These nuns turn hospices into true homes
When people ask about the type of care the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne provide for the cancerous poor, it can become a little confusing. One of the reasons is that the destruction of language can cause difficulty. Words often have devolved, not evolved, in the post-modern age.
For example, people will ask if we provide hospice care, and that is where the confusion can begin. Hospice is not just a term that governments, insurance agencies, and hospitals use to designate a type of care that will be paid for and provided for a certain period. Hospice is not a term for data sheets for a business; it is much, much older and richer than that.
Hospice comes from a Latin word for a place of rest and protection for the weary. It was used originally to describe places for those coming home from the Crusades, where they would rest, some of them so worn and weary from battle that they would never leave, their wounds being too grave. It is close in origin to the words host and hospitality. It was also used in France in the 1800s to describe places kept by monks for pilgrims passing through the Alps.
Battle laden
Our patients come to us often weary and battle laden, not from a Crusade, but from the problems that vex us all in life. They have fought battles with cancer, with troubles of addiction and vice, with broken relationships, and a whole host of other foes. Our homes become a place they can lay those burdens down, come close to God Whom they will see soon, and receive healing and peace.
One example is a woman who, even with her dementia, was able to say, “I did not have a happy childhood, and I did not have a happy marriage, but I have been happy here.” And this patient has talked several times of knowing she is waiting here for the time when God brings her home.
