Project: Abriendo Puertas
Organization: Hospice by the Sea
Boca Raton, FL
Story submitted by Cindy Hassett, Project Director of Hospice By The Sea.

Happy Ending

Try to imagine a story where the “happy ending” is death. Given my own personal history, I didn’t think I could ever imagine such a story, but now I can.

For starters, I grew up in a funeral home, the original Six Feet Under daughter. Mourning family members surrounded their deceased loved ones one floor below our kitchen. It was always scary to me, there was always a lot of crying and there was nothing “happy” about it. I escaped from these “death” experiences by retreating to the third floor of our house, or just trying not to be home. Then, I spent most of my early professional life working in a large medical center, where people were always dying and a “code” was always in progress. In the hospital, death was often loud and chaotic, with the dying person surrounded not by loved ones, but by machines and tubes and well meaning but generally emotionally detached hospital staff working frantically to prolong life at whatever cost. This time I detached myself from the reality of death by getting a Master’s Degree and getting out of the clinical world and into the administrative world. I feel as though I have lived around death my entire life, but I have never personally experienced the death of a loved one, and I have worked very hard to prevent myself from being “touched” by death.

Then, strangely enough, I took a job at a hospice, where I am responsible for new program development and funding. Although I had 15 years of healthcare experience, I really didn’t know much about hospice. Like most people, I thought hospice was just this place where people go to die. And, working in “Administration”, did not expect that I would really have to deal with the death and dying part of it. But I did have to spend some time learning about hospice care so I could do my job. For my orientation to hospice, I spent two weeks out in the field with hospice nurses, nurse’s aides, social workers and clergy. In these two weeks I learned, to my great surprise, that hospice staff took care of most of our patients at home, and, surprise again, also cared for the patient’s family. But I learned something even more important in that memorable time.

My very first experience, orientation day 1, was out with Jane, one of our nurses. We were going to the home of Joseph, a frail 84-year-old man with terminal cancer, and his wife, Louisa. As we drove to the house, Jane told me that Louisa had just called her to say that she thought her Joseph had died. Joseph had been our patient for over two months, so Jane knew both Joseph and Louisa very well. My stomach immediately began to churn; this was not what I was envisioning for my first hospice encounter. I did not want to have to deal with an actual death head on. All I could think of were all those loud, chaotic, extremely disturbing images I had from my past about death.

When we arrived at the home, Jane and a tearful Louisa embraced; “Oh Jane, thank goodness you are here”, Louisa said, and then, to my surprise, Louisa turned and embraced me as well. I couldn’t believe it, here was this woman who had just lost her husband, hugging and thanking me, a total stranger, simply because I was wearing a hospice badge. The Louisa led us to the bedroom, where Joseph lay motionless on the bed, the indentation from Louisa’s presence still visible on the mattress. I couldn’t take my eyes from this sight. Was Louisa just there beside him? Had she held him when he died?

My thoughts turned back to Jane, who carefully closed Joseph’s eyes, sat down beside him and pronounced him dead. Although it was in an instant overwhelmingly sad, it was also indescribably peaceful. The intimacy between Jane, Joseph and Louisa was both beautiful and comforting. Jane covered Joseph neatly and folded his hands before escorting Louisa to the kitchen. “We need to talk about the arrangements for Joseph’s funeral”, Jane said, and with hands held, they began to discuss what to do next with the hospice social worker that had just arrived. The quiet sense of calm was interrupted by the arrival of Joseph’s distraught daughter, Amy. A grief-stricken Amy went to her dad, but with Jane and the social worker by her side to provide comfort and support.

What was most amazing to me was the warmth and gratitude extended to the hospice staff by these family members as they struggled to make sense of the reality of what had just happened and their own feelings of grief. And they expressed these feelings to me as well, even though I had no prior encounter with them. Through choked tears, Amy confided “I know my dad died peacefully in his own bed, with mom by his side, and hospice made this possible”. She held my hand and thanked me for all we had done for both her dad and her mom. I was completely overwhelmed, both by how different this “death” was from anything I had experienced and by how grateful this family was to me, for what they perceived to be my role in helping them so much at this difficult time.

What this experience said to me was that, yes, death is always sad and always difficult, and none of us wants to face it. But, the truth is…. we all will. But I knew in that instant, that there is a much better way to die than the way most people do. I understood from those moments with this family what hospice was all about. I could see clearly that Joseph was blessed to have experienced quality of life until the end of his life. I became an immediate advocate for hospice care, and I knew that I had to find a way to share what I learned about hospice with all the families who needed to know.

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