Nancy Remembers

I think hospice uncovered in me a gentleness I didn’t know I had. It showed me intimacy in a new form.

I remember giving Alvin a footbath and thinking I wish I’d done this for my dad. But I never had that chance; so being able to serve patients was a way of being able to ‘pay back.’

I remember the Friday sing-a-long at Laguna Honda with Leroy, Gerry, and others, where we all hammed it up singing “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens,” complete with chicken squawking sounds. Also playing deep notes on the flute as Moses lay dying in the Quiet Room.

I remember these incredible characters. Cosmic Lady saying, “the rent is due on the planet.” Juana insisting on teaching me how to crochet and feeding us micro-waved plantain bananas.

I remember singing Amazing Grace for Mary Anne. Three of us were there and none of us had particularly strong voices, but somehow the song sounded beautiful. The amazing grace was really for us to be with Mary Anne in her gentle confident leave-taking of this world.

Hospice gave me an opportunity to tap into something timeless in my everyday life.  It was like a weekly appointment with eternity, a transcendental adventure that tested me on many levels – physical, emotional, and spiritual. Whether tasks were mundane, like making tea or doing laundry, or sublime, like accompanying someone dying, sitting quietly with them. It required courage, empathy, trust, imagination, and intuitive action or non-action. Someone in the training made us all laugh when they said “Don’t just do something sit there!” And sometimes that is the hardest thing to do.