Editor:
To the wonderful staff, administrators, Fraser Health, donors, conceptualizers, volunteers of the Palliative Care Unit, Burnaby Hospital:
Re: Patient Roshan Virani, who passed away at your unit:
On behalf of the extended Virani family, this is a heartfelt note for the wonderful, almost otherworldly, oasis and refuge of kindness you have created for dying patients and their families at the Palliative Care Unit at Burnaby Hospital.
During the 10 days we waited on our dying mother around the clock, what could have been the most traumatizing time of our lives was transformed into a time of peace, security and communion of family love and sharing with the deceased that prepared us spiritually for the inevitable.
The above-average competence and care of your nurses allowed us this time of peace knowing that everything possible was being done to keep our mother comfortable.
For us, the staff were no less than angels tip-toeing around the ward offering advice when requested and encouraging us to talk in mum’s ear to say everything that needed to be said because the sense of hearing is the last sense to go.
The understanding and patience demonstrated to cultural diversity was exemplary.
Our family and community circle is large and in our culture all are obliged to pay homage to the dying and support the family. Very healing cultural practices in themselves, but resulting in a large stream of visitors, which you tolerated with some negotiation of boundaries but with utmost grace for which we are most grateful
The memory of the kindness experienced during my mother’s final days will always remain with us and be handed down as family stories of special memories on par with the kindness the family experienced when we landed as Ugandan Refugees one snowy winter evening at an army barracks in Quebec that was hastily converted into a refugee hospitality centre.
As a bewildered pre-teen then, in an utterly foreign environment, I bonded with Canada as a child does to the mother who is its first face of kindness.
I hope that we will be able to continue to maintain these spaces of humanity in Canada as they are after all the hall marks of a great Civilization.
Hanif Virani, Burnaby
