I’ve been volunteering for about a month with Capital Caring Health, a hospice and advanced home-care organization that works throughout the Washington region. This is my second time working alone as a vigil volunteer, and despite weeks of training, I’m nervous. Should I talk to her? Should I not talk? Should I hold her hand? Some volunteers sing. Some pray. A pastor friend recommended some Scripture (I’m not religious), but the woman’s roommate, who’s quite alive, asks a nurse to turn on the TV, and an episode of “Martin” blares. Should I shout proverbs over the sitcom zingers and Geico ads? And what if she opens her eyes? What if her last image on Earth is a strange man in a mask?
So I sit quietly. The dying can feel our presence, I’ve been told. That’s the mission here. To be a compassionate human being. To provide family members — in this case the woman’s devoted daughter — with a break from their vigil. To make certain someone is here if she needs something. To ensure that she won’t feel alone and, most important, that she won’t die alone.
This is what I can tell you about standing dangerously close to the crater of an erupting volcano: The heat is unbearable, and so is the thought that the wind might change suddenly, steering the colossal river of fire and half-molten rock straight at you. The magma consumes everything in its path. Sizzling and crackling like old joints, it seems almost alive.
There has been a change in my life that is massive and boring, miraculous and quotidian. After decades of failing, flailing, and frustration, I am on medication and in therapy for ADHD. My brain is finally beginning to work properly, and the biggest breakthrough is the smallest: now I rinse the last dish.
The pay was pitiful; they had to work 16 hours a day. It was a challenging, tedious job, but Jessup kept at it for decades and survived the sinking of the Titanic. She was called “the unsinkable stewardess.” In April of 1912 she was one of 23 women who worked on that ship. She was told to climb into a lifeboat to show passengers that it was safe. She escaped with an abandoned baby in her arms who was eventually reunited with its mother. Later on, Jessup outlived the pounding from torpedoes by various ships. When the iceberg destroyed the Titanic, the White Star line stopped all the crew’s wages. It’s the lesser known information that makes this book fascinating reading.
Contemplating Mount Greylock, at 3,500 feet the highest peak in Massachusetts, Philip D’Anieri is very clear that neither he nor it “rate in the pantheon of mountaineering.” Because of his own lack of know-how, and water, he must cut short his ascent and retreat before the sun goes down.
“More comfortable spending time in a library archive than a backcountry tent, I am a day-hiker only,” concludes D’Anieri, who teaches architecture and regional planning at the University of Michigan, in “The Appalachian Trail: A Biography.”
I’ll spread my arms to the wind,
it blows my hair
wild, as a hurricane.