32 Quotes About Hospice

I stared at the hospice nurse's clipboard of notes, her purple scrubs, her file filled with Momma's health history, and I listened to the clicking of her pen and never looked her in the eye. She didn't belong in our home. She was just full of false information, cynical with age, and her pessimism about Momma's lifespan was making the house feel claustrophobic, like a coffin. She was closing the lid.

At another time, or in another case, it might have excited my ridicule. But into what quackeries will not people rush for a last chance, where all accustomed means have failed, and the life of a beloved object is at stake?

I knew then why I had to suffer. The older we get, the more reasons God gives us to seek His comfort. In the end, He sends us just enough pain and suffering so that we will want to leave. If everything were perfect, we would never choose to go. He wants us to seek an end to our suffering because He wants us to want to come Home.

Of course, it’s now obvious why he was so angry that day. People don’t move into hospice to live but to die. And that half an egg sandwich I ended up making him–that sandwich was the last meal he ate in our Haight-Ashbury apartment, our one true home.

A paradigm shift of viewing palliative care or hospice as a gift instead of seeing it as giving up has the potential to change the way we experience advanced age.

Queenie Hennessy - "I am here to die."Sister Mary Inconnue - "Pardon me but you are here to live until you die. There is a significant difference.

There is absolutely no way someone cannot be affected, or cannnot learn vital lessons by being forced to dwell in the margins of a hindering repose as the one loved by so very few."Dying and Loving It

There is one essential requirement for being close with a dying person: the letting go of self-concern.

When I reflect on the stories of death supported by hospice care and contrast it with our story depicting an absence of support, I find myself dealing with envy and anger. I have channeled those emotions into this book with the hope that hearing our story might give someone else a chance to create a better ending to the life of a loved one.