Itasca Hospice Foundation

by Stephanie Stevens, bereavement counselor Itasca Hospice Team

Supporting people who are dying and their families can be very
rewarding, but it can also be draining. All of us need to be sure we take care
of ourselves so that we don’t deplete our energy and emotional resources.

One way to renew our spirit is to spend quiet time in a special
sacred space. A sacred space may be somewhere in nature, an empty chapel or
church, or a special spot you create in a quiet area of your home that you can
go to often.

When creating your sacred space, consider all of your senses. What
color do you find soothing? I know that whenever I see the blue of Lake
Superior, I feel my tension leave me. You could hang some beautiful fabric or a
photograph that invokes tranquil feelings. I have enlarged photos of my garden
to sustain me through the winter months.

Certain aromas such as lavender, chamomile, and rosewood can have
soothing effects. Candles, essential oil diffusers, simmer pots, flowers, or
herbal tea can be relaxing. Soft music, nature recordings or a small fountain can
provide relaxing ambiance. Finally, objects of significance to you can be
added. Religious items, photographs, statues, objects from, nature are just a
few ideas. Use your imagination and then remember to go to your sacred space
often to relax and renew your spirit.

Written by Angela Morrow, RN, for About.com

If you have lost a loved one, you might be wondering how to cope with your grief this holiday season.

With the first fallen leaf of autumn, we begin to anticipate the holidays ahead.  Our senses are acute and take in everything:  the smell of turkey roasting and freshly baked pies; the holiday songs playing on the radio; the sound of laughter from our loved ones who have gathered together.  But for those of us who are experiencing illness, grief, or the loss of a loved one, the holidays can be a time of sadness, pain, anger, or dread.

The ebb and flow of grief can overwhelm us with waves of memories, especially during the holidays.  Grief will also magnify the stress that is already a part of the holiday season. How do we begin to fill the emptiness we feel when it seems everyone else is overflowing with joy?  There are some strategies to help you cope during the holidays and beyond.

Strategies for Survival

Offer Yourself Some Grace
The best thing you can do this holiday season is be kind to yourself.  Give yourself permission to feel whatever it is your feeling.  Don’t fall prey to the belief that you have to feel a certain way or do certain things for your holiday to be “normal.”  If you feel sad, allow the tears to come; if you feel angry, allow yourself to vent some steam.

Be Kind to Yourself
Get the rest and nourishment you need.  Don’t take on any more than you can handle.  If you need to be alone, honor that.  If you crave the company and affection of others, seek it out.  Do whatever it is that feels right to you.

Ask For and Accept Help
The holiday season is no time to feign strength and independence.  You will need the help and support of others to get through.  Don’t feel as though you are a burden.  People get immense satisfaction and joy from helping those they care about.

In times of need, other people desire to help but often don’t know how.  This is the time for you to speak up and make your needs known.  If you need someone to help you with meals, shopping, or decorating, tell them so. They will be delighted to feel like they are helping you in some way.

The same holds true for your emotional needs.  Friends and family may feel uncomfortable when it comes to talking about your grief.  They may think that you don’t want to talk about it and don’t want to remind you of your pain.  Again, you will have to direct them in the best way to help you.  If you want to talk about what you’re going through or just want a shoulder to cry on, let your loved ones know.

Find Support
Sharing your feelings is the best way to get through them.  You need people you can talk to.  Friends and relatives can be a great support to us during times of grief, but they are sometimes full of their own grief or so immersed in the business of the holidays that they cannot be a support to you.  Support groups for caregivers and the bereaved are plentiful during the holiday season.  Check with local churches, community centers, and hospice agencies to find a group that suites you.  Support group members often make friends that end up being a source of support for years to come.

Make a Difference
Most of us like to help others during the holiday season.  Taking the ornament off the tree at the mall, dropping our change in the charity basket, or donating to our favorite organization can help us feel like we are contributing to a greater good.  Helping others in times of grief can help take the focus off yourself and your pain.  Volunteeringat a nursing home, hospital, children’s shelter, or soup kitchen can be cathartic in times of pain.  Even helping a friend or family member in need can be healing.

Stop the Comparisons
It’s easy to watch other families and compare them to your own.  Seeing other families together and enjoying the festivities may make you feel deprived.  Keep in mind that the holidays are stressful for most families and are rarely the magical gatherings depicted in greeting cards.  Try to embrace what you have rather than compare it to what you think others have.

Remember That You Will Survive
As hard as it is for you right now, you will survive.  You will make it through the holidays in one piece.  It may be the most difficult season in your time of grief, but it will pass. And when it does, you will come out on the other side stronger than before.

You don’t have to enjoy the holidays.  You don’t even have to go through the motions pretending to enjoy the festivities.  But, it’s also just fine to have a good time in spite of your grief.  If happiness slips through your window of grief, allow it to happen and enjoy it.  You won’t be doing your loved one an injustice by feeling joyous.  The best gift you can give anyone you love, even someone you have lost, is being true to yourself and living your life to the fullest.

Thanks to Jeri Berndt, the volunteer coordinator at the Essentia Health Itasca Team, for being today’s guest blogger.

National Volunteer Week is April 10 through 16, a time to recognize and celebrate the thousands of people who give selflessly of their time and talents in service to others. Nowhere is this more important than in our nation’s hospice and palliative care programs.

Essentia Health Itasca Hospice has more than 85 trained volunteers who are dedicated to making sure those in our community have the support and care they need when facing the journey at life’s end. This journey can often be a lonely, frightening, and unfamiliar experience. Knowing that there is a caring neighbor to give a hand, lend an ear, and share his or her heart can make all the difference to patients and families.

Hospice volunteers understand that every person for whom they care is a unique individual with a lifetime of experiences, relationships and gifts to share. Hospice care brings comfort, dignity and peace to help people live every moment of life to the fullest, leaving loved ones with memories they can treasure.

Many misconceptions about hospice exist—that it means “giving up” or there’s “nothing more than can be done.” Nothing could be further from the truth!  Hospice is about living and making sure those with a life-limiting illness are surrounded by love and support.

In 2010, Itasca Hospice volunteers provided 4,493 hours of support.  With the opening of Kylar Glen, more help will be needed.  Volunteer services may include the following: 

• Greeting and welcoming visitors
• Answering the phone
• Offering companionship
• Doing patient laundry
• Light housekeeping (such as dusting, cleaning surfaces, running the dishwasher, vacuuming, etc.) 
• Feeding patients
• Walking with ambulatory patients
• Yard work (snow removal, mowing, watering)
• Baking
• Running errands

If you would like to learn more about being a volunteer, please contact Essentia Health Itasca Hospice at 218-327-8780 or 800-650-8520 and ask for Jeri.

My parents were in their mid-sixties when my mom, in her matter-of-fact way, mailed me copies of her and my dad’s healthcare directives. At the time it was a bit jarring to think about some future unknown time when they would be needed. Years later I was grateful for the guidance and peace-of-mind they provided.

Grand Rapids, Minnesota – ElderCircle, Essentia Health – Itasca Hospice, Home Visitor Program and River Grand Senior Living, along with other national, state and community organizations, are participating in a massive effort to highlight the importance of advance healthcare decision-making—an effort that has culminated in the formal designation of April 15, 2011, as National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD). As a participating organization, ElderCircle, Essentia Health—Itasca Hospice, Home Visitor Program and River Grand Senior Living are providing information and tools for the public to talk about their wishes with family, friends and healthcare providers, and execute a written Minnesota Health Care Directive in accordance with Minnesota state laws. These resources are available at http://www.nationalhealthcaredecisionsday.org.

Specifically, on Friday, April 15, from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm, ElderCircle, Essentia Health—Itasca Hospice, Home Visitor Program and River Grand Senior Living are welcoming the public to an Open House at River Grand Senior Living Great Room, 355 River Road, Grand Rapids, (218-999-5333) with free information about advance healthcare planning and advance directive forms. Professionals from these organizations will be available to assist with planning, completing and notarizing the health care directive, and will offer follow up if needed. A local attorney will also be attending if legal questions arise. (An attorney is not required to complete a health care directive). Seniors age 60 and older can schedule in home visits to finish their health care directive through the Home Visitor Program.

“As a result of National Healthcare Decisions Day, many more people in our community can be expected to have thoughtful conversations about their healthcare decisions and complete reliable advance directives to make their wishes known,” said Cindy Brummer, Social Worker. “Fewer families and healthcare providers will have to struggle with making difficult healthcare decisions in the absence of guidance from the patient, and healthcare providers and facilities will be better equipped to address advance healthcare planning issues before a crisis and be better able to honor patient wishes when the time comes to do so.”

For more information about National Healthcare Decisions Day, please visit the Minnesota state website at or the national site.

The afternoon I stopped by Kylar Glen Clarence Randle was installing trim.

I recently toured Kylar Gen with Clarence Randle of Clarence Randle Construction. He’s been working on the house since the slab was poured, and I’m convinced his continuous presence plays a role in peacefulness that pervades the house from the moment you step through the door.

“I think people will be real comfortable here,” said Clarence as we stood in what will, come July, be the home’s living room. As we talked about the home’s construction, we watched two eagle’s circled the large pine tree in the front of the house, visible through the half-moon window.  Clarence showed me where the deer walk through the property each day, and I forgot for a moment that we were in town.

Check out the Gallery to view the photos I took inside, and outside the house.

Hi, my name is Ben Edwards, owner of Edwards LaPlant Construction.  We are a three-generation company that has been operating in northern Minnesota for over 55 years. 

When the Itasca Hospice Foundation was donated the money to build a hospice house, it was very exciting for me because of my mother’s involvement with hospice. Barb Arbour approached me about helping to design the home and later to build it. It has been a great honor to provide the expertise to make this happen. 

After a few hurdles in the beginning, we finally broke ground and got going on the hospice house in the fall of 2010.  Now entering the spring of 2011, we have the home near its completion.  We are inside now working on the painting and the tong and grove paneling.  The outside is almost complete, other than some rock work and a little bit of siding.  The home is really turning out to be a beautiful place, and I hope that those who stay here in their final days will think so too. 

I’ll be writing periodic updates from the construction site. We invite any and all to come by and see Kylar Glen. Just stop by Monday thru Friday during normal business hours and there should be someone around who can show you around.

 Ben Edwards

Edwards LaPlant Construction

Edgar and Hanna Hetteen

Kylar Glen, Grand Rapids’ first hospice home has many benefactors. Edgar and Hannah Hetteen are prominent among them.

My name is Barb Arbour, and I’m the executive director of Itasca Hospice Foundation. My initial experience with hospice was brief with my husband Steve’s parents first and then my parents. After my father died, I came home wishing to learn if there was a hospice program in the Grand Rapids area for which I could volunteer. My phone calls lead me to Gayle LaPlant Edwards, Volunteer  /Bereavement Coordinator for Itasca County Hospice. She told me at the time they did not need more volunteers, but when they did their next volunteer training course she would call me.

I took the training course in May, 1995, and, after spending hours with Gayle, Judy Pittack, Cheri Niles, and Pastor George Gilbertson, I knew that I was part of an extraordinary program filled with talented, gifted and caring individuals.

Gayle had a recurrence of breast cancer later that year and died in 1996. She was 40 years old. Her passion, wit and determination left an enormous void in the hospice program.

In many ways Gayle was, and is today an inspiration for the Itasca Hospice program. The hospice foundation immediately began organizing and planning a major fundraiser in her memory and “The Festival of Trees” was born.

In 1997, with planning well under way for the first Festival of Trees, my husband met Edgar Hetteen and a great relationship developed. Soon thereafter I met Edgar’s wife, Hannah. She immediately wanted to know all that was involved with the Festival and what she could do to help. Her enthusiasm and energetic personality gave us marvelous PR!

During the 5-year span of the Festival, Edgar and Hannah came to Ruttgers to assist and support the program, and help her daughter and son-in-law decorate their tree. The Festival was an exciting time for them, but so too was the cause behind this effort. Relatives and friends had been in hospice care and one of Hannah’s daughters was a hospice nurse.

In 2001, we held our last Festival of Trees. Edgar, and especially Hannah, didn’t know what they would do the following November without a Festival to anticipate in and with which to commence the holiday season. They told me that if Hospice ever did anything that would require financial support, that I should come and talk with them.

In 2006, the Hospice Foundation board had serious discussions about the possibility of building a hospice home in the Grand Rapids area. Visiting other hospice homes in the state and talking with community leaders encouraged us to move forward with the concept. Steve and I took Edgar and Hannah to lunch and presented the idea to them. They were excited and asked lots of questions. One week later I received a phone call from their attorney telling me that Edgar and Hannah would like to donate $1 million to help build our hospice home.

There are no words to adequately say thank you to Edgar and Hannah. That Kylar Glen is becoming a reality speaks eloquently enough. And in its completion, there is an element of poetry. At Gayle’s funeral so many years ago I met her charming son Ben, then in the ninth grade. Today Ben is Kylar Glen’s builder.

Thank you Gayle. Thank you Edgar.  And thank you Hannah.