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This Christmas, Help Us Make Every Moment Count
With the festive season fast approaching, we need your help. Your donation today is crucial to ensuring we can provide loving care, create special memories, and be here for every family spending their last Christmas together.
This Christmas marks the end of a difficult year for The Kirkwood. You might have heard about the changes we’ve had to make to our services so we can continue to provide the very best care to those in most need. This is a really challenging time for our charity, and we are relying on the kindness and generosity of people like you more than ever before.
We work hard all year to make every day special for our patients and their families, but with your help, we’ll pull out all the stops to help families enjoy Christmas together, no matter what is happening in their world. As well as providing expert care, your generosity helps us to create special moments. We ensure that families can concentrate on being together, creating positive, lasting memories, even in the toughest of times. In his story, David reflected on how we helped give his wife, Nicola, and his family one last special Christmas together:
Your donation this Christmas will support our team to go above and beyond – like helping a family celebrate a child’s birthday with friends here in the hospice, ensuring those children have positive memories to hold on to. It could help a patient to feel the dignity of being able to choose a final gift or give a family the opportunity to share a homecooked Christmas dinner together.
Please, if you can, consider making a donation today. Your support means that more families like David’s will have the chance to share laughter, love, and one last special Christmas together.
Support patients and families in our care this Christmas
Your donation could help toward…
£20 would pay for a delicious Christmas lunch at the hospice for two patients and their relatives on Christmas Day.
£30 could help cover the cost of an hour of expert nursing care on Christmas Day for a patient on our In-Patient Unit.
£150 could help to make sure one of our amazing Auxiliary Nurses is on hand to support families – helping them make the very most of this special time.
Would you prefer to make a regular gift to help The Kirkwood all year round?
The Kirkwood relies on the generosity of our community to make sure we can continue to care for families here in Kirklees Your donation today could help another family to share laughter, love, and one last Christmas together.
One powerful way to help The Kirkwood’s future is by making a regular monthly donation. Contributions of any size make a profound impact, allowing us to reach out to people in need from the moment they are diagnosed with a life limiting illness, provide compassionate care for our patients', support families and loved ones through bereavement.
No matter the size of your monthly donation, you will be making a real difference in the lives of those facing life limiting illnesses.
“They didn’t just care for Nicky, they cared for all of us. That’s something I’ll never, ever forget. It’s vital we keep this place going. There will be someone else in a similar situation right now – a family going through their last Christmas together. Just knowing The Kirkwood can be here for them will make all the difference.”
When David Woodward remembers Christmas 2024, it will forever be the one that changed everything. It was the last Christmas he shared with his beloved wife, Nicola, and their three children, Olivia, 18, Jake, 14, and Thomas, 11. A time that could have been filled with fear and sadness instead became a season of love and togetherness, filled with precious memories.
David and Nicola built a life filled with love after meeting more than twenty years ago. “She was one of those people who filled a room,” David said, smiling. “Bubbly, funny, never still for five minutes. Everyone loved her. I’m quieter, happy in the background, but she made friends everywhere she went. She adored being a Mum. She was the centre of everything, the best person I’ve ever known.”
Nicola became ill in 2020. What started as back pain was eventually diagnosed as secondary breast cancer that had spread to her bones. For a while, chemotherapy helped, but by 2023 the cancer had spread to her brain.
“I think we knew at that point that it wasn’t good,” David said. “We tried to put a positive spin on it, but in the back of our minds we both knew what was going to happen.”
On December 7th, Nicola was admitted to the hospice. She arrived during our annual Light Up A Life service. “I remember the tree being lit,” David said. “It brought calm to everything. Nicola settled in quickly after that, it just felt peaceful.”
Our team made sure something special happened almost every day, including a visit from the local panto cast that thrilled Nicola.
On December 14th, The Kirkwood helped the family celebrate Thomas’s 11th birthday.
“The kitchen team made us a small buffet and one of the ladies even made Thomas a birthday cake with the Sunderland badge on it – because he’s Sunderland mad! We had a couple of Thomas’s friends there and Nicky was with us too,” David said. “You don’t usually put hospices and ‘birthday parties’ together, but we really enjoyed it. It was a really good day. And it was an important memory for Thomas. A last birthday with his mum.”
On Christmas Eve, Santa visited The Kirkwood, bringing presents and a touch of magic to the Woodward family. “There’s a lovely photo of us. It’s the last photo we’ve got as a family together – with Santa photobombing it!!”
Our team helped the family share one final Christmas Day meal together, cooked by Nicola’s mum. “The staff set up a table, we put up decorations, and her mum made a full Christmas dinner,” David said. “We had crackers and paper hats. Nicky sat in bed, but she was with us. We were all together.
“If we’d been at home, it never would’ve happened. The staff made it perfect. It wasn’t medical care; it was something deeper. They gave us a memory we’ll never forget.”
On the 30th of December, everything changed quickly, David remembered. “That morning Nicky was still talking about coming home. But when I came to see her that night, she was really sleepy... Then the nurse told us we should start to call our family. It was a massive shock to the system.”
The family came in, filling the room. Around eight o’clock the following morning, Nicola’s breathing changed. David brought the kids in from a side room. At quarter to ten, with David holding her hand, Nicola finally let go.
“In those moments after she passed, I thought about how The Kirkwood gave us something we could never have had at home – Christmas together,” David said. “They gave Nicky dignity and comfort. They gave our children happy memories in the hardest time of their lives.”
“They didn’t just care for Nicky,” he said. “They cared for all of us. That’s something I’ll never, ever forget. It’s vital we keep this place going. There will be someone else in a similar situation right now – a family going through their last Christmas together. Just knowing The Kirkwood can be here for them will make all the difference.”
Make Christmas special for a family like David’s. Please donate today.
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