Oct. 23 to 29 is Pastoral Care Week, an annual observance celebrating spiritual care and those who provide it.

Faith can offer comfort and guidance throughout a person’s life, including the last chapter of life. For this reason, spiritual care is an important aspect of hospice. After all, a hospice patient’s and family’s needs aren’t limited to the physiological. The end of life can be a time for finding and making peace; sacred tradition; joy; thanksgiving; and preparation. Alive Hospice chaplains are guides and companions on that path.

Wherever a patient is receiving care – at home, at an Alive Hospice inpatient facility or other care facility – Alive Hospice chaplains are faithful servants. Your faithful servants.

Happy Pastoral Care Week!

WATCH: NewsChannel5+’s Issues of Faith looks at  spiritual care and the end of life with Alive Hospice Chaplain Khette Cox. Click here to watch.

Oct. 8 is World Hospice and Palliative Care Day! As part of that celebration, we offer three stories of families touched by hospice care: an Egyptian family displaced from its home during the 2010 Nashville flood; a brother and sister from Guatemala; and Maluak, one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.

Though they came to Tennessee from different homelands and cultures, their common link is the difference that hospice (specifically, Alive Hospice) made for them. Click on each photo below to read their stories.