Volunteer offers guidance to hospice patients

Michelle Christenson/Caller-Times

Robert Moseley (left) chats with Richard Hart on Wednesday. Hart volunteers with hospice patients several times a week. ‘If somebody calls saying somebody needs a visit, I’m there,’ Hart said.

Top-level administrative opportunities brought Richard Hart much professional satisfaction during his 41-year career in health care.
   But the work that the 65-year-old retiree has found the most personally rewarding isn't listed on his resume, nor does he get paid for it.
   "The people I work with are dying and they know they're dying," said Hart, who has been a hospice patient volunteer for about a year. "You can't get more real than that.
   "There are patients who in their latter years of life and waning hours are wanting to blame someone or something for their lot in life. I try to help them realize how good life has really been to them. And all of this, I think, has taught me something about myself. To enjoy what I have today because tomorrow might be different."
   Just three years ago, Hart faced one of his own life-altering "tomorrows," his rheumatoid arthritis and heart problems prompting him to sell his hospice business in Springfield, Mo. He and his wife, Dottie, eventually moved to Corpus Christi.
   Before owning his own business, Hart was a systems administrator of an acute care hospital in New York City and a vice president of operations for a chain of 56 nursing homes.
   While running a business is now a part of his past, arthritis is a constant companion, limiting the amount of time he can spend on his feet. Nevertheless, Hart volunteers two or three times a week at VistaCare Hospice.
   "If somebody calls saying somebody needs a visit, I'm there," Hart said.
   Among the patients that Hart sees is Robert Moseley, 77, who said he looks forward to the volunteer's visits "because it gives me peace of mind."
   Unable to balance his bank checkbook anymore, Moseley, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, said he depends on Hart to help him with those financial chores.
   But the visit isn't all about bank statements.
   "He's not like most people who say they'll come and visit you and then don't," Moseley said. "When he says he'll be there, he's there. You can depend on him."
   Win Blackmon, whose husband, W.C. "Bill" Blackmon died in June of liver cancer at the age of 79, said she puts hospice volunteers like Hart on the top of her list of volunteers.
   Not only do they help lift the spirits of family members who must endure the pain of seeing someone they love hurting emotionally and physically, hospice volunteers also work through their own grief when they lose a patient to whom they've become attached, Blackmon said.
   "When they die, I lose a friend," Hart said. "It happens many times over in this kind of volunteer work."
   But while death indeed may take a friend, Hart said, it cannot claim the friendships that have made his life richer.
   "Because of those friendships, I enjoy my family a lot more and I've learned to become a better listener," Hart said. "It has helped me with my own spirituality and to accept my final years, when they come, without anger or bitterness."