The night her husband Peter died, Kerrie Robinson tried to stay awake to be there for him, just as she had been for the two years he battled a brain tumor.
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But as the long night rolled on, the desperate need for sleep wore her down. “When I woke up in the morning he had a smile on his face.”
Along with the grief that came with his loss, Ms Robinson felt a sense of contentment that her husband was given the death he wanted.
Peter was always a positive thinker, interested in meditation and Buddhism, and was determined to die in his own home.
“He was completely positive the whole time. He had a direction and knew what he wanted to do,” Ms Robinson said.
“We had just moved to New South Wales and we met this person who introduced us to Annie, who was a Buddhist monk, and she used to come out and sit with Peter and she was just beautiful.”
A palliative nurse helped with Peter’s care, but as he became sicker Ms Robinson, a nurse herself, cared for him full-time.
“It was hard because we had just moved to the area, we moved there in ’96 and Peter got diagnosed the next year, so we didn’t have a big circle of support.”
But from the moment of diagnosis in 1997, Peter’s wishes were clear.
“It was really nice that he died at home and not in a hospital,” Ms Robinson said.
“People could just come in and we had our dog, it was good.
“It’s a really nice memory that I’ve got.”
Ms Robinson has since remarried and moved to the south-west with her family and is a nurse at St John of God Warrnambool, however, it’s the memory of Peter that sparked her interest in volunteering for the hospice in the home program.
“I had a beautiful person who came in and sat with Peter and it was just fantastic. That’s why I feel like I should offer that to someone else.”
