I arrive early at the hospice in-patient unit every Tuesday afternoon so the volunteer finishing her shift can brief me before I start mine.

“The patient in room four has visitors,” Deborah says on a early autumn Tuesday. “The one in room seven is actively dying. His wife is with him and their daughter is on the way. The woman in eight is sleeping and the man in room 10, Mr. Greene, will stand in his doorway when he wants a cigarette.”

“Wait, what? I didn’t know patients are allowed to smoke,” I said.

“Yes, of course, but outside,” Deborah replies. “His cigarettes are on the nurse’s conference table.”

Ten minutes later, I look up and see Mr. Greene standing in the doorway of his room. I don’t know how long he has been there since he is as quiet as a shadow. Mr. Greene is wearing plaid flannel pajama bottoms and navy velvet slippers. A purple hospital gown hangs like a drop cloth over his skeletal frame. The middle of his face is wrapped in a gauze mask that stretches flat across the hole where his nose should be, and his left eye is closed and bulging so far out that it looks like it could fall off his face with the slightest motion. Although I read ‘sinus cancer’ in his chart, I am startled by how grotesque he looks.

“Mr. Greene, what can I do for you?” I look down at my desk and pretend to straighten up a row of folders while I regain my composure. I flash to my dear friend Leslie who died from breast cancer after a long, bitter battle with the disease.

“Devra, get me out of here!” I can still hear Leslie’s frantic, final words, barked as though she had somewhere to go and was deathly afraid of being late. Leslie was not referring to the hospice room. I believe Leslie wanted out of her cancer-ridden body and she knew I would understand.

I felt helpless standing by her bedside as she pleaded, tugging at her oxygen line with one hand and pulling off her covers, exposing her scarred chest, with the other. The angry red criss-cross lines that marked her torso caught me by surprise and my legs started to buckle. Then she screeched again, bringing me back to her.

“I’m with you, Lester,” I said, using her college nickname, “and I want to help you get out of here.” I tried to sound reassuring even though I had no idea what I could do to relieve her struggle.

Leslie’s eyes were glassy and unfocused, but I knew she could hear me. So I took hold of her hand and talked to her—a steady stream of reassurance, jokes, and silly commentary on me and the others in the room (her husband, daughter, parents, sister)—until she quieted down and drifted into a deep, restful sleep.

I felt my fears dissolve as I focused on easing hers. And, I realized that I actually was helping Leslie by simply being there.

The year after Leslie died, I became a hospice volunteer. I reasoned if I could provide some comfort to Leslie in her final days, maybe I could help others. But right now I feel like a fraud because I am frightened of Mr. Greene, as if he were the monster he appears to be. I am also afraid that I will not be able to step outside my fear of death; the way I could with Leslie.

“I want a smoke.” Mr. Greene’s voice is soft but deep and clear.

I stand, maybe a little too quickly, and glance around for someone else—anyone else—to take him outside. There is no one.

“OK, I’ll grab your cigarettes while you take a seat in that wheelchair next to your door,” I say, my voice a little shaky. I hope Mr. Greene does not sense my discomfort.

“I don’t need to sit in no wheelchair,” Mr. Greene says in a weak protest, as though he knows he won’t get his way but has to try.

I do not want to take his pride away from him, but I stand firm. “We both know the hospice has a rule about this,” I say. “Please, sit down.”

I grab Mr. Greene’s Ziploc baggie of Newports and Tastee Diner matches off of the conference table. As I get closer to Mr. Greene, who is now sitting in the wheelchair, I notice the bandage wrapped around his concave face is leaking a thick yellowish liquid and I feel my throat get thick. My gut reaction is to look away, and I remind myself that my goal is to make him—and every hospice patient—as comfortable as possible. I recall Leslie once telling me she did not like to be stared at or treated differently when she was bald and bloated from chemo, so I take a deep breath of courage and step behind the wheelchair.

“My name is Devra. I volunteer here on Tuesday afternoons,” I say, as I start to push. The wheelchair moves easily, as though it is empty.

“Harold,” Mr. Greene says.

“Harold. It is nice to meet you.”

I guide him toward the exit and spin the chair around to back out, using my right hip to open the door. We roll onto the stone patio which is lined with low green boxwoods and benches dedicated to people who spent their last days in the hospice. Beyond the shrubs is a sloping lawn dotted with oak trees that look like they are trying to reach up to heaven. Some still have a few resistant dried leaves clinging to the upper branches. The air is crisp around the edges, and I did not remember to put on my coat, so I steer Mr. Greene over to a wooden bench in the sun.

After I make sure Mr. Greene’s chair is secure, I sit down next to him and take out the Newports. I give the pack a shake and straighten my arm in front of Mr. Greene who slowly pulls out a cigarette and places it between his lips. I strike a match and hold it up between us when I realize I am on his blind side and he can not see it. The flame travels quickly to my fingertips and dies out. There is only one match left. I strike it, this time standing in front of him as I put the flame up against the cigarette. “Here you go,” I say. He tightens his mouth and inhales. The cigarette shrinks in and glows red. Mr. Greene takes a long pull, thanks me, and crosses his legs.

I sit back down, point my face up to the sun and close my eyes while I search for a safe topic of conversation. “It says in your chart you lived in New Orleans during Katrina,” I say, turning to look at Mr. Greene.

“Yup,” he replies, staring straight ahead.

“New Orleans is a great city. Did you listen to a lot of music while you were there?”

“Nope.”

“What did you do there for fun?”

“Drank.”

Dead end. I am determined to bond with with Mr. Greene so I wait a beat then try a different subject.

“Have any family around here?”

“Nope.”

Another dead end. Since Mr. Greene does not feel like talking, I close my eyes and listen to the slow beat of his inhales and exhales. When he goes quiet, I glance over. He is holding up the smoldering butt. “Got another?” he asks.

I consider telling him one is the limit, then realize that sitting outside and smoking on a lovely autumn day is one of the few pleasures available to him. I quickly hand Mr. Greene a cigarette so he can light it with the one he is holding since there are no more matches. Mr. Greene can not quite make the connection so I gently guide his hand to help him. His skin is cool, and crinkly like tissue paper. After the new cigarette starts to burn, he leans over to tamp out the old butt against the pavement. He checks to make sure it is dead before he flicks it into the bushes behind us.

I lean back and wait quietly for him to tell me he is ready to go inside. He startles me when he speaks. “Them’s nice boots. You get them around here?”

When I open my eyes and sit up, I see Mr. Greene studying my feet. “These boots? I got them in Texas about 15 years ago. They’re old favorites,” I say, delighted that he is talking to me, as though it is a signal that I am well-suited to be here.

“Yes sir, them’s nice boots. Very nice boots. I had a pair of boots once,” Mr. Greene says, holding his cigarette away from his face as he sits back and rests his elbows on the arm of his wheelchair. “Bought them in Washington years ago.” He brings the cigarette back up to his mouth, inhales, nods, and then exhales. “Didn’t take long before my stepfather stole them,” he says. A tail of ashes drops off of his cigarette and lands on his left foot. He leans over to clean off his slipper then sits back up. “Should have seen that coming.”

Now that he has opened up and seems at ease, I want him to keep talking, to tell me more about his life, but he does not. We sit in silence while he slowly finishes his cigarette. I wonder what I was so afraid of earlier and wish I could start today’s shift over.

“As much as I am enjoying sitting here with you, I think it is getting a little chilly,” I say, reluctant to break the spell, but the sun is starting to slip behind the building. “You ready to go inside now, Harold?”

“Yup. Thank you, dear,” he says, and I am glad he cannot see my eyes well up when he calls me dear.

I slowly wheel Mr. Greene back to his room and stay with him until he gets back into bed. When I ask, he says he does not need anything else. He is tired and would like to rest. So I go back to my desk and wait for him to appear in the doorway again. He does not before my shift ends.

When the next volunteer arrives, I brief him as I gather my belongings. On my way out I walk into Mr. Greene’s room to say goodbye, but he is sleeping peacefully. I do not want to wake him so I hold his hand and watch him breathe for a few moments before I leave, already looking forward to my next shift.

Some names have been changed in this story out of respect for privacy.

If you are interested in becoming a hospice volunteer, go to hospicefoundation.org/volunteering.

Meeting Mr. Greene—Journal of a Hospice Volunteer The Saturday Evening Post

The warehouse is located 10 or 11 blocks north of the Victorian homes and upscale shops for which the city of Burlington, Vermont, has, time and again, been rated as one of the ten best places to live in America by a slew of national media. But here there are no houses trimmed in lacy gingerbread and no chic shops. Instead, sagging homes line the street surrounding the warehouse, which—along with a small kitchen—is home to the Chittenden County Emergency Food Shelf.

A freezing rain pelts the 60 or so men and women gathering outside. Inside, eight volunteer students from the University of Vermont (UVM) dressed in jeans and khakis are working furiously to bake chicken, warm up Tater-Tots, re-heat donated pizza, chop vegetables, make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and put bananas and beverages within easy reach of anyone who comes through the door.

Six nights a week, the Salvation Army makes dinner for those who have fallen through the safety nets of the city, state, and nation. But on Sunday, the Army’s day of rest, the UVM kids take over and make sure that anyone who’s hungry gets fed.

The students are more than just short-order cooks. With $85 from UVM, the group has spent the afternoon shopping for bargains at PriceChopper; scavenging for pizza seconds at American Flatbread, Uno’s, and Domino’s; and sweeping up not-quite-stale pastries at Starbucks. They arrive here at the Food Shelf by 4:30 p.m.

This year the program is headed by a tall, blonde chemistry major from Ohio. At age 22, senior Carly Hodgins has been a part of this group for four years and is a masterful organizer. She bursts through the door loaded with bags of bread, boxes of pizza, and a carful of fellow students. Within minutes every hand is scrubbed, chicken is in the oven, salad is being tossed, pizza is warming on the stovetop, and this observer is put to work too, chopping what seem to be a zillion carrots.

Here are the stark facts about hunger in this plentiful nation. While 96,000,000,000 pounds of food are thrown away every year by the food industry—that’s 96 billion pounds—someone in 1 out of every 10 households in the United States is either hungry today or at risk of being so tomorrow.

Why they are is a matter for sociologists and politicians to debate. But for these kids, it’s beyond politics: When people are hungry you feed them.

“Time to open up!” Carly yells.

The door swings open. Men and women who’ve been waiting outside silently flow into the building, single file. There’s no pushing or shoving, just focused intent. Ten steps inside the door each man or woman picks up a waiting plate and the students start piling it with food. Every person gets a portion of meat, vegetables, salad, potatoes, and pizza. When the last person heads for a table, those who’ve been through the line can come back for seconds. The kids will serve until they run out of food.

Carly stands at the end of the food line and offers a beverage. “Apple juice?” she asks, looking straight into the eyes of each diner. “Orange juice?” Her smile is a flash of sunshine, her warmth a benediction.

As she reaches out to steady someone’s hand, I remember words buried long ago in my heart: “I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

When the last meal has been served and the last diner has gone back into the darkness, I wipe down a steel table in the kitchen and think about what these kids have accomplished: Tonight, no one in Burlington will go hungry.

To contribute to a food bank, please contact Feeding America (feedingamerica.org). Excerpted with permission from Blessed: Living a Grateful Life, © 2011 G. Ellen Michaud, published by The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., rd.com.

Edited on Dec 8, 2011: Blessed was named 2011′s “Best Inspirational Spiritual Book” by USA Book News.

Feeding the Hungry Can be a True Holiday Blessing The Saturday Evening Post

So we quote today from a Post article —“The Peace Corps: Making Friends for America.” Even in 1982, with the country’s culture wars just starting to heat up, the program enjoyed broad (we could even use the word “bipartisan”) support among public figures.

There are President Reagan and [recently appointed Peace Corps] Director Loret Miller Ruppe. Then, John F. Kennedy. “Miss Lillian” Carter. Bill Moyers. The King of Tonga. Senator Paul Tsongas. Father Hesburgh. Sargent Shriver. Unlikely allies, but all linked through one strong common interest.

Shriver was the founding director of the Corps—which began in 1961—and served under his liberal Democrat brother-in-law. President Kennedy, who originally proposed the organization in his campaign promises. Ruppe, President Reagan’s Peace Corps head, is—like her chief—a conservative Republican. Yet both directors testify to the enthusiastic backing of their chief executives, 20 years and political poles apart. Both directors won their White House standing through vigorous and successful election campaigning.

Today, Ruppe… is confident that the Peace Corps is on the threshold of a new era of growth and public recognition, fully in harmony with President Reagan’s philosophy of expanding the private-sector role in serving the public good. But it isn’t easy, especially since the Peace Corps has had such a low profile in recent years that many people, even in government-centered Washington, assume that it was one of those “nice ideas” that was abandoned long ago.

Over the past two decades, the Peace Corps has enlisted and sent out to 90 countries more than 85,000 volunteers.

Today, those numbers have grown 139 countries, and the total number of volunteers is nearly 250,000,000.

Wherever former Peace Corps volunteers live and work, they are symbols of caring concern, inclined to be active in community service and, inevitably, bridges between their hometown neighbors and visitors and immigrants from abroad. Some outside observers— and many of the volunteers themselves —believe that one of the main achievements of the Peace Corps has been the expanded and enriched education, experience and global understanding it has provided for those who have had PC assignments abroad.

However true that may be, the chief purpose of the Peace Corps today, as in the past, is to help other people in the poorer, less developed countries help themselves.

When the conservative government of Ronald Reagan arrived in Washington, there was a widespread belief that foreign aid would be drastically slashed, if not abolished. It didn’t quite happen that way. Despite initial proposals by the Office of Management and Budget for cutting the A.I.D. budget in half, and reducing the Peace Corps funding by about one- fourth, bipartisan support for maintaining a substantial assistance program won out. The Peace Corps allocation was held to $105 million. This represents, in actual value of the dollar, only about half the $114 million available to the Corps in 1966, when it had some 15,000 volunteers on duty in more than 70 countries.

In 2010 dollars, that 1966 budget would be about $700 million. In actual 2010 dollars, though,  the budget for the Peace Corps is now $400 million.

Loret Ruppe sees the entire Peace Corps operation as a prudent national investment of long-term benefit to the countries being helped, to the interests of the United States and to the peace of the world. She is thoroughly opposed… to a hand-out approach to solving people’s problems at home or abroad. But the Peace Corps, she points out, is one of those down-to-earth endeavors in which the emphasis is on helping people to help themselves—and it has a track record to prove that such an approach really works.

In a speech at the Peace Corps’ 35^th anniversary, in 1996, Ruppe recalled the moment President Reagan changed his attitude toward the program.

In 1983, I was invited to the White House for the state visit of Prime Minister Ratu Mara of Fiji. Everyone took their seats around this enormous table—President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Caspar Weinberger, the rest of the Cabinet, with the Prime Minister and his delegation, and myself.

They talked about world conditions, sugar quotas, nuclear free zones. The President then asked the Prime Minister to make his presentation. A very distinguished gentleman, he drew himself up and said, “President Reagan, I bring you today the sincere thanks of my government and my people.” Everyone held his breath and there was total silence. “For the men and women of the Peace Corps who go out into our villages, who live with our people.” He went on and on. I beamed. Vice President Bush leaned over afterwards and whispered, “What did you pay that man to say that?”

A week later, the Office of Management and Budget presented the budget to President Reagan with a cut for the Peace Corps. President Reagan said, “Don’t cut the Peace Corps. It’s the only thing I got thanked for last week at the State Dinner.” The Peace Corps budget went up. Vice President Bush asked kiddingly again, “What did you pay?”

Well, we know one thing: It isn’t for pay that Volunteers give their blood, their sacred honor. I can never forget those who died while I was Director. Let us never forget those who have given their lives or were disabled in service. I can never forget the sweat, the tears, the frustrations, the best efforts, and successes of thousands of Peace Corps Volunteers. I stand in awe and with the deepest respect.

The Deathless Legacy Of Sargent Shriver The Saturday Evening Post

A: As you are well aware, there is an extreme shortage of organs, including hearts, suitable for transplantation. In 1982, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) was formed to provide equitable distribution of transplant organs. Located in Richmond, Virginia, UNOS is a nonprofit organization that administers the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) to facilitate organ matching and placement according to equitable policies based on objective medical criteria such as blood and tissue type, medical urgency of the patient, time spent on the waiting list, distance between the donor and recipient, and so on. There are about 2,500 heart transplants yearly in the U.S., with many thousands more on the waiting list. The waiting time varies from several days to several months or longer.

Give the Gift of Life The Saturday Evening Post

Minorities overall have a particularly high need for organ transplants because some diseases of the kidney, heart, lung, pancreas, and liver are found more frequently in racial and ethnic minority populations than in the general population. For example, African Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics are three times more likely than Whites to suffer from end-stage renal (kidney) disease, often as the result of high blood pressure and other conditions that can damage the kidneys. Native Americans are four times more likely than Whites to suffer from diabetes. Some of these conditions that can result in organ failure are best treated through transplantation, and others can only be treated by this life-saving procedure.  In addition, similar blood type is essential in matching donors to recipients. Because certain blood types are more common in ethnic minority populations, increasing the number of minority donors can increase the frequency of minority transplants.

There are no costs to your family for your donation. Costs related to donation are paid by the recipient, usually through insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid.

Electing to become an organ donor will NOT affect the quality of medical care you receive at the hospitals. The medical team trying to save your life is separate from the transplant team. Every effort is made to save your life before donation is considered.

What can be donated? Organs: heart, kidneys, pancreas, lungs, liver, and intestines. Tissue: cornea, skin, heart valves, bone, blood vessels, connective tissue, bone marrow/stem cells, umbilical cord blood, and peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC).

To learn more about donating bone marrow or a cord blood unit, visit:
http://bloodcell.transplant.hrsa.gov/DONOR/Donating/index.html and http://bloodcell.transplant.hrsa.gov/CORD/Options/Donating/index.html

Even if you sign a donor card, it is essential that your family knows your wishes. Your family may be asked to sign a consent form in order for your donation to occur.

If you wish to learn how organ donation preferences are documented and honored where you live, contact your local organ procurement organization (OPO). The OPO can advise you of specific local procedures, such as joining donor registries that are available to residents in your area.
Each organ and tissue donor saves or improves the lives of as many as 50 people. Giving the “Gift of Life” may lighten the grief of the donor’s own family. Many donor families say that knowing other lives have been saved helps them cope with their tragic loss.

Get Started

Register with your state donor registry, if available.

Designate your decision on your driver’s license.

Sign a donor card and carry it with you. Download a page of eight donor cards that you may print and sign.

Order a free donor card that will be mailed to you.

Talk to your family. To help your family understand and carry out your wishes, sit down with your loved ones and tell them about your decision to be an organ and tissue donor. They can serve as your advocate and may be asked to give consent for donation or provide information to the transplant team.

To learn more. visit www.organdonor.gov

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration

Are You an Organ Donor? The Saturday Evening Post