Become Something Special

A hospice chaplain was being interviewed about his work. At one point he said that over the previous weekend, eight of their thirty patients had died. Knowing that with hospice care, a close, family kind of relationship exists between the caregivers and the care-receivers, the interviewer asked, “What effect do so many deaths have on the staff?” The Chaplain replied with the moving story of one patient — one death. He said . . .

On Saturday, one of our patients who had been with us a couple of months was visited by her teenage son. It was a great morning because there were laughs and joyful conversation. At noon, the son said, “Mom, I’m meeting a friend for lunch, but I’ll be back in a little while.”

Shortly after the boy left, the patient called in her favorite nurse and said, “I think I’m dying.” The nurse checked the woman’s vital signs and said, “In all honesty, I think that it’s possible you may…