COURTESY HOLY FAMILY HOME
Incarnate Word Sister Margaret McAuliffe and residents share stories near a waterfall in the garden at Holy Family Cancer Home.
Incarnate Word Sister Margaret McAuliffe and residents share stories near a waterfall in the garden at Holy Family Cancer Home.
Dying find comfort, love for the final journey home
PARMA-“We can’t cure our patients, but we can assure the dignity and value of their final days, and keep them comfortable and free of pain,” said Rose Hawthorne, daughter of the 19th century novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, and founder of St. Rose’s Free Home for Incurable Cancer, which cared for the destitute and dying in New York.
As a member of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, New York, just north of New York City, Mother Mary Alphsona, as she became known, inspired homes for cancer patients across the country.
Resting on the crest of a hill on State Road in Parma is Holy Family Home, one of those started in 1956 by the Dominicans. While they returned to their Mother House in New York in 2004, the pastoral care they started continues today through the work of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word, Ursuline Sisters and the Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate who rotate between Holy Family Home and serving the homebound of Slavic Village.
They are celebrating life to its final moments with joy, happiness, hugs and encouragement through clinical and pastoral care in the home and the community hospice. While patients here are treated for their physical pain, they also receive equal doses of emotional and spiritual nourishment.
Medicine can’t cure a broken heart and much of what the sisters do at Holy Family is to relieve emotional pain by bringing family members together while there’s still time to resolve differences.
Incarnate Word Sister Margaret Mary McAuliffe arrived here 45 years ago from Limerick, Ireland. A teacher and administrator for years, she came to Holy Family Home in November 2004. With an infectious smile and deep love for Jesus, she fills patients and families with an unwavering love whether she’s giving a warm hug, keeping a child entertained so a parent can grieve or sitting quietly at the final moments.
Her experience is personal. When her brother, Dan, was dying of cancer in Boston, she spent weeks with him on his final journey and learned the power of being present.
Ursuline Sister Frances Helen Komar likewise, wrestled early on with the death of her younger brother when he was 18. “I learned very early on about the preciousness of life,” she says.
Both women draw on that experience to help them in the home and out in the community. There’s a waiting list for that care, which is provided free of charge. The Home is supported solely by donations. The community hospice began two years ago and is the only Catholic hospice in Cuyahoga County.
Eucharist, rosary and Mass are offered daily as is plenty of one-on-one time. “A lot of what we do is build trust with people to help them in their journey. We don’t judge and we pray that they will forgive themselves just as God has forgiven them,” says Sister McAuliffe.
They learn firsthand about God’s love. Some people have called it the “first step to heaven.” “To see the peace that overcomes them at the moment of death—that’s the presence of Christ,” she says. And sharing that experience isn’t limited to the nuns. Everyone—from housekeepers to nurses and volunteers—participate in prayers.
They follow Mother Theresa’s simple advice to, “Do little things with great love.”
“This ministry is very humbling. With physical death, there is an end. But the spiritual is eternal. People allow us to share in this precious time with them. Our faith has to be deep-rooted because we cannot give what we don’t have,” says Sister Komar.
Their job is a daily reminder of their faith.
“God nourishes us and that’s helps us in our work,” says Sister McAuliffe. “And the people here are so centered on God, as weakened as they are.”
They have learned much about cherishing life, about the value of simplicity and to follow Jesus’ words to love one another.
“In ministering to [the dying], I see myself as ‘wounded healer,’ ” says Father Alexander Inke, A.J., chaplain of Holy Family Home and a native of Uganda. “I reflect that these dying individuals could be me, and I treat them with love and caring as I would treat my own family.”
Sister McAuliffe sums it up with the words of Stephen Grellet, the French Quaker missionary, who wrote: “I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
For information about Holy Family Home and Holy Family Hospice, please visit www.holyfamilyhome.com.
Hoke is a freelance writer.
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