From a Volunteer's Diary

Stories written by life

Behind every donation and every watch, there is a real person. Discover moving, beautiful, and thought-provoking stories from our daily service at the bedsides of the sick and lonely.

A volunteer's confession about the bag of stones we all carry through life

Some decisions in life are not born from a plan. They do not appear at a desk, in a calendar, or in an Excel spreadsheet. They are born in silence. In that special silence that remains after someone close passes away. Sometimes I think that every person goes through life with a bag slung over their shoulder...

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When a person is still alive, but their apartment is already being viewed

While Mr. Jan was lying in his bed, someone in the hallway was making arrangements over the phone to sell his apartment. It wasn't a conversation about the future. It was a conversation about the time after him. The room smelled of medicine and old paper...

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"Just drive me there." On the epidemic of loneliness and a volunteer who cures it with tea

"Just drive me there and pick me up." She said it with such calmness, as if it were about giving her a lift to the store for rolls. She is seventy years old, has a bad hip, and a huge need to talk to another human being...

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"We don't administer meds. We offer a hand." Why do they sometimes shut the door in our faces?

Sometimes help looks very ordinary. There is no medical equipment, ambulances, or white coats. Just a chair by the bed. A quiet conversation. And someone's hand you can squeeze when things get really tough...

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At Easter, we take the doors off their hinges to make a bigger table

Easter is a time for tables. Big, small, family ones, sometimes a bit chaotic. With plates that are always too many, with eggs shared in half, with conversations that drag on into the late afternoon. But there is also another world of holidays...

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The silence before dawn

Sometimes the greatest help you can give someone is simply to keep watch. Not medicine. Not complicated equipment. Not grand words. Just presence. There are some watches that stay with a person for a long time...

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