This year, BCHPCA has been focusing on integrating key elements, including evidence, voices, strategy, and heart.
As we prepare to present our first-ever provincial business case for hospice societies and funding ask, I’ve found myself sitting with a deeper truth. One that has emerged not just from the numbers and reports, but from listening, really listening, to hospice providers, volunteers, and the people they walk alongside.
And that truth is this:
The Grief that hospice societies support is not just about death. It’s about the loss of meaning.
When someone loses the person they have shared a home with for years, a relationship, a sense of belonging, or a vision for the future, they are grieving. When that grief is unsupported or unacknowledged, it doesn’t fade away, it festers. It can lead to despair, disconnection, and sometimes harm.
What hospice societies do, quietly, consistently, and often without recognition, is help people rebuild meaning. They create spaces where grief is named, where stories are held, and where life can be reoriented.
"When a caregiver loses the partner they’ve spent decades supporting, the absence of daily purpose can be devastating. Hospice societies quietly step in, holding space for grief, honoring stories, and helping people rebuild meaning in a life forever changed."
- Health care provider in community
That’s not merely a “nice to have.” It represents public health infrastructure, mental health care, and prevention!
I wanted to share a reflection that was brought forward at the Budget 2026 consultations this month. It’s not a formal pitch. It’s a reminder of what’s at stake and what’s possible when we choose to invest in care that's relational, responsive, rooted in community, and, yes, evidence-informed.
“The Absence of Meaning is a Public Health Issue”
When people experience grief, trauma, or chronic disenfranchisement without support, they lose their sense of meaning and purpose….
In today’s world, people aren’t just struggling with symptoms, they’re struggling with meaning. When someone loses a partner, a job, a home, a community, or even a vision of the future, what they’re grieving is not just the event. They’re grieving the loss of who they are and why they matter.
And when that grief is unsupported, unspoken, or unseen, it doesn’t disappear, it festers. It shows up in depression, substance use, suicide, isolation, chronic illness, and even disengagement from work, education, or community life.
That’s why I’m saying: The absence of meaning is a public health issue. It’s what underlies so many of our crises, mental health, toxic drug deaths, aging in isolation, and youth despair.
“Grief-Responsive Care IS System Transformation”
Hospice societies are not only about end-of-life. They are anchors of meaning-making. They help people:
- make sense of what they’re going through,
- reconnect with identity,
- build resilience, and
- take the next step forward, whatever that may be.
This is what grief-responsive care looks like. It is non-clinical, often volunteer-driven, and embedded directly in community. It reaches people where they are, and often prevents their need to enter the formal mental healthcare system.
And that’s what makes it system-transforming. It reduces crisis interventions, delays deterioration, and brings relief to an overwhelmed health system at a fraction of current healthcare costs.
If we fund grief-responsive, meaning-restoring supports, such as those delivered by BC’s 70+ hospice societies, we are not just being compassionate; we are being fiscally responsible.
We are investing in the emotional infrastructure of this province.
We are addressing mental health/mental wellness at its roots, not at the ER doors.
Your Perspective - Grief, Meaning, and Why It Matters Now
