A CARING and committed widower whose late wife's dying wish was for him to continuing volunteering for St Luke's Hospice is backing the Observer's Showing We Care fundraising campaign.

Since the 1980s, Raj Vithlani, 66, of Rayners Lane, has shuttled the terminally ill to and from the Kenton hospice, for which we are appealing for readers to donate a total of £25,000 to help the charity expand its servicves in its 25th anniversary year.

The retired financial controller, who lost his partner Bharti, 69, to a lung condition in November 2009, said: "I met my wife in the UK and society has been kind to us and this is my way of paying back society.

"My wife used to volunteer at the hospice when it was in Harrow View. She used to help in the office and in the fundraising department.

"She encouraged me because the hospice needed a driver. She said: 'Why don't you do something to help out?' and I said: 'Okay!' My role is to bring patients from their home and take them to the day centre and in the afternoon I take them back home. I won't drive off until they open their front door and are safely inside.

"I used to take a few hours time off from work to do it. Nowadays I still drive once a week. It's tremendously satisfying. When I give the cancer patient a lift home, we talk and they say: 'I had a wonderful day, I had a massage.'

"The smile on their face says everything. It's worth a million pounds."

Uganda-born Mr Vithlani, who also volunteers at a Hindu temple in Greenford and used to be a member of the League of Friends of Northwick Park Hospital, continued: "I use my own car and I don't charge the hospice any mileage to the hospice. I pay for everything out of my own pocket.

"And if they need an emergency blood run when there's a transfusion and the blood needs to be picked up from Northwick Park Hospital, then they'll ring me."

Mr Vithlani is grateful to the help people gave India-born Bharti, a former Harrow Council employee, with her lifelong respiratory condition.

"She went into the hospice on a Thursday and by Saturday morning she had passed away in front of members of her family," he explained. "The care she received was unbelievably good. They looked after her as a human being, not just a number. The hospice is doing a great job - there's no doubt about it.

"I would urge readers to donate because you never know when you're going to need to use the hospice. Charity begins at home and that's what people should consider."

Mr Vithlani said his weekly endeavours are a constant reminder of his wife, with whom he had 37 years of marriage and no children. Before she died, she made me give two promises. One was to donate her ventilators to a village in India where sick children had none.

"Her second was for me to never, ever stop my voluntary sector work. Both her last wishes I fulfilled. I loved her too much. I think about her a thousand times a day."