One volunteer shares the impact hospice services have on individuals and the community

MOSES LAKE — It's okay to talk about death.

Ask any hospice volunteer like Shirley Schuller, and she will tell you that communication is an important part of the grieving process.

Schuller, who volunteers at Columbia Basin Home Healthcare and Hospice, knows this because she too needed the help of hospice volunteers when her husband was terminally ill with cancer and passed away two years ago.

"I needed someone to come and watch my husband so I could watch the grandchildren and continue day-to-day activities," she said.

However, as time went on, the relationship that developed between the hospice volunteers and Schuller's family would change her life.

"I was so impressed with the nurses and the level of care they gave," she said. "They had a sense of humor too."

Humor? During a grieving process?

But it was the key to helping her and her family get the support they needed. The hospice volunteers found the Schullers' interest in horses and dogs to be something they could connect with on a deeper level that went beyond a caregiver and patient relationship.

That's what hospice is there for, said Jamie Vanerstrom, director of hospice at CBHHH. "This is about people to people care and we walk this with the patient."

And for the more than 950,000 patients who were served by the nation's 3,300 hospice providers in 2003, that service makes it manageable to progress through the grieving process.

"It helped get through each day," Schuller said.

It was better for the grandchildren too, because the dying process was treated as normal, she said, not something to be hidden or forgotten.

While a grieving process had begun, a new inspiration for life and living had become apparent.

Schuller decided she "wanted to be a part of something," and hospice was part of that something new in her life.

Two years later, as a volunteer, Schuller can sympathize with those who are going through the grieving process of losing a loved one.

"I can now relate to what those people are going through," she said. "Death is a natural thing, but until it happens to you or your own family, you don't think much about it."

Having had time to reflect on those changes, Schuller says one thing is for sure: "You live every day to the fullest and if you want to do something you just do it."

For Schuller, her time spent volunteering with hospice is about keeping active and has helped her move on since her husband passed away. "There are places I haven't been and people I want to see," she said, naming off places such as Idaho, Alaska, Las Vegas and an occasional basketball game with her grandchildren that she will be looking forward to in the near future.

As the holidays approach and Schuller remembers other hospice volunteers, she says that serving others is about "them knowing I'm there and available for them to make their day brighter."