Ann Smithcors is celebrating 40 years as a Hospice of Santa Barbara Volunteer!

This month is Ann’s 40-year anniversary as a volunteer with HSB! More impressive than the quantity of time she has served, is the quality of compassionate care she has provided over the years.

Here is a little bit about Ann and what brought her to Hospice of Santa Barbara (HSB) – Ann came to volunteer at HSB in 1982 after a lengthy career as a nurse and midwife in three countries. She saw firsthand the good work that volunteers did throughout her career. So, when she retired, she felt it was time for her to begin her volunteer career.

Ann has shared that she feels it is a privilege to be a volunteer and to give back in this way, and that she gets more from her volunteer work with patients/families than they get from her. Some of you may have heard her say this as well. She has expressed that she is grateful to the many patients and families, who by their gifts, have enriched her life. Ann has served as a Patient Care Volunteer, a Bereavement Volunteer, and a No One Dies Alone Volunteer. It is through many hours of listening to her patient’s stories, to the myriad of emotions one expresses when grieving, and in just being there for others, without judgement or agenda, that have made Ann such a valued person to HSB, and all the patients and families whose lives she has impacted and touched. Whenever Ann has been assigned to a patient there is full peace of mind that they will be well cared for.

Ann has given so beautifully over the past 40 years, and it is an honor to work with her! Happy 40th Anniversary, Ann!

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When Death Comes

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world