A Widow’s Sorrow: Hospice – Kristen Meekhof

According to a Kaiser Health News article dated January 16, 2013, re-printed by AARP, approximately 1.65 million Americans utilize hospice each year, so, chances are, you or someone you love will at some point experience hospice. For myself, I was 33 when I reached out to hospice after my late husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Still, to this day, I remember exactly where I was standing when a compassionate nurse at the University of Michigan hospital led me to a private office and explained that I needed to telephone hospice. I asked, “What do I say?”

With a kind, maternal tone, she said, “They are expecting your phone call.”

I didn’t think to even get the name of the nurse, or ask whom I should thank for arranging this. I just stood there, lump in my throat, trying to hold back tears while looking outside and noticing a perfect autumn day. I remained by the desk and the nurse pulled out the chair. She said, “You will need to sit down here.”

Many have lost loved ones in the hospital and others, like my late husband, have had in-home hospice care. Rather often, when I talk about my upcoming book, I am asked whether I would again engage hospice. This answer is— Yes. Hospice is a difficult decision for anyone but it allowed me to bring my late husband home, somewhere he desperately wanted to be.

Nurses and doctors help people understand the nature of hospice. Dr. Gary Hammer, the Millie Schembechler Professor of Adrenal Cancer at the University of Michigan Cancer Center, helped me. His patients have an ultra-rare type of cancer:adrenal. Sadly, nearly all of the patients Dr. Hammer treats have advanced cancer. My husband was treated at this cancer center, and six years after his death, I met with Dr. Hammer. I told him that I felt guilty for having my husband undergo numerous biopsies, other procedures and doctor visits, and spending so much of his remaining time in the hospital, when the best solution was hospice. With great patience and kindness, Dr. Hammer explained that many times adrenal cancer is diagnosed only after it has metastasized and said, “You did the best you could do.”

Dr. Hammer speaks to such value in his open letter to patients. “In this vulnerable place of finding themselves dying, brave people have let me into their space where three truths seem to be unveiled again and again as defining gifts of sacredness. And these truths are indeed the very reflections of the word presence: conscious engagement, the experience of present time–the razor sharp NOW, and a gift–the gift of emotional authenticity.”

One of those places of emotional authenticity is found in the book, Hospice Voices: Lessons for Living at the End of Life. Author Eric Lindner’s debut is somewhat like an Irish wake. There are tears, but also joy and surprising levity. His writing honors and gives voice to those intensely personal moments that patients and their loved ones endure; and find reasons to celebrate. I use the word endure because there is pain: physical, psychological, and spiritual. Letting go often gives rise to an intense, raw, cold, sharp pain; from which moments of great warmth and even hope.

These moments of touching irony remind us all of this universal truth: life–and death–is replete with paradox and juxtaposition. It is this paradox that I continue to balance. The prayers I said, when I knew my dear husband was dying, came from a place of great sorrow and yet, they also spoken with hope. We believed, and I still do believe in a great reunion.

Kristin Meekhof is a licensed master’s level social worker. She graduated from Kalamazoo College with a major in psychology and completed the clinical master in social work program at the University of Michigan. She is a contributing writer for the Huffington Post and recently authored an essay (in the Huffington Post) titled, “The Moment I Knew”, which was published June 10, 2013. She is currently writing a book, “When Your Husband Dies: 7 Challenges Widows Encounter” with James Windell. They are talking directly with widows of all ages, and are addressing topics such as death by suicide, substance abuse and tragic accidents.