It was in 1979 that her journey began -- a journey that would take 18 years.

"Had I known that,'' admits Hilary Soares, "I probably would have given up there and then! I thought my mission would take about five years, at the most.'' Mission finally accomplished, the remarkable, down-to-earth woman who recovered after a near-death experience herself, and totally transformed concepts of nursing care in Bermuda, has decided to retire. Well, maybe not retire -- that would be too akin to taking it easy. She feels the need, she says, to strike out in a new direction, "to try something else before my working life ends''.

The mission that was to take Mrs. Soares so long was, she insists, a simple one: to provide loving, but entirely professional care for the terminally ill.

"I thought this concept would be immediately acceptable. What I didn't realise at the time was that no one even wanted to hear the `C' word. The idea of talking about cancer, let alone dying, was definitely out of bounds! Can you believe,'' she asks, almost gaily, "that people felt so uncomfortable talking to me that they'd actually cross the road so that they didn't have to risk being drawn into conversations about cancer or AIDS? No, I'm not jesting.

Fortunately, things are better now.'' Hilary Soares, who founded PALS and became the coordinator of Bermuda's first hospice, Agape House, is modest about her achievements. She maintains that "If you have certain skills, you have the responsibility to use them to your utmost ability for the good of all. If you don't use them, you are failing as a human being in your service to others.'' She also believes that society has been fatally weakened as family ties have loosened. "The hospice looks after the whole family, not just the patient. I think, in this very small community, it's of the utmost importance and urgency that we try and get back to family life because therein lies the solving of multitudes of problems, not the least of which is violence. I also think,'' she adds, "that if those kids who acquired AIDS through drug-taking and promiscuous lifestyles had enjoyed a strong family life, they might not have contracted HIV -- and the hospice would not have to deal with the end result.'' Born in India where she grew up speaking Hindustani rather English as her first language, Mrs. Soares lived "in Africa and all over the place'' before completing her studies at the famed Oxford Radcliffe Infirmary. By the time she arrived in Bermuda, 34 years ago, she was determined to use her training to its best advantage. That opportunity came in 1979 while nursing geriatrics at St. Brendan's. "One day, I suddenly found myself praying, `Send me something'. It worked, because the very next day, I saw an advert for an oncology services coordinator -- and I knew that would be my job.'' At that time, she explains, geriatric nursing involved little more than custodial care. "I had done my best to change things for the patients, but it didn't work. People were too entrenched in their old ideas -- it's not like that now, of course,'' she adds hastily. "But at that time, I felt quite despairing. I knew I could use my knowledge effectively, if only I was given the chance.'' Given that chance, she grappled with the stark realisation that many cancer patients were "stuck in hospital because people didn't want them at home. We needed a system that would help those families -- and that is really how PALS (Patients Assistance League Service) began, and it went from strength to strength. There was a vested interest in this for me because I wanted to empty the hospital beds and get people home where they belonged. I was a one-man band as far as cancer care went at that time, so it's quite phenomenal how this concept has grown in the intervening years.'' With sole volunteer June Stephens to help coordinate the proposed scheme, Mrs.

Soares had to figure out how to pay for a nurse. "So first, I called the funeral directors and asked if they would approach people for memorial donations to provide nursing care and then I asked the TB Cancer & Health Association to lend us a nurse and they did. They sent Audrey Mitchell and she spent some years doing that. Then I wrote to the movie producer, Robert Stigwood, asking if he could help us out. I thought he'd stuck it in File 13 but just as I was about to give up, his lawyer called to say he would put up two years' salary for a pilot project. A mini-van was also donated,'' she adds, "but in the beginning, we had to park it round the corner because it had the PALS logo on it and people were starting to connect it with the dreaded `cancer'. Anyway, I believe PALS has five nurses now.'' One of the many problems confronting Hilary Soares was teaching her growing band of volunteers to cope with the process of confronting death. "That was a challenge,'' she admits with a rueful smile. "I was actually told I was not to talk about dying to anybody. Now, I knew for a fact that everybody I had met who had cancer, did have death on their minds, but I had to learn how to discuss death with patients without mentioning the actual word. Well, as it turned out, I never needed to -- they mentioned it to me!'' Once PALS had been successfully established, thoughts then turned to the idea of a hospice for Bermuda. Once again, however, Hilary Soares had to battle prejudices and misconceptions, for although people praised the idea as a splendid one, it turned out that no one wanted a hospice anywhere near their own backyard. "The hospice concept was still relatively new,'' she explains.

"It had been started in Britain in the 1960s by Dame Cecily Saunders. When I visited St. Joseph's Hospice in London and St. Barnabas in Sussex, I realised that the kind of care she proposed was similar to what had been available in the hospitals in the 1950s. There were not as many medicines available then, so we had to use some very basic nursing skills which, in turn, brought us very close to our patients. It was very honest, good basic care, very humane and compassionate. Now, they pop a pill!'' After endless wrangling, Bermuda's hospice was housed in the former doctors' home in the grounds of King Edward VII Hospital, and called Agape House.

In the meantime, the spectre of AIDS appeared in Bermuda. "Cases had begun to surface around 1983 and initially, there were efforts to open a hostel.

Eventually, it was agreed that AIDS patients would come to the hospice. From the beginning, we had realised that we needed to take in all those who needed us. About 80 percent are cancer patients. If we had restricted the hospice to AIDS we would have closed down in about five months because HIV takes a long time to show symptoms and even then, it may take years to reach the `end' point. Now that we have some new drugs, that process seems to have been delayed even further -- although we haven't had long enough yet to see how effective they really are.'' Just as professional success seemed assured, Hilary Soares suffered a serious stroke. "I was giving a speech at the Women's World Day of Prayer and I suddenly thought someone had hit me over the head and I remember thinking `How rude to invite me here and then hit me'! Then I became unconscious and in hospital for three weeks. When I came round I had two very weak legs, half-blind vision in my left eye, a right hand that thought it was a left hand, complete wipe-out of immediate past memory, so that remembering a telephone number from the book to actually dialling it was hard. So I started singing out the numbers and that seemed to work. I still have difficulty remembering words.'' Countering disbelief on that point, she adds, "well, I had a large vocabulary so I can usually find something to say!'' Far from allowing the stroke to ruin her life, Mrs. Soares used it to enhance her life's work. "I think the hospice had been open three months when this black American nun came through my door and told me we both had a lot in common. We had both worked with AIDS but she revealed that she, too, had had a stroke -- and that both of us had come to the conclusion that it had, in fact, equipped us for hospice work. Things like memory loss, the desire to just give up, hallucinations, the idea that maybe death is just a black hole, that sort of stuff. But just prior to `coming to' after my stroke I had the most incredible visual experience which removed completely the kind of terror of being dropped into nothing. I had had faith before, but not in any concrete sort of way. Now I have, and it governs my whole life and given me a quite different aspect on nursing practices. I don't think I could have done the hospice job if that experience hadn't come into my consciousness.'' After this, it comes as no surprise to hear Hilary Soares express her belief, in a totally matter-of-fact way, that death can be "pleasant'' and even "wonderful'', if handled in the right way. "If you see your job as helping someone make their journey in a comfy manner -- and do it well -- people see it as a wonderful solution instead of a tragedy and can look back on it with love and affection afterwards. We have to take care of the families who become exhausted with the strain of terminal illness. In the last few weeks, patients do need 24-hour good nursing care, and to be in surroundings where the end is as pleasant and wonderful as possible for everybody. One of the main works of the hospice,'' she says, "is `finishing unfinished business' -- tidying things up, whether it's financial, spiritual, seeing people.'' As she prepares to hand over to an as-yet unnamed successor, Hilary Soares is jubilant that her long efforts to secure a part-time palliative physician for Agape House, have at last come to fruition. `Palliative care is now a recognised medical speciality. Nobody has to be uncomfortable or in pain.'' And for Hilary Soares, it's off to California where, in January, she begins studying for a new career in clinical hypnotherapy. "This is the beginning of my 40th year in nursing and I shall open my own practice, helping people to work through things more easily.''