Honoring Hospice Patients’ Last Requests

By Karen Hendricks 

While hospice care is built around medical needs and comfort, it also addresses patients’ end-of-life goals, wishes, and dreams. Angie Pickel, hospice social worker for Lutheran Home Care & Hospice, says it’s incredible to be a part of these chance-of-a-lifetime plans.

“One gentleman wanted to go to his daughter’s wedding, but he was in bed all the time,” she says. “So we arranged for a recliner chair to be at the reception for him. So not only was he able to go and participate in his daughter’s wedding, but he also got to dance with his wife for the last time. He died a few days later.”

“Another gentleman wanted to go hunting for the last time. By the grace of God, a friend of a friend of his wife’s coworker had access to a fantasy, once-in-a-lifetime, trip to a deer park. His life was complete. His wife also treasures that experience because she was able to go along with him.

“One of my clients had a sad beginning to her life—her mother died in childbirth giving birth to a brother. But at the end of her life she was so loved, surrounded by loved ones—she was 100 when she passed away.”

“I had another client—a 108-year-old woman tell me the secret to life was ‘not getting married’ because she was an old maid.”

“At hospice, we try to approach everything from a positive place. But there are clients who are angry. Not everyone has a happy story. The saddest cases are when people have shut out others. I had a 91-year-old man kick me out of his house because he hadn’t lived enough and said he wasn’t dying. It was a moment that made me think about life. I also had a 9-year-old very acceptant of the fact that he was doing to die. It’s not in the years that we live, but how we view them.”

“There aren’t many children in hospice, one or two a year, and we do get several people in 20-50 age group. I’ve had young moms who had to say goodbye to their kids. There are moments that pull at your heartstrings, people in the prime of their lives. We focus on the gift they were when they were alive and how we honor their memory.”