A Final Wish Finely Granted
Yolo Hospice team members always ask patients, “Is there anything else I can do for you?” before they leave a patient’s home. But Spiritual Care Counselor Micah Murdock wasn’t expecting the response he received when he asked patient John Coleman this question. John’s long-time partner Delores said, “You can marry us.” “I turned to John,” Micah relates, “and asked him, do you want to marry her? He told me, I’ve been asking her to marry me for 34 years. She kept saying no.”
Nontraditional Traditions
An unusual but important weekly ritual, rarely seen in other hospice organizations, takes place every Friday morning at Yolo Hospice. Staff gather in a community room in our building on Galileo Court to light a candle in memory of each recently deceased patient. One by one, as each candle lights, a story is shared about the person being remembered. The poignancy of this early-day custom is palpable. It makes clear that each one of the organization’s 500 annual patients are
