Hospice of Amador and Calaveras

We are thrilled to announce this year's amazing prizes! Purchase your tickets to support your local Hospice and a chance to win 1 of 8 amazing prizes. We would like to extend a heartfelt THANK YOU to our prize donors! ... Tickets can be purchased today by phone (209) 223-5500 and tickets will be mailed out to you! Starting next week our Thrift Store locations will have tickets on hand to sell. But, don't wait- Call our office TODAY to buy yours! Take a Chance on Love Valentines Drawing

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response i...s magnificent: Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta: I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana. What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow. Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula. Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK? Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow. God bless you all! Kurt Vonnegut ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When I was 15 I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of getting to know you questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes. And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them. And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them. And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could Win at them.

National Pastoral Care/National Spiritual Care Week is October 25 - 31 and is hosted by The COMISS Network: The Network on Ministry in Specialized Settings. The first Pastoral Care Week was held in October 1985. We are taking this week to give special thanks to Hospice Chaplain and Bereavement Coordinator George Stathos (pictured), who brings comfort and care to our patients and their families all year long. For more information on National Pastoral/National Spiritual Care Week, please visit: https://www.spiritualcareweek.org/

Join us in celebrating National Pastoral Care Week. We are so fortunate to have 2 of the most compassionate and kind Chaplains here at our Hospice- George and Tim! We would also like to take a moment to thank our community Pastors and Chaplains for their serving hearts and all they do for our community!

In honor of National Pastoral/Spiritual Care Week, here are a few words from our Hospice Chaplain Tim Johnson, describing his role in our patients' lives. "I am honored to serve as a hospice chaplain. I share author Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' vision of a future in which dying was embraced as part of living and in which the care of the dying was an integral part of the life of the family and the life of the community. I serve with a wonderful staff here at Hospice of Amador and Calaveras and in an amazing community. Thank you for including the chaplains in your everyday lives!"

Telling a Loved One they're dying. WRITTEN BY Barbara Karnes Dear Barbara, should we tell someone they are dying? How do we do it correctly? I feel I need to tell mom because I need her to know for my own self....Continue reading

Hospice of Amador & Calaveras offers free grief support meetings via zoom to all adults in the community, led by our Hospice Chaplain, George Stathos. Meetings are held every Tuesday at 10:00am or 6:30pm. Email [email protected] for a link to join our weekly meetings. Please feel free to join us. You don’t have to struggle with your loss alone.... Bereavement groups are free and open to anyone in the community. For more information, please call 209-223-5500 http://hospiceofamador.org/grief-support-meetings/