https://youtube.com/shorts/bnh5aNnCvLc
I COULD HEAR Julia singing before I got to Connie’s unit. The soft and light voice, the strumming of the guitar. Julie comes once a week to sign to Connie, and she is a welcome visitor. She is a part of the hospice team.
Two other hospice workers were giving Connie a bed bath and while Julia sang AJ, the day nurse, came in to give her a dose of Ativan and morphine. I sat off to the side and watched and listened. The lead hospice nurse talked low to me, away from Connie’s ears, and told me it looked like days, not a week or two weeks.
When they lived me to the quiet of the room I thought about these past few weeks and I could not imagine them without hospice.
I am an old man and so my memories of hospice are from small towns where hospice was someone, always a woman, came to a house when death was hours or a day or two away. They changed diapers, maybe washed a face, but mostly sat and waited with the family. When the care facility staff first talked to me about bringing in hospice I said “no.” My memories were not pleasant.
But as time went by they educated me and I am grateful for the learning. Hospice today is nothing like the old days. Today hospice provides whatever equipment is needed and it’s covered by Medicare. An RN comes in at least three times a week and as the end nears, daily. Aides also come to do bathing, changing and other general tasks. There has been a gentleness, a caressing caring to all the hospice workers; not that the care facility staff has not shown that but with hospice in the building it all goes up a few notches.
My ignorance also kept me from understanding how much help they could be to me. On one level it’s obvious. The care they give Connie has a focus that the staff, which has to respond to a unit full of patients, just can’t always give. But beyond that, they’ve cared for me. Not overtly, but quietly and in the way they talk to and with me.
I have sat with them and let my hair down, dropped the façade of the guy in control, told them just how tired I am and how useless I feel at times. They have listened quietly and replied softly.
I wish I had better understood what hospice in 2026 looks like and brought them in sooner, but I didn’t understand so did not. They are here now, though, and that is all that is matter.
Hands gently wash and massage Connie and whisper in her ear and Julie’s voice and guitar fill the room with soothing melodies and all that makes the dying just a little more bearable for me and for Connie.
Thank you.
Rich Heiland, has been a reporter, editor, publisher/general manager at daily papers in Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and New Hampshire. He was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the Xenia Daily (OH) Daily Gazette, a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year. Since 1995 he has operated an international consulting, public speaking and training business specializing in customer service, general management, leadership and staff development with major corporations, organizations, and government. He also writes the blog stuffonmymind.blog. Semi-retired, he and his wife live in West Chester, PA. He can be reached at [email protected].