Living & Dying: A Hospice Blog

By Jennie Reichman The eagle has landed!  Actually, it’s a crow, and unlike Neil Armstrong’s historic visit to the moon in 1969, this bird has found a permanent nest at the new Experienced Goods location, 80 Flat St. in Brattleboro. After many months of planning, renovations...

Given today’s world, let’s celebrate when something goes right! By Susan Parris You’d be hard-pressed to find another place in our town like Experienced Goods, where a wide variety of people interact daily with such good vibes.  All who enter–customers, donors, volunteers, staff–create a shared experience of...

SAYING GOODBYE TO ABBY by Jane Southworth, longtime BAH supporter   Saying goodbye to Abby, my four-legged friend of 14-plus years, has been hard, difficult, excruciating, expected, and swift and for her,  I most fervently hope, painless. One knows, when a dog or cat comes to join the family,...

ASK ALICE This Month's Topic: Home Funerals Dear Alice, I have an aunt who is, sadly, nearing the end of her lifetime journey.  She has planned her own green burial with a biodegradable box in a local hybrid cemetery, and she has asked her children and me to...

Thank you, Patty, for walking so many of us home. By Susan Parris, Executive Director In my twenty-seven years at Brattleboro Area Hospice, I have met many exceptional volunteers and staff.   In a culture where most of us step back when faced with the pain of...

By Jennie Reichman “Home sings me of sweet things, life there has its own wings to fly over the mountains, though I’m standing still.”  Karla Bonoff, “Home” After a whirlwind week of sales and, at the end, a day of “Everything is FREE!,” on Saturday, May 21, we...

My great-aunt Mary told me, “Honey, when I turned 74, I got old.” Aunt Mary always seemed so young to me, so vibrant, so alive. After being swirled in a tornado when she was 62 and dropped in a field a quarter-of-a-mile from where her...

A Springtime Note from Muriel Wolf, BAH Spiritual Companion Spring is the time of the Great Unfurling: of lilies’ fronds, of ruffled daffodil petals, of birds’ wings and April showers, and the winds of change setting last year’s beech leaves tremoring and falling to the ground to make way...

By Jennie Reichman Gratitude. A word I have used many times in this column to describe how I feel about my workplace and co-workers, our donors, our intrepid shoppers, the town and region we live in. It’s a lovely word that I don’t want to overuse...

ASK ALICE This Month's Topic: The Individuals-with-Disabilities Community and Act 39 Dear Alice, I have heard that the disabilities community does not support Medical Assistance in Dying Acts like Vermont’s Act 39, and that some advocates for those with disabilities may actually find these Acts offensive.  I try...