Sherri Stinson

As a volunteer at Alive Hospice Residence Nashville, I have the pleasure of being invited into those last sacred moments of a person’s life. What an honor! We can’t change a person’s outcome, but we can make it more comfortable and peaceful for the patient, family and friends.

One of my favorite things to do is visit with someone who has just come in to the Residence. I love being a part of welcoming them, from showing families how to operate the coffee machines and where everything is to sitting with them and helping to ease their fears. Stories, oh, my gosh, I love to hear the stories about the patients and things they have done. Love stories about meeting a person and then marrying them or the unspoken love story that I see on the face of a spouse as they wipe the brow or caress the face of their other half. What love we are allowed to witness every day that we are here.

Listening – that’s what we all do the most of here. Oh, and caring enough to get out of our comfort zones and then finding out that we now have a new comfort zone. We assist patients with writing thank-you’s and then sometimes we help them write letters of good-bye. We cry, we laugh, we listen some more and we may laugh and cry all over again. Sometimes we order pizza and have girls’ nights in, bring in patients’ beloved pets, watch movies, water plants, take a patient for a walk or ride around the Residence, play music, or paint nails.

People sometimes ask how I got in to this type of volunteering and I always let them know that I have been there, too. Everyone’s situation is different but we all must go through this process. My father passed away two years ago and we used a hospice with him in East Tennessee. I honestly believe that it was the care and love that he received that gave him the chance to live 15 months longer than was ever expected. Dad was cared for at home because there wasn’t a place like the Residence where he lived. If there had been, I think he would have liked to have been here.

So why do I do this, why volunteer in a place like this? Because someone did this for him, and I have never forgotten them.

Sherri Stinson is an Alive Hospice volunteer.