Status: 24.12.2023, 12:00 p.m.
By: Sebastian Tauchnitz
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Rest and care: "There's no such thing as impossible," says caregiver Balu Knedlik. This thought hovers over everything at the Pollinger Hospice. © Emanuel Gronau
Death doesn't take a break even at Christmas, the rooms in the Pollinger Hospice are always occupied. Difficult yet beautiful hours await the guests and the employees.
Polling – A car is parked in the courtyard of the hospice. "All I need is love an champagne" is written on the sticker on the rear window. For a short time, it seems inappropriate in this place. And then all the more fitting. Yes, people die in the hospice in the Pfaffenwinkel in the beautiful Pollinger monastery. 100 to 120 per year. It is a place of farewell and sorrow, pain and speechlessness. But it is also a place of love, enjoyment, care and forgiveness. A place where life is celebrated one last time.
Even at Christmas. It's a special day at the hospice in Polling. And yet also one like any other. Because every day is a little bit of Christmas here, every wish comes true every day – big and small. Because every wish could be the last. Anyone who comes to the hospice in Polling is considered to have "exhausted all forms of therapy". Medicine has reached its limits. There is no more chemo, no beeping machines, no emergency doctor running into the room in the middle of the night.
Here you can sometimes hear Spanish music from the room with the large bathtub when a guest is enjoying their first bath in many years – with music, a glass of red wine and atmospheric lighting. Here it smells of freshly baked meat loaf from the kitchen, the door of which is always open. There is a large board with the preferences of the residents. "Bread roll divided horizontally, likes tea sausage and cheese" is noted by one resident.
Nurses Martina Albrecht (front) and Elisabeth Baumann are fighting a paper war in the ward room. This is also part of the work in the hospice in the Pollinger Monastery. © Emanuel Gronau
"There's no such thing as impossible," says caregiver Baloo. A bear from a man who lives up to his name. His contagious laugh echoes through the corridor. One lady, he recalls, wanted to go on another boat trip. A cruise, that was no longer possible. But he spent a day on Lake Starnberg with her. Afterwards she told everyone that she had been bathing naked with him. He winked at him and told him to see how he explained it to the others.
One guest wanted to taste the taste of beer in his mouth again. He couldn't swallow anymore. So they just brushed his teeth with beer. They were with their guests at the ice hockey game in Peiting, visited their son's new farm in the Allgäu. There was always the risk that the guest would not survive the journey. "And yet it is astonishing how much power the will can mobilize," says Renate Dodell, chairwoman of the Pfaffenwinkel Hospice Association.
One of the special features of the hospice is that little can really be planned concretely. No one knows how long the guests will stay, when the next one will come. The only thing that is certain is that the ten beds are far from sufficient to meet the demand. That's why it is to be expanded (we reported).
This makes the preparations for the Christmas days a little more difficult. But of course, nursing service manager Barbara Rosengart and her colleagues clarified weeks ago who would be on duty on Christmas Eve, the holidays and New Year's Eve. This is also difficult for colleagues, says Rosengart. They are emotional services. The families who celebrate at home, the staff in the hospice. "But it's a community that's being created here," says the nursing service manager.
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Otherwise, even a few weeks before the festival, no one can say which guests will be at the hospice over the holidays. Those who are brought home by their relatives on Christmas Eve, who are visited by their loved ones, who stay in one of the simple but beautiful apartments that have been set up for this purpose in the monastery and are rented out to visitors of hospice guests on a donation basis.
The hospice is dependent on donations
There will be a ceremony on Christmas Eve. Sausages and potato salad for those who like. Then they all sit and look at the Christmas tree, which was donated this year by Gut Achberg near Oberhausen. Years ago, Renate Dodell asked another Christmas tree dealer in the region if he would sponsor a tree. He said he had to think about it – many clubs asked if he would donate a free tree. "I completely understood that and offered that we would be happy to pay if he delivered one," says Dodell. The next morning, the fir dealer called back, recalls the chairwoman of the hospice association. Said he hadn't slept all night because he hadn't said yes right away. And brought over two trees.
Dodell and Anton Schuster from the Board of Directors are pleased about this. Not only because money is always tight – 200,000 euros in donations have to be collected year after year so that the hospice can continue to exist. But because it shows that the people in the region know and appreciate "their" hospice.
Often it is small things – the beeswax candles of the young beekeepers from Seeshaupt, home-baked cookies, self-knitted socks – that are handed in to the hospice. But they show that with each year of the hospice's existence, the awareness that dying is part of life is growing among the people in the region. And that the work that is done in Polling day in and day out is noticed and appreciated. Associations sell mulled wine at the Christmas market and donate the proceeds to the hospice, companies do without Christmas cards and use the money saved to ensure that a person's wish is fulfilled at the end of life, that they can walk in an environment of warmth and attention.
If a guest has passed away, they are allowed to stay in their room for a day so that their relatives can say goodbye to them there. The staff go into the room and dress the deceased as he wanted. "This can also be the jogging suit," says Barbara Rosengart. The dad, who was always dressed casually throughout his life, should not be dressed up all at once, even in death.
In the Room of Silence there are dozens of memory books, in which almost all the guests are recorded. Nursing service manager Barbara Rosengart leafs through it. © Emanuel Gronau
A candle then burns in front of the door. And the employees design another page in the memorial book. It is available in the corridor of the hospice. A way for staff to say goodbye to their guests. In the 21 to 28 days that a guest spends on average in the hospice, close bonds are formed between caregivers and guests. Bindings illustrated in the commemorative book. Before that, it is clarified who wants to be named, who wants a photo in the memorial book and who does not. As always at the Pollinger Hospice, the focus is on the wishes of the guests, whom no one would ever call patients here.
The relatives can design the other page in the memorial book. If they want to. If they can. "You also have to allow speechlessness in grief," says Dodell. Many come back to the hospice later to design the memorial page or to participate in one of the commemorative ceremonies that are held regularly.
Statistically, 42,000 people die in Germany during the Christmas holidays. It is possible that one of the guests at the Pollinger Hospice will have to leave forever during this time. Until then, they can expect days full of affection and care, days full of love – and maybe even a glass of champagne – at Christmas.