Fully Staffed! Death Doula Certification & Other New Events + Our Guests, Our Hearts
July 29, 2022
Top: Mary, Marynelda and Claudia; Bottom: Natalie, Crystal and John
WooHoo! We received a ton of interest in the open End of Life Navigator positions we posted last month, and have a look! We're fully staffed again! Our home is filled with a renewed spirit, energy and gratitude.
John, Claudia and I are very pleased – and very thankful – to welcome Marynelda, Natalie and Crystal to our team!
Marynelda comes to ABODE with decades of experience in the hospice field – and has cared for many Guests here over the years. When we posted the open positions, she called and applied immediately!
Natalie leads our Bedside Yoga each Friday – including today, 2:30-3:30 pm! Join us! She says she immediately fell in love with ABODE as soon as she walked through the door.
You may recall that Crystal’s brother Joe was a recent Guest here, and when we saw the love and compassion that she shared with him during her regular visits, we knew she would be a perfect match for our team.
For more background on each of our teammates and what draws us all to ABODE, please visit our Staff page on our website. And come see us! We're always happy to welcome you at ABODE.
OUR GUESTS, OUR HEARTS
Thanks to your love and support, our ABODE Community has cared for 290 beautiful souls since we opened 7 1/2 years ago. We estimate that each Guest "brings" with them at least 10 family members/friends in some form or fashion – which means we've directly touched the lives of close to 3,000 people...and several hundreds more through our educational programs.
Here’s a look at a few of the Guests we've loved on during the past several weeks:
Suzanne with John and Natalie – and her last, most important, possessions.
Suzanne joined us in June. She was fiercely independent – she lived alone for most of her adult life. She was a fashion buyer for Dillard’s and had collected a closet full of gorgeous clothes that she gave away or sold. We asked how she felt about that. “It doesn’t matter now," she said. "I thought it would bother me, but it doesn’t.” In fact, her Bible, glasses and notebook were pretty much all she left behind.
Suzanne’s last wish was to donate her body to the UT Health Science Center Body Donation Program. She got her wish Wednesday evening, July 27. John was holding her hand and singing to her, and as he finished his song, she took her last breath.
Suzanne was 75, under the care of Compassus. Ben Getter MD was her hospice physician – Ben is a former board member and a wonderful supporter of ours.
Martha with John: A sweet reunion!
If you follow us on social media, you know that Martha was an End of Life Navigator in ABODE’s earlier years. In fact, our first Executive Director Jane Marie Young came to see her the other day, as did so many of her family and friends. Martha's brother Larry died at ABODE in 2016, and that's what inspired her to join our team. John has very fond memories of working with her.
Martha, 64, called us awhile ago to say that she was terminally ill, and she wanted to spend her last days at ABODE. We were a bit concerned that we would be taking her too soon – she was still ambulating and she looked quite good when she arrived. Yet she was with us a little over two weeks – she knew her time was limited, and she just needed a quiet, peaceful place to rest.
Martha died Friday, July 22. She was under the care of Guiding Light. Martha cared for so many people as an ABODE Navigator. We were especially happy to return the favor to her.
Charlotte with Milo; Mary serenaded by the Threshold Singers
Several of you met Charlotte. She had been declining and living in less than ideal conditions when Christus determined that she simply could not live at home safely any longer. Charlotte is another one of our Guests who improved so much that she was able to move into a personal care home – the same one where our former Guest Wilma lives. We suspect that they’ve become fast friends.
Mary came to us July 23 from VITAS and died three days later. We don’t know much about her as she was already well on her way when she arrived. We love, though, that she had a visit from the angelic Threshold Choir earlier this week. Their voices, no doubt, brought her much peace. Mary was 94.
Along with these folks, we’ve recently cared for Robert, 92, Embrace Hospice; Jose, 57, Christus; Michael, 60, Companion Hospice; and Kat, 62, Hope Hospice.
Dustin with John
Our newest Guest is Dustin – he’s just 33 and has had Cerebral Palsy all his life. While he cannot communicate verbally, he understands everything we say – and he loves rock music. Please stop by, sit with him and ask Alexa to play AC/DC, Aerosmith and the like! Dustin is under the care of Embrace Hospice.
As always, thank you all so, so much for your time, talents and treasures. Your contributions to ABODE – in all ways – make such a difference to those at the very end of life.
SCROLL DOWN: DEATH DOULA + OTHER EVENTS
Caring for our Guests, of course, is our main mission at ABODE. Equally important, though, is the community education we offer in hopes of achieving our vision – that we live in a world where death is not feared and we live fully until we die.
We continue to host two weekly meditation sessions, Thursday Lunch at ABODE, Friday Bedside Yoga, the Threshold Singers perform two Mondays per month – and we have plenty more events ahead, including our ABODE Death Doula Certification program! Please keep scrolling, and join us for any and all of these exciting events! You'll find these under our Education tab, too, on our website.
YOUR GIFTS: MUCH NEEDED IN THE SUMMER
Summertime is always a challenging time for fundraising – so we are especially thankful for any help you can provide! If our stories have touched your hearts in any way, could you take a moment and donate now?
You can easily donate here or mail a check payable to ABODE to PO Box 47640, San Antonio, TX 78265. Donations of all sizes are so helpful as we care for those who need us most.
Thank you for all you do for ABODE, our Guests, volunteers, staff – and one another. We are forever grateful for our ABODE Community.
Mary Thorsby, Executive Director
415-271-4974
mary@abodehome.org
Tax ID #27-3691295
PS: Please follow us on social media – our links are at the top of our website. Interested in getting more involved at ABODE? Please reach out – we'd love to hear from you!
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Saturday, Aug. 13: Tea, Cake and Death Café
Last month's Death Cafe was very well attended – and quite lively! This is a free-form discussion group where we talk about death and dying. There are no agendas, objectives or themes – we simply gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death.
Our objective? To increase awareness of death with a view to helping us make the most of our (finite) lives. Ours is one of 14,000 Death Cafes in 81 countries.
Our next gathering is 2-3:30 pm, Saturday, Aug. 13, at ABODE. Everyone is welcome! Please RSVP – we'll keep an eye out for you!
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Powerful Tools for Caregivers: Starts Sept. 14
Are you the caretaker of a family member, parent, friend or neighbor? Are you feeling overwhelmed or stretched thin? Welcome to the club. More than 53 million Americans provide care for those who cannot care for themselves.
ABODE cares about caregivers because we, ourselves, are caregivers. That’s why we’re offering the evidence-based Powerful Tools for Caregivers program to help us take better care of ourselves while caring for a friend or relative.
 Our caregiver classes meet via Zoom, 3-4:30 pm, starting Wednesday, Sept. 14. We'll meet for six consecutive Wednesdays through Oct. 19.
Everyone receives the newest edition of The Caregiver HelpBook, 292 pages filled with insights and resources on all sorts of topics we caregivers encounter every day.
A donation of $40 to cover the cost of the book and other materials is appreciated, but not required. Interested in learning more? Please send us an email and we'll get right back to you!
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Staff and Volunteer Training: Friday, Sept. 16 and Saturday, Sept. 17
If you've been thinking about sharing your hearts and talents with ABODE, we're ready for you. We need help with, well, everything!
We can always use a hand, for example, with cooking and yard work, helping with our marketing and education committees and, of course, visiting with our Guests. If honoring those at end of life strikes a chord, please come and be a part of our team, in person, here at ABODE.
We invite you to learn more during our Staff and Volunteer Training, Friday, Sept. 16 (5:30-7:30 pm) and Saturday, Sept. 17 (9 am-2 pm), in the spacious Brown Hall at the Church of Reconciliation, 900 Starcrest Dr., not far from ABODE. You'll find details on our website.
If you'd like to participate, please RSVP if you haven't already. We'd love to have you with us.
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Book Club & Study Group: Starts Sept. 20
Our next Book Club & Study Group starts in September. The international group – yep, that's right! We have participants from Canada and Australia! – meets 6:30-7:30 p.m. each Tuesday, starting Sept. 20, via Zoom.
This time, we're reading The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom, by L.S. Dugdale MD. It's a wonderful book, and we will all learn so much from it and from one another. If you'd like to join us, please RSVP here. We'd love to have you with us.
If purchase your book using Smile.Amazon.com and select ABODE Contemplative Care for the Dying as your beneficiary, the AmazonSmile Foundation will donate a portion of the purchase price to ABODE.
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ABODE Death Doula Certification: Starts Sept. 24
Are you drawn to the world of Death Doulas? At ABODE, we practice the art of Death Doula care every day. And we’re excited to launch our first ABODE Death Doula Certification program, designed just for you!
We’ll meet 9 am-5 pm, for four Saturdays: Sept. 24, Oct. 8, Oct. 22 & Nov. 5, featuring hands-on learning with ABODE Guests! We welcome you to take advantage of this 32-hour program and learn the ABODE Way of contemplative care for those at end of life.
We’re delighted to partner with International Doula Life Movement in bringing you this special Death Doula Certification program.
Interested in learning more? Send us an email and we'll follow up!
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