School: Princeton

Dear Chaplain, I felt most reflective when we sat in those Sunday circles and listened to each other. I am a private person, but the passage of the year and the solemnity of the other students heightened my comfort with sharing. Of course, your indefatigable positivity and openness certainly helped. For all these reasons, I … Continue reading “A Sunday Letter: Unexpected Things in Volunteering”

Death, with its shrouded mystery, is often anticipated to be an inherently profound experience. The call for hospice volunteers came with words like “demanding,” “emotionally complex,” and framed the experience as one where I would “help the patient navigate the process of dying.” These characterizations are not necessarily untrue of my volunteer experience. Yet more … Continue reading “Reflections on Hospice as a Lived Experience”

I originally sought out the Kindred Hospice opportunity because I wanted to learn more about death. It was foreign to me: all my other grandparents’ deaths came to me through my parents’ sad words. Both my classmates’ deaths had been sudden. I had little idea as a doctor what I would say to a patient … Continue reading “Listening”

“Happy 91st birthday! I wish you a long and healthy life …” As I had been reading aloud all of the birthday cards that “Anna” had not been able to read due to her deteriorated eyesight, she stopped to comment at the end of this letter as she had with every other one. Usually, it … Continue reading “Birthday Card”

In the past, my friends would always joke around when trying to persuade me to take a leap of faith or do something outrageous by saying, “What’s the worst that could happen?” Immediately, I would respond with one simple phrase: “I could die.” Before working hospice, death was not a subject that I had ever … Continue reading “A Deeper Understanding”

I read Being Mortal a few years ago, and reading it was one of the main reasons I wanted to start volunteering with Ascend, to gather my own information to form opinions on end-of-life care. Even before reading this thought-provoking book, I had often held long philosophical debates late into the night with friends whose … Continue reading “New Perspectives”

A year is a long time to be visiting patients – or 7 months really. Looking back, a lot of my patients blur together especially since I didn’t often see the same patients for long periods of time. So what sticks out instead are the brief interactions, the ones that were unique and special and … Continue reading “Snippets from my past year as a hospice volunteer”

One of my most meaningful interactions during my hospice experience was a visit with a couple who had been together for 50 years, but who had only recently gotten married at the care center last year. While the husband Jack was deteriorating at a much faster rate than his wife Lisa, Lisa was able to … Continue reading “Small Gestures and Memories, and Carrying On Legacies”

As I begin to think about my potential career path, working at the pre-med hospice was the first step to help hone my career aspirations. One day as I volunteered there, I walked past a lovely lady who laid in bed silently, staring into the abyss through her glassy eyes. Her despondent stare pierced my … Continue reading “Just Sit Down and Listen”

What does dying look like or dying well or living well are they two separate things? i would guess that it is one process that we are choosing how we will die now we seem to pick paths without evidence without RHYME without REASON and if that is true what should we do what should … Continue reading “inspired by the end”