The Book → Introduction
Note
Hospice social workers arrive near the end of someone else’s life. We stay until it’s over.
The story belongs to the family.
The people in this book are composites, drawn from recurring situations across the author’s years of social work practice. Names, details, and circumstances have been changed to protect privacy. No individual patient or family is depicted.
The Introduction
I’m Telling You Now
People die every day. Most of us never see it. Not in a movie. Not behind a curtain. In a living room on a Tuesday afternoon.
The air smells sour. A hospital bed faces a flickering TV. One bare foot, streaked purple and blue, slips from beneath the sheet.
Everyone wants to know if this is normal. They never say what they mean: the wet gurgle, the open mouth, the way each breath hesitates.
Her daughters stand on either side. A son-in-law paces. The grandson turns a quarter over in his fingers.
No one says it aloud. So I will.
She’s dying.
One daughter sobs. The other plays “That’s Life” from her phone.
At 3:04, she dies.
I stay for the paperwork and the silence, then go when the funeral home takes her away.
I’m a hospice social worker. I’ve stood at hundreds of bedsides like this one. The faces change. The disbelief doesn’t.
Where you live, what’s in the bank, who shows up, how much warning you get: dying drags it all into one room. Some deaths follow plans. Some wear people down. Some leave no good choices.
Most of us are already living the death we’re going to get.
Families hear that and go quiet. Then someone asks: “Why didn’t anyone tell me this sooner?”
So I’m telling you now.
Seven deaths, counting down.
Ready isn’t the point.
Stay anyway.
⁂
Planned Exits
The hospital bed sits where the family used to eat together. A son pulls up a chair while his sister takes their father’s hand. Their mother traces the lines in his face. No one calls 911.
“This is what Dad wanted,” one of them says.
The others nod.
The conversations started years ago. After visiting someone in the ICU. On the drive home from a funeral. Over Sunday dinner, when Dad said, “I don’t want to live like that.”
The forms matched what everyone already knew. There was no arguing. No guesswork.
Few people make it this clear.
Patsy made sure she did.
Next: Patsy