. Unknowingly, she captured an exhibition of her final weeks. When her husband got the film developed, we covered a table with her photographs. There was a lone crow perched on a branch, winter-stripped tree limbs stark against a pastel sky. Sunlight sparking crystallised ground in the woodland. The fine whiskers of a donkey snout, its tongue darting mischievously towards the camera. ‘It brings tears to my eyes,’ her husband said, ‘that she saw out her days with the solace of a world as beautiful as she was.’ She had dedicated her life to campaigning for a better future for the planet; spent time in schools hosting workshops on climate change, encouraging them to make positive changes in their daily lives. She simply loved the earth. Her husband told me that his wife had hated being cold, and as she’d died, sunlight had draped itself across her hospice bed. He believed that this was the earth loving her back.

I often sought solace in the gardens myself, too. On the difficult days - the inevitable moments where I would feel the sorrow and injustice of time cut too short - I would slip outside and let the wild soothe me for a while. I would follow the flutter of white butterflies. I would think of the robins in the courtyard as people I once knew, or walk through the amber-dipped woodland in autumn, breathing in the scent of damp earth. I would remind myself that in the presence of pain and loss, life was still everywhere. Abundant. Healing. Hopeful.

We often think of death as separate from life, but the natural world tells us otherwise. The two are one and the same, in the way flowers wilt and bloom once more; in the caw of the crow on the bare branch; in the daffodils that defiantly spear through frost-hardened ground, golden-lipped, singing to the sky. In the way humans depart but still - through a series of photographs - are as alive as the world they captured. And in the grief after: how those that have lost loved ones feel their whisper in the breeze. I still speak to my late Grandma, and I feel that she is there. Life and death may have separate definitions but the truth is that we can exist in both realms, all at once.

One patient, from the second hospice, left notes for staff to find after she’d died. She’d dreamt of an inpatient room built within the woodland itself and had sketched her vision of this sacred space, nestled amidst the trees. It would be mirrored on the outside for privacy, and so as not to disrupt the spectacular setting. From the inside, the patient would be able to enjoy panoramic views of the natural world around them. She annotated her drawing with notes of tranquility, the cyclical experience of it all, and of deer at dawn. Squirrels would sit, oblivious, pressed to the glass. Rain would streak the windows. Above, in those slivers of sky, candyfloss clouds would drift across the tree canopy, before giving way to a patchwork of silver stars. Life, in one sense, would be coming to an end, and yet just a few feet away: blooming, burrowing, sparkling, still.

My friend met a gentleman in a bird hide once. He died a few short weeks later, his binoculars left on the wooden shelf; his seat empty; the orange bellies of the kingfishers untracked in his absence. I picked them up once, in the months after, wiping dust from the lenses, because I thought it was a nice way to honour him, and because it’s ‘not a bad way to pass the time, eh?’ The bird’s iridescent body still moved against the stillness of the water. The wild continued in its gentle, relentless way. I heard his voice, and it made me smile.

Many people with terminal illnesses have told me that it is the greatest comfort of all in dark times: knowing that they will remain present in the fabric of the world, somehow. Knowing that life goes on. That nature continues to give and take; that the sun rises and sets; that people close to them will sit on benches looking at nice views, and that rich-scented roses will ripen and bloom atop the grave their body rests in.

They like the idea that on some day beyond, somebody - perhaps even a stranger - might sit in a bird hide they once frequented, watching the flash of a kingfisher’s wing. And for reasons they can’t quite explain, they’ll feel a little less alone.