Ten-Finger Exercises

free write-- you get what you pay for

Sweets did a free write last night, and since I discarded the only topic that had come to mind, I thought I'd do the same. Maybe something will come to me.

(dkjjffsppslidfujentur... drums fingers hopefully on keys, makes no words)

Maybe that isn't the way to free write. Hmmm. Maybe you have to have a topic at least.

Okay, how's this? (a vast nothingness has spread across the city, and it's headed to Chicago, so watch out!)

Okay, hospitality, that's my topic.

Last week I did a program for my P.E.O. group (a women's sorority that promotes education for women) about hospice. I remember passing a hospice in England that dated back several hundred years, and went looking it up. I'd have to look it up again to give you the exact name and date, and that wouldn't be free writing at all. I think it was St. Christophers, but maybe some other saint or maybe none at all.

Anyway, it struck me thast the word hospice comes from the word hospitality. So does hospital for that matter, but they have become much less hospitable than ever. The criteria to get admitted are stricter, as are the criteria to stay in. Just because you've had surgery and still have drains in you doesn't mean you get to spend the night. How's that for inhospitable?

So much for free writing. I had to stop and answer the phone, then thought I'd better call my daughter to check on her husband's condition. He had major surgery Friday, and yesterday something looked wrong on the x-ray. No answer though, so I poured some white wine. Maybe that will free me up?

Hospice is, of course, for the dying, but that wasn't always the case. In the middle ages, a hospice was a place of rest for travelers, or poor folks, or people who were on a pilgrimage or homeless or ill. I suppose they couldn't offer much in the way of medical care anyway, so what they did was try to make people comfortable. I don't know anything about how the places were financed, other than I read a petition from the people of London to Henry VIII asking for a hospice.

Since the 1970's, due to the work of Dr. Kubler-Ross and Dr. Ceciley Saunders, death and dying were brought to the public consciousness. Too often people were isolated in hospitals, visited only during visiting hours (no longer true), and, according to surveys, frequently avoided by staff.

Hospice is as much a philosophy as anything. Some teams are volunteers; some are small, like ours, and serve people in their homes; some are massive, for-profit, inpatient buildings. What they all have in common is the desire to help people live out the end of their lives with as much intention, meaning and comfort as possible.

And now, because the wind is roaring and the power keeps flickering, I think I'll end for tonight.