Over the low whir and bubble of an oxygen machine pushing air into her stiffening lungs, Doris Hockaday is having a conversation with a dear friend she didn't know five months ago.

"Gwen's got two girls. What are their names, again? I should know that," says Lane Kaplan, sitting in a rocking chair next to Hockaday's hospital bed, discussing a hoped-for family visit. "I'm excited to meet your other daughters. Will they be coming with their families?"

"I think they will," Hockaday says. "I think they will."

This friendship between Hockaday, a 72-year-old grandmother of eight and great-grandmother of three who retired from banking, and Kaplan, a 34-year-old new mother with a background in public relations and marketing, came at an unlikely time and down an unlikely path.

After years of living with pulmonary fibrosis, Hockaday is under the care of Hospice of Wake County. This allows her to live in the North Raleigh home of her daughter and son-in-law, in a room with walls painted the same buttery shade as her favorite yellow roses, filled with pictures and family mementos.

Kaplan is a volunteer with hospice, spending several hours each week visiting the older woman, which allows Hockaday's daughter Sue Beach the opportunity to run errands, schedule appointments or take a brief break from the responsibilities of caring for her mother.

In this time of light and shadow in the family's life, Kaplan shines brightly. She felt a call to a volunteer commitment that wouldn't appeal to everyone, taking on a role critical to the success of hospice organizations locally and nationwide.

And more than that, her conversations with Hockaday prove that the need to connect is vital, even until our very last days.

Living out our days

The hospice movement got its footing in the United States only in the past 30 years. It is based in the notion that terminally ill patients should live out their lives physically comfortable in a family-focused setting where issues of death and dying are approached with peace of mind.

Patients referred to hospice are usually expected to live six months or less. The hospice concept has broadened to include bereavement services and support groups and other programs to ensure that families receive the help they need when a loved one dies, much of it done with the help of volunteers.

For Hospice of Wake County, that means everything from folks like Kaplan, called family support volunteers, to bereavement volunteers who work with the families up to 13 months after a patient's death -- helping them past the first anniversary of the death.

Nationally, about 400,000 people are hospice volunteers, giving more than 18 million hours of their time annually, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. To be Medicare-certified, a hospice must have 5 percent of its hours provided by volunteers.

The nature of hospice work, the forming of attachments that will almost certainly be broken and of locking into the emotional lives of people at such a difficult time, holds some people at a distance. According to Sandy Simone, volunteer coordinator for Hospice of Wake County, that's because they don't get the full picture.

In a society where sex and politics are openly discussed, death is a topic many tread timidly around, as if talking about it or being too close to it might somehow invite its attention.

"I have had so many people ask me, 'Isn't that depressing work?' " Simone said. "It isn't depressing. It is so filled with hope. It is so enriching. It is so much more."

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