After 18 years with the charity, Maire has retired to spend more time with wife Liz and family, and pursue his interests in conservation work and spiritual direction. Vincent, from Manly, first joined Harbour Hospice in 2005, but not as a spiritual carer. In fact, Vincent is not an ordained minister.
“I had a very long career in marketing and communications, and was the fundraising manager at Harbour Hospice for six years before I retrained as a spiritual companion and returned to hospice in 2013,” he says. When Vincent started at Harbour Hospice he took on the unenviable task of raising the final $2 million to build Harbour Hospice’s building at John Dee Crescent, Red Beach – which he achieved. But once he moved into the role of spiritual carer his focus changed to being “a steady presence, someone who walked with someone who was nearing the end of their life.
“With comfort and gentleness I would help that person explore what’s going on for them in terms of their spiritual orientation, whatever that might be. What that looked like could be anything from sitting alongside and chatting with them about their life or their fears, or simply sitting in silence with them. It could mean praying with them, anointing them or connecting them with a minister from their own faith tradition.
” Many older people are at peace with dying, Vincent says. “They are able to look back on their life and see that they’ve had a life, whatever that has been like. A lot have already.