The Kindness of Strangers
At first, she just made a change in her own nursing life, transferring to a position in the intensive care unit where she had fewer patients and more time, where she felt she would never have to leave a dying patient alone. Then she began talking to her fellow nurses. Maybe volunteers could come in before or after their shifts to sit with dying patients. “Great idea,” they would say, “but I can’t possibly do one more thing on top of my job.” She talked to administrators. “Great idea,” they would say, and that would be the end of the conversation. She kept working. She kept thinking. The years passed, but her sense of mission remained. “It was an idea waiting for the right time,” Clarke says now.
The right time came unexpectedly in 2001 when, at a lunch break during an in-service seminar at the hospital, the director of pastoral care overheard Clarke talking about her volunteer idea to another nurse. By that time, Clarke been talking about the idea for nearly fifteen years.
“This is just incredible,” the director said. “Go home and write a proposal and bring it to me as soon as you can.” Clarke had no idea how to write a proposal, but she went home and wrote one anyway. Six months later, No One Dies Alone (NODA) was launched.