As of: March 9, 2024, 11:05 p.m
By: Kathrin Hauser
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In the Room of Silence there are dozens of memory books in which almost all of the guests are recorded.
Nursing service manager Barbara Rosengart leafs through it.
© Emanuel Gronau
What happens after death?
Christians deal with this question particularly intensively during Lent.
In the series “Behind the Horizon” people who are regularly confronted with death in their jobs have their say.
Today: Barbara Rosengart, nursing manager at the hospice in Polling.
Polling
– “That was bad back then,” says Barbara Rosengart.
She had just started working as a nurse in the 1980s and it quickly became clear to her that the way dying people were treated in hospitals was completely wrong.
“Patients who were dying were pushed into the baths until it was over.
Then they went straight into the fridge.
Nobody cared about her.” This was a burden for her as a young nurse.
She remembers a night shift when she didn't have time to sit with a dying patient.
“I mentally asked her for forgiveness,” remembers Barbara Rosengart.
She sits in her office in the monastery in Polling with a view of mighty old trees.
The fact that her professional path led her to the hospice also has to do with the experiences she had as a young nurse with terminally ill patients.
“I wanted to have time for people and their deaths.” Barbara Rosengart has been working in the hospice since autumn 2007 – initially in nursing and for almost ten years in management.
Sometimes the suffering became overwhelming
At the beginning she was skeptical as to whether this work, in which she only deals with the seriously ill and dying, would be good for her.
Would she be able to endure being constantly confronted with the deaths of guests and the grief of her relatives?
She endured it - even if there were phases in between when the suffering seemed to become overwhelming.
“Sometimes it’s too much.
Especially when there are a lot of deaths in the private sector.” In these times it is important to do something good for yourself, to look after yourself in order to regain your strength.
The Kreuzberg Chapel in Wessobrunn at sunrise.
© REGINA WAHL-GEIGER
Working in the hospice has changed her attitude to the final phase of life: “I have lost the fear of dying.
I know I don't have to be afraid of it.” Most people feared a painful death.
A lot has happened in the last few decades when it comes to relieving pain, she says.
Today there are well-trained palliative care specialists.
Especially in districts like this one, where there is a hospice and outpatient palliative care, people are well cared for at the end of life.
The attitude towards life has also changed
But not only Barbara Rosengart's attitude towards dying has changed, but also her attitude towards life since she started working in the hospice: “Having so much to do with death helps with life.
“I live more consciously than before,” she says.
It became clearer to her that the time needed to be used.
And some things would have been put into perspective.
“In the first few years, everyday problems became relatively unimportant.” She also survived her sons’ puberty relatively calmly because she was always aware that there were worse things.
“There is no greater gift than being healthy.” This is demonstrated to her again and again through her work.
In the past, when she still worked in the hospital, she shied away from dealing with the relatives of deceased patients.
“I didn’t know whether I should say something, how to find the right words,” says Barbara Rosengart.
She has now overcome her shyness about this.
“Today I know there is no right or wrong.
You have to listen to the feeling.” Some people especially need someone to listen, others need words of comfort, and others don’t want to talk about their loss.
“Many people can’t bear the grief of others.”
“You feel this moment of peace”
She also learned to talk to guests in the hospice about their death if they wanted to talk about it.
“It’s often difficult for relatives,” says Barbara Rosengart.
She can even endure it if an old or terminally ill person tells her that they no longer want to live.
“I don’t call it tired of life, but fed up with life.” She can understand that at some point it’s enough.
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For some guests it is difficult to say goodbye to life.
“Leaving everything behind and worrying about what will happen without you is often very difficult to bear,” says the nursing manager.
For example, social workers, family therapists, pastors or nurses are needed who are in daily contact with the dying guest in order to answer any outstanding questions or solve problems.
“We often manage to work through some things, but often not.” Sometimes it just helps to endure the situation and be there.
“Our work is often characterized by speechlessness and acceptance of the situation.”
The guests who come to the hospice in Polling usually go through a longer dying phase.
In the many years in which she has accompanied the dying as a nurse, Barbara Rosengart has observed that people center themselves at the end of their life, withdraw into themselves and no longer perceive the things and people around them or in a different way, than they have done before.
As if they had already taken a step out of life towards the gate to heaven.
“Many people look as if they are seeing something or someone right at the end,” says the nursing manager: “And many look happy when they have died.” In general, a very special atmosphere can be felt in the room someone just died.
“You feel this moment of peace,” says Barbara Rosengart.
Even if she doesn't believe in continuing life in the religious sense, she still believes that everything doesn't end with death: "I believe that our energy goes somewhere.
That in some way we live on in the people who knew us – and in the memories.”