Emotional Biden turns sod on new €15m hospice facility

SPECIAL MOMENT Former US Vice-President Joe Biden officially turns the sod on the new Mayo Roscommon Hospice facility, pictured with board members and staff of Mayo Roscommon Hospice, as well as his brother Jimmy and nephew Jamie. Pic: Conor McKeown

Construction to begin in November and will take 15 months to complete


Neill O'Neill

FORMER US Vice-President Joe Biden turned the sod on the new €15 million Mayo Roscommon Hospice facility in Castlebar last week. A statesman with a lifetime of political experience at the highest level, Mr Biden was making his second visit to the county in as many years, though this time as a fully fledged private citizen. Relaying a deeply personal account of his many experiences with hospices, he said he was delighted to be in Mayo for the occasion, and that he was proud that his son Beau’s name would be associated with the new Mayo Roscommon Hospice facility ‘in this beautiful land of his ancestors’. Beau Biden died from brain cancer in May 2015, aged 46.
“Unfortunately, I have been a great consumer of hospice services,” he explained in a moving oration, referring to his late son, who was the Attorney General of the State of Delaware and tipped for a bright future in politics.
“Beau didn’t make it; we lost him two years ago after a valiant struggle with cancer, He had stage four neuroblastoma in the brain and struggled for about 18 months. He was an incredible young man, and during those difficult days there were so many who rallied around our family and I am forever grateful to them, so I can tell you from personal experience what an incredible service it is to stand with those who are in their final days.”
The loss of his son is not the only tragedy Joe Biden has known, nor is it his only encounter with hospice services.
“Six weeks after I was elected as a 29-year-old kid to the United States Senate [he had to wait to be officially sworn in at the age of 30] my wife and three children were Christmas shopping and a tractor and trailer broadsided them and killed my wife and daughter and badly injured my two sons (Beau and Hunter) who were hospitalised for a long time. Hospice also took care of my mother for four months, my father was in my home the last four months of his life, in hospice care, so I learnt what an incredible thing it is that you all do.”

Dignity
Centering his speech around ‘dignity’, Mr Biden said it is a word he hears used more ‘on this island’ than anywhere else, except in his home growing up.
“My father would say that everyone was entitled to be treated with dignity, from the moment you’re born, until you take your last breath. For those of you who have not been the beneficiary of hospice caring for a loved one, it is hard to appreciate how powerful and meaningful it is. I came, in a way, to say thank you to you all.
“As I talk of all those who will come to this hospice to find comfort and dignity, I can’t help but remember the words of William Butler Yeats, in the Isle of Inishfree poem, where he says: ‘I will arise and go now, and go to Inishfree... and I shall have some peace there… for peace comes dropping slow’, and that is what you will bring, and for all that will come to Mayo Roscommon Hospice, I pray they will have some peace.”
Joe Biden is a distant relative of Laurita Blewitt, the Mayo Roscommon Hospice’s fundraising manager, who acted as MC for the occasion. She played a central role in the Biden family’s visit to Mayo last year, and in bringing Mr Biden and his brother and nephew to Castlebar for the sod turning last week. She described Joe Biden as someone that is known the world over as a man of ‘integrity and compassion’.

Sanctuary
Martina Jennings, CEO of Mayo Roscommon Hospice, paid homage to the leaders of the past whose vision and concern brought the organisation into being.  
“In 1993, thanks to the foresight and dedication of a small group of people, led by Dr Bert Farrell, and our first Chairperson Cathal Hughes, this foundation was established as a voluntary organisation to help provide hospice services in Mayo and Roscommon. They believed that the end of life deserves as much beauty, care and respect as the beginning, and that belief and ethos has stood the test of time, right up to our present board.”
She outlined the services and care provided to families and individuals by the Mayo Roscommon Hospice, and the difference they make to people’s lives.
“Success is not about how much money you make, it is about the difference you make in people’s lives. Mayo Roscommon Hospice has provided a hospice service, without walls, for the last 24 years to over 13,500 patients. We raise €2 million annually through community fundraising to provide this service. That is success. That is proof that people coming together as a community can make a difference.”
Showing a video of the proposed new hospice facility, Martina said that her organisation has €10 million in funding for the new centre, which will house a 14-bed hospice and day-care unit with family accommodation. It has also secured a bank loan for the remaining €5 million required for the project. The build phase is due to start in November and will take 15 months to complete. The HSE has committed funding for the running of the hospice but Mayo Roscommon Hospice must first build it. The unit planned for Roscommon will be an eight bed facility and will open in 2021. Martina urged people to ‘continue on the journey’ with them, as fundraising will be vital, not only to pay for the facility, but to allow them to be able to continue providing vital palliative care services across the county.
“Over 20 patients died in a hospital setting in Mayo last year who should have died in a hospice setting,” she outlined, continuing, “this will be a sanctuary where patients can complete their journey through life, in an environment of dignity and love.”

Support and legacy of others
Addressing the crowd, Joanne Hynes, Chairperson of Mayo Roscommon Hospice, said that while the new hospice will inevitably see much sadness, that is not how it will be defined.
“It will be defined by compassion, dignity and love, it will be a blanket woven of the finest qualities of the human spirit, embracing those facing life’s final challenge,” she said, thanking and welcoming all who had contributed to Mayo Roscommon Hospice over so many years. “Mayo and Roscommon families for generations will find comfort in the threads of empathy and compassion you have woven,” she said, addressing Mr Biden.
From national and local politicians and members of the local authority executive, staff from the Galway Hospice, HSE, their own palliative care teams and all the members of Mayo Roscommon Hospice, past and present, ‘who have worked and dreamed of this day’ for so long, Joanne Hynes had words of welcome and thanks. She also acknowledged Cynthia Clampett, the former CEO of Mayo Roscommon Hospice, who retired earlier this year.
“When new CEO Martina Jennings and I took up our roles, we spoke of how we are only steering a ship that was brought to full speed by those wonderful people who went before us. They made and are still making that difference,” she said, acknowledging the presence of Helen Farrell, wife of the late Dr Bert Farrell from Westport, who was one of the pioneers of the Mayo Roscommon Hospice movement.
She also welcomed Mark Kavanagh, from the Kavanagh Group of SuperValu stores. The Kavanagh Group, she explained, ‘single handedly raised the funds to purchase the site on which this hospice will be built’.
“We want to welcome the volunteers and those who cannot be with us, you are the sun, moon and stars of hospice, without you there would be no hospice,” she said, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, stating that Mayo Roscommon is all about care ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’.
At the conclusion of the formalities, a presentation of a Mayo jersey was made to Mr Biden by Chairman of the Mayo GAA County Board, Mike Connelly.