Laura Neal-McCollum: She was the first hospice social worker in Texas and one of the first in America. She created a path through cultural, racial, medical, funding, and other wildernesses at the literal edge of human existence.
She gave me the record of the music (Pachelbel’s Canon in D) we played on breaks in the first hospice training sessions at my house and at Cliff Temple Baptist Church. W
e were finding our way in uncharted waters and Laura was walking point. Some memories of things I know she did…
There was a woman dying from cancer (all of our patients were dying from cancer) who was still feeling sexual despite a large purulent abdominal wound, weight loss, pain, etc. In the course of conversations with Laura, the woman said something about black or red satin sheets. Our way was clear. The nurse working in that team taught the woman how to put on a secure dressing that the exudate wouldn’t soak through. The rest of us took up a collection for the satin sheets. The woman and her man had sex on the satin sheets and the dressing didn’t leak. That was the way Laura was.
An old man was dying. I remember him as severely jaundiced. I remember sitting on the front porch of his little frame house in Oak Cliff. He lived with a lady who gave him beautiful care. His worthless relatives started showing up, usually fucked up in one way or another and talking about getting his life insurance. Laura got an attorney (Sister Rosemary) from an advocacy group to get his affairs in order, in particular insuring that his money went to the lady who cared for him. The lady got everything – $14,000 – and his relatives got pissed off, and he died knowing that he’d done the right thing.
Laura enlightened us to the reality that we were doing nothing less than birthing souls from this life to the next. She explicated that concept to us. This was in 1978. Today, so many years later, people are talking of “end-of-life doulas.” That’s what I’m talking about when I say that Laura showed the way into and through the wilderness.
Laura Neal-McCollum gave us a lot. Thank you, Laura.
Thanks for sharing Charles. I didn’t know her but am thankful for her vision. Her pioneering ways led to Ron dying as he wished.