By Bob Chiappinelli, Hospice Volunteer
Decades ago, I first heard of a new organization called hospice that provided skilled medical personnel and caring volunteers to work with dying patients and their families.
“Wow,” I thought. “I could never do anything like that.”
And then, one day in the 1980s, George Katz, the first executive director of Big Brothers of Rhode Island and later director of development for the Big Brothers of America, called me with a proposal that I could not refuse. Now retired, he had returned to Rhode Island and began volunteering for Hospice Care of Rhode Island. He was working to expand its number of volunteers.
His proposal to me, a reporter for the Providence Journal Bulletin, was this: Hospice would train me as a volunteer and during that time inquire whether any incoming patients and their families would be willing to have me serve them as a volunteer and write about the experience for the newspaper.
It was an unusual proposal, but I agreed. I underwent wonderful training by the hospice staff and lost some of my fear of not being up to the job. I even volunteered with a wonderfully devoted couple. But we were separated all too soon by the husband’s passing.
Then, about a year into the search for a willing patient and family, Lettie Boffi, a former waitress from Johnston, accepted the concept of having a reporter chronicle her final days.
Lettie floored me when she told me that she already had in mind the outfit she would wear for her funeral. The dress, she said, would have a high neckline to hide the scars that a dozen cancer operations had left on her.
Her quiet bravery reassured me and I embarked on a two-month writing and volunteering journey that I have never forgotten.
On one visit her husband Bucky cautioned me that Lettie had a hard night and was still sleeping. I walked quietly to her bedside and peered down at her, only to be greeted by the ear-to-ear smile that she regularly bestowed upon visitors.
The Providence Journal published the seven stories I wrote about her and her family, the last one about her funeral, where she wore the attire she described to me that day we first met.
Many times, as I was writing about her, I would have to stop typing and tap my fingers on my desk to steady myself before continuing. The stories and Lettie’s life ended all too soon and I mourned her passing.
At her funeral in a pew in the back of the church I caught myself momentarily reflecting on the most important moment of my journalism career. I recalled covering events involving two Presidents and a Pope but that reverie ended quickly as I scribbled my shorthand answer to my own question: “I knew Lettie.”
And now, some 40 years after I accepted the late George Katz’s wonderful offer, she is still with me. Her memory and the ever-caring staff of HopeHealth have shepherded me through my volunteer experience.
I have seen incredible volunteers, resolute family members caring for their dying loved one night and day, hospice professionals tending to a family’s every request.
I have visited scores of patients in their homes and at the Hulitar Hospice Center. Not all have died. One man at death’s door recovered, moved out of state with family and lived for almost another decade. But many have faced the usual course of fatal illnesses. So, I also have made numerous bereavement calls.
In recent years COVID severely limited my volunteering and a heart attack more than a year ago left me even more cautious. But having reached an age where I might someday change roles from volunteer to patient I find myself anxious to increase my volunteering—and to find my next Lettie.
And I hope that somewhere out there some timid folks are reading about this unique organization that they admire but fear they are incapable of helping and decide to explore giving it a try.
I’ll bet Lettie will be smiling down on you if you do.
