"I reached out to the hospice before I hit a brick wall"
Norah Dabill and her husband Jack moved to Bude following a job promotion at GCHQ back in 1982. It was in Yorkshire where Norah and Jack first met with a game of bowling. Norah tells us “It took me a few years of married life before I realised that Jack was actually called John – it’s a bit of a Yorkshire thing! He was the healthiest man anyone could find. He ate really well, kept his weight down and had a massive passion for scuba diving. He spent more time in the sea than on dry land.”
Jack’s passion for scuba diving, meant that all of their free time was spent on family holidays and enjoying the water with Gozo in Malta being their favourite destination. Norah said “We have two sons John and Ian who live away now, but they all grew up around the water – they loved scuba diving too.”
Throughout married life, Jack enjoyed smoking a pipe. Norah tells us “Lots of people were smoking back then and we simply didn’t know the dangers of it. It was when Jack passed blood in his urine that we knew he was in trouble. He ended up being diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2013; it was such a shock as Jack had always been so fit and healthy. He had the opportunity to have an operation on his cancer but he turned it down as it would have meant him giving up his scuba diving due to needing a bag fitting. He was ok for 3 years after having some chemotherapy and radiotherapy but then it came back and he eventually died in August last year at his home in Bude.”
Norah added “After Jack died, my neighbour told me about North Devon Hospice at The Long House in Holsworthy and my GP referred me for some bereavement counselling there. The Long House is such a wonderful place. It changed everything for me. I wish Jack had gone into the Hospice as it would have been quite different both for him and for me, but he didn’t want to go. There is so often a stigma associated with hospices, as if people are giving up. It’s such a supportive and wonderful environment. I was so tired looking after Jack. Emotionally I was finding it so difficult. I was telling myself I was fine but afterwards my body was saying I wasn’t fine. I kept getting headaches – the pressure and the worry was really there and building. I knew I was going to hit a brick wall and I reached out to the Hospice before I hit it.”
Norah began a series of bereavement support at The Long House. She recalled “When you’re talking to people you know really well, you don’t want to pile it all on them, but I was really struggling. It’s a lot easier talking to someone you don’t know. The Long House is an absolutely beautiful place. Very often when I went in there, there would be people having tea and cakes and getting the support they needed in lots of different ways with therapies and emotional support. My counsellor Sharon was amazing. I could talk to her about how I felt. It was like having a friend that’s not going to judge you. I didn’t need to pretend to be a strong person with her. I was having to cover so much in front of my family and friends that everything was ok when it really wasn’t. I was able to tell her everything, some really personal things that I was struggling with. By talking about these things, it was like a weight coming off my shoulders. I was told that anytime I wanted to come back, I could do so. It’s fantastic to know that the Hospice is there for me and I don’t have to carry on holding everything in.”
“Sometimes you think you can cope and we try to be ‘all British about it’. It’s the afterwards when you can have real problems and that’s when you need someone to talk to. All the questions emerge like what happens next to me when the focus has been on someone else, where do I live, what should I do. I would have been in an absolute state if I hadn’t been to the Hospice. I would have ended up on anti-depressants or something. I can’t speak highly enough of the Hospice and am so grateful that I can continue to get the support I need from them – they’re just a phone call away and that’s so reassuring.”
For more information on the services provided by North Devon Hospice, visit the care pages of our website, or call 01271 344248.
