Legacy Matters

Helping the Dying to Live

Dame Cecily Saunders said her purpose in life was to "help the dying to live until they die and their families to live on."

A Christian, she saw dying not as something to be feared, but as a spiritual event which could bring meaning to life and provide an opportunity for reconciliation. 

She became a doctor because she  wanted to alleviate the physical pain of the dying.  She founded the Hospice Movement despite the hostility of the medical establishment  to also address  her patients'  "mental, social and spiritual pain."

During her life, she fell in love at different times with three different Poles, each of whom contributed to her understanding of what it is like to die.  She said of one,

"I loved him very much," she recalled. "He taught me what it was like to be dying and to be bereaved; he showed me the achievement of a good death, that as the body becomes weaker, so the spirit becomes stronger."
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Though the philosophy underlying St Christopher's was Christian, it welcomed patients of any persuasion or none. Cicely Saunders noticed that those who coped best always had a shining faith, but that atheists often died as peacefully as Christians. The people with the most problems were those who had not sorted out their ideas. Clergymen, oddly, and the affluent, often turned out to have the most difficulty.
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She was the guiding influence behind a 1976 Church of England report on dying which argued that everyone should have the right to "die well", without pain and with dignity.

In rejecting the argument that chronic pain justifies euthanasia, the report drew attention to the fact that correct medical and nursing treatment can usually remove pain or reduce it to a minimum and can help the survivors as much as the dying.

Cecily Saunders died at St. Christopher's Hospice that she founded, her Great Legacy bringing comfort and care to the dying and their families in hospices around the world.