Rushville Hospice

April 7, 2001

Blessed to be raised by giving parents in a giving community. Dad: spanked: 10cent vs. 15cent coke. Fire: $500

Giving Centers us on what’s important... Hiney the Mule Anxieties...look in your purse... Jim Kern: Mrs. Brown Dr. Phrabacher Mom: Alcatraz

Giving makes our load lighter..... Most giving lady I know..Mae Beets..spent her life with the sick, helping. Died: Funeral Music Jeff W: spent entire school career giving to others...Robbed. Giving heals ourselves... Becky E...funerals James Dobson Albert Sweitzer Conway Twitty

Matt..baritone

My mother…one of those elective heart surgeries… 97% chance of success… Mom helped fill out the other 3%. Died in St. Johns two summers ago. In intensive care while her family sat just ten yards away in a very sterile waiting room. I wrote a play in the following months.. called “A Room Full of Strangers,” about the American way of dying.

Good friend..Dr. Thomas Bunting..Pike County.. elderly population… basically spent the last ten years of his practice telling families that their loved ones had died in the next room. He told me that the main reason to retired and moved to New Mexico was “America is a great place to live. But when it comes to dying, we have a lot to learn.”

My co-director and very good friend is sitting with his mother at this moment in J’ville. She’s under hospice care and may not make it through the weekend. Her final goal..Easter baskets for each of her 12 grandchildren. She finished the last one this morning..her morphine pills allow her to have one coherent hour out of five. The last basket is done. She will die in a room full of people who love her…her Easter baskets are finished.