Every Wednesday you’ll find Jeanette Hayden and Kitty Hormann working side by side at Harbour Hospice’s Link Drive shop. They’ll be out the back sorting and pricing homeware donations. They met 20 years ago through volunteering for hospice and have become the firmest of friends.

The pair from Unsworth Heights say they know each other so well now they can work in silence – each anticipating the other’s next move. That doesn’t mean they don’t like to talk though. When Jeanette picks Kitty up for their shift the car ride only takes six minutes, but they allow a lot longer because they like to sit in the car and have a good chat.
Kitty, 77, says the reason they get on so well is because they’re so different. “We’re like salt and pepper,” she says. “Yes, that’s what everyone calls us,” adds Jeanette, 80.
But they also have a lot in common. They’re both grandmothers of three and both dedicated to their churches. And once they started to get to know one another they realised that Jeanette had known Kitty’s husband of 55 years, Russell, as a child. She had grown up just around the corner from him, in Dunedin.
It’s the camaraderie with one another and the other volunteers that has kept them coming back to the shop year after year, they say.
“We have a great bunch of ladies that we work with, and everyone gets on with everyone else,” says Jeanette.
Kitty began volunteering for hospice after seeing an advertisement in the paper, and says that during her orientation at hospice’s Takapuna site she learned how wonderful the service was. “The place had such a calming feel to it. I thought it’s a lovely place for someone who's at the end of their life.”
For Jeanette it was a promise to herself that led her to hospice. After her first marriage ended she was left with two young children to raise, and she found it difficult to find a job. “This was in the late 1970s when it was still very tough for women. A single woman couldn’t even get a Farmers card,” she says.
She vowed that if she could find a good job, she would give back to the community. She found a great job with ASB bank, which also supported her to take on a mortgage. So, she sought out charity work and hospice was one of the charities she chose.
Jeanette has since remarried and enjoyed 27 years of wedded bliss with husband George.
Both women have friends who’ve been cared for by hospice, and have witnessed the ‘good work’ hospice does. They both say they feel proud to volunteer for an organisation that’s so important in the community.
Most of all, they feel thankful that hospice brought them together. “We tell our husbands that when we’ve had enough we’ll go flatting together,” Jeanette says with a laugh. “Kitty will cook. It will be so much fun.”
Jeanette and Kitty were both recognised for 20 years’ service at Harbour Hospice’s Long Service Awards on 23 July.

If you’d like to find out how you too can become a hospice volunteer, email volunteer@harbourhospice.org.nz