Internal Hospice Losses and the Re-Emphasis of our Significant and Meaningful Work
I am saddened by the recent string of losses of valuable individuals in our hospice world. These are some of my dear FRIENDS - CEOs, leaders and front-line staff whose contributions cannot be fully appreciated. People like Michael Aureli, Ron LaSalle, Amy Schmitzer…all true-blue, salt of the earth individuals that caused "revolutions" in the atmospheres they occupied. I realize that we are all getting older in this time-space and dense matter dimension that we live in, but boy this impacts me. I firmly believe that we are more than our physical bodies and that death "is just a point of view." Personal experience tells me this…as well as my own "library" devoted to the investigation/research that exists. Of course, all of this "documentation" is from the limitations of our 5 physical senses and even including the 6th sense sometimes. (Which should perhaps be called the 1st sense?) We have an option in hospice to view ourselves as gateway organizations, helping people transition from one dimension of life to another. What a wonderful honor it is to serve during this fantastic point of focus…a focus that helps us concentrate on important things as the superficial aspects of our lives fall away.
My own personal losses, which I can speak about more freely than before, have led me on a journey and have caused me to have a more profound appreciation and understanding of the role hospices play, and will increasingly play, in the future. I relentlessly explored every avenue to relieve my pain in an attempt to find answers, even at risk of the answers being undesirable or my experiments being considered controversial. I am a VERY pragmatic person in many respects. I appreciated all of the work of our hospice bereavement experts and other counselors, but I must say that these efforts were not what "resolved" my grief. It was research and, most importantly, direct personal experience supported by counseling efforts that helped me. So ultimately, it was a combination of things that were "linked together" that made the difference in my situation. Unfortunately, many hospices rely too much on one major modality of treatment, counseling. I used to discount the value of some alternative approaches. I was woefully wrong.
As all of us no doubt will experience many varieties of losses in our lives, including the losses of co-workers and hospice people we love, we have more tools and methods than ever before to transcend. Sometimes it is simply a shift in our perspective that makes the difference, like the idea that "death is a point of view…"
~ Andrew
