Good morning.
I want to tell you a really nice story.
Several years ago I met a woman in hospice care. I was a hospice chaplain then. It’s an honor on many levels to be allowed into a person’s home during the sacred end-of-life time.
I’ve seen every imaginable kind of situation, from extreme poverty, hoarding, and chaotic family dynamics to pristine, highly-orchestrated, shhhh we’re not going to talk about dying situations.
One of my favorite hospice people ever was Flo.
She was mostly confined to a chair when I met her, living with her husband, who clearly adored her, but was also quite sick.
When I made my first visit Flo was pretty sure she didn’t want or need a chaplain, but she warmed up to me pretty quickly and so I was allowed to return for more visits.
In the course of our time together, as is often the case when one is in hospice care, I learned a lot about Flo’s life. I learned how she had been put in foster care as a child, separated from her beloved sister (“We were brought into the office at school one day, then I was put on a bus, without her.”), moved around a lot and abused. Though she didn’t use explicit language to describe that part of her life, it was clear that terrible things happened to her as a girl in the foster care system in Vermont.
She married young and was betrayed by her husband, left to raise their children by herself. She worked long hours in a local factory, working to make a life for herself and her family. It was a difficult life, but Flo never caved. The world had betrayed her in ways too numerous to count, but Flo never gave in nor did she ever consider, for example, using a gun to express her disappointment, anger or frustration by shooting others. She somehow found a way to carry on.
She raised her children, kept them sheltered and fed and eventually married again, to a wonderful person.
Close to the end of her life the only regret Flo expressed was that she never finished high school. She hadn’t been allowed to finish high school because the adults in charge of her life had screwed up so much in her childhood that she had had to leave high school to work.
I knew there had to be a way to make Flo’s only wish a reality, so I got in touch with the principal at the high school she should have graduated from and together we hatched a plan: he was willing and able to give her an honorary diploma.
Boy, do I love a good, juicy Yes!
We had a little party that day and the awesome, kind-hearted principal presented Flo with her long-awaited and much-deserved high school diploma.
Flo died within the year, hopefully satisfied to have fulfilled her wishes and proud of the life she created, in spite of the many challenges she faced.
Flo remains one of my fondest memories and greatest heroes.
Beautiful