The people who make last wishes come true
Earlier this year a photograph was released showing a woman on a stretcher in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. She was there to take a final look at her favourite Rembrandt painting. Her visit had been made possible by a Dutch charity that helps terminally ill patients fulfil their last wish.
"I've learned that people who are going to die have little wishes," says Kees Veldboer, the ambulance driver who founded the Stichting Ambulance Wens - or Ambulance Wish Foundation - after an impulse to help a patient.
In November 2006 he was moving a terminally ill patient, Mario Stefanutto, from one hospital to another. But just after they put him on the stretcher, they were told there would be a delay - the receiving hospital wasn't ready. Stefanutto had no desire to get back in the bed where he had spent the past three months, so Veldboer asked if there was anywhere he would like to go.
The retired seaman asked if they could take him to the Vlaardingen canal, so he could be by the water and say a final goodbye to Rotterdam harbour. It was a sunny day, and they stayed on the dockside for nearly an hour. "Tears of joy ran over his face," says Veldboer. "When I asked him: 'Would you like to have the opportunity to sail again?' he said it would be impossible because he lay on a stretcher."
Stichting Ambulance Wens
Veldboer was determined to make this man's last wish come true. He asked his boss if he could borrow an ambulance on his day off, recruited the help of a colleague and contacted a firm that does boat tours around Rotterdam harbour - they were all happy to help, and the following Friday, to Stefanutto's astonishment, the ambulance driver turned up at his hospital bedside to take him sailing.
In a letter written weeks before his death Stefanutto wrote, "It does me good that there are still people who care about others… I can tell you from my own experience that a small gesture from someone else can have a huge impact."
Stichting Ambulance Wens
That was the genesis of the Stichting Ambulance Wens. Veldboer and his wife Ineke, a nurse, started it at their kitchen table - eight years on it has 230 volunteers, six ambulances and a holiday home, and is fast approaching 7,000 fulfilled wishes. Sometimes wishes are fulfilled the day they are made. On average, the charity helps four people a day - they can be any age and the only stipulation is that patients are terminally ill and can't be transported other than on a stretcher.
"Our youngest patient was 10 months old, a twin. She was in a children's hospice and had never been home - her parents wanted to sit on the couch with her just one time.
"And our oldest patient was 101 - she wanted to ride a horse one last time. We lifted her on to the horse with the help of a truck, and later we moved her to a horse-drawn carriage - she was waving at everyone like royalty. That was a good wish," says Veldboer.
Stichting Ambulance Wens
Although other charities offer terminally ill patients a day out, the Stichting Ambulance Wens was the first to provide an ambulance and full medical back-up. There is always a fully-trained nurse on board, and the specialist drivers tend to come from the police and fire brigades. The specially-designed ambulances have a view, and every patient receives a teddy bear called Mario, named after Stefanutto.
Stichting Ambulance Wens
Find out more
- Kees Veldboer spoke to Outlook Listen to the interview on iPlayer
- Listen to more extraordinary stories from Outlook on the BBC World Service
"It gives us volunteers so much satisfaction to see people enjoying themselves," says Roel Foppen, a former soldier who acts as a driver. Over the past six years he has helped to fulfil 300 wishes.
Once he went as far as Romania, a 4,500km (2,800 mile) round-trip. It was for a woman called Nadja, who had lived in the Netherlands for 12 years. Her children, aged three and seven, were already back in Romania with her family, and she wanted to go there to die.
"She was so ill we couldn't even touch her," says Foppen. They left on a Thursday morning, but as they were driving through Germany Nadja's condition deteriorated, so they stopped at a hospital. Doctors recommended Nadja stay there, but she wanted to see her children - and her wish was what counted. After a three-hour delay they carried on, through Austria, then Hungary - when they reached the Romanian border, Nadja said, "Take the stretcher out, now I can die!"
Foppen said, "It's just another 600km to your mother and your children - could you hang on just a little longer?" On the Saturday the ambulance arrived in Bucharest for an emotional reunion. Then the crew drove back, leaving Nadja behind. Her family sent a card to say she died two weeks later.
Stichting Ambulance Wens
"If people know we're coming, they find new reserves of energy," says Foppen. "Often the family tell us they were about to cancel because the patient was so ill, but when we arrive they are beaming, ready for their day out."
It was Foppen who took the famous photograph in the Rijksmuseum. He was on the other side of the gallery with his colleague Mariet Knot, fulfilling someone else's wish. They were looking after a man called Donald, who used to visit the museum regularly with his partner of 30 years - the two men had married the week before. "What was great was that he was very much in charge," says Knot. "He told us which paintings he wanted to see and was able to tell us a lot about them, so we could enjoy it too."
The last work in the exhibition was one Donald had never seen before - Simeon with the Christ Child in the Temple, a painting that remained unfinished at the time of Rembrandt's death. Donald was deeply moved by it. "I realise now that a life is never finished. My life is unfinished, and this painting is unfinished," he told them.
Then, after a pause, "I have seen what I wanted to see, we can go now
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