[B]efore construction began on a new hospice care facility in Colchester in October, the head administrator, Sharon Keegan, held a small ceremony on the site. Along with a few others, she spread grains and sweets for the squirrels, chipmunks and other animals whose habitat was about to be disturbed.
As Keegan — who has run the Vermont Respite House in Williston for 13 years — told the story one recent morning, she paused, her eyes welling up with a mixture of gratitude for a new home and concern for the animals the project would displace.
Transitions are important to Keegan and the staff and volunteers who work in hospice care, where they help terminally ill patients make the most of their final days, weeks and months, as comfortably as possible, as they make the ultimate transition from life to death.
During a recent visit to the new facility, the same care and attention to helping people was clearly on display as Keegan and the staff make the transition from Williston to the new site a few miles north of the interstate on Route 7. Final touches are being made. The new facility, run by the Visiting Nurse Association of Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties, is set to open in mid-September. Later that month, a ceremony will be held at the Williston site to honor the 25 years of memories there.
For example, to help the staff with the move, Keegan had them place a carnation on top of a cardboard model of the new facility — along with their aspirations about what would happen at the new place. Then, Bobby Miller — the philanthropist who with his wife, Holly, provided the principal financial backing for the new building — tossed in the carnations as workers poured the cement foundation of the “Reflection Room” at the new facility. Yeah, Miller said, he got a few funny looks from the construction workers, but who cares, he said with a smile.
Then there is the attention being paid to honor the old facility and those who stayed there. To carry forward the memories, staff, family and volunteers can put a message on a small scroll of paper, which will be placed inside a small replica of the old house. After a ceremony at the end of September, the replica will be placed on the grounds of the new site.
In another link to the past, the signature wall mural that greets those entering the Williston building — painted by Holly Miller’s mother — is being taken out like a section of the Berlin Wall and placed in the lobby of the new building.
The mural, about 15 by 10 feet, depicts a collection of animals two-by-two, a Noah’s Ark theme that is carried throughout the facility, where each patient room is named after an animal — elephant, squirrel, eagle and so on. That same tradition will be followed at the new facility, where Keegan said they had to come up with more animal names as they expand from 13 rooms in Williston to 21 rooms.
“I am very happy I can keep her legacy going,” Holly Miller said of her mother, Elaine Park Dudley, and her work. The mural took six to eight months to complete. She worked on it daily.
“Patients would come out of their rooms in their wheelchairs to watch her all day long,” Holly Miller said.
Simply put, the VNA had run out of room at the old site, which Keegan described as “just perfect” with its homey atmosphere, an aquarium in the front sitting room, and the smell of brownies seemingly always wafting from the kitchen. But demand for end-of-life hospice care has grown in the past two and a half decades. Last year, 230 people received care at the Vermont Respite House, an increase of 50 percent in a decade. Keegan said occasionally there has not been a room available in time.
A development is planned near the site in Williston, just off Route 2 near Taft Corners, so expansion was not possible there. Running two sites was deemed impractical. A larger facility made sense, Keegan said, given baby boomer demographics. Also, Holly Miller said, technology is allowing people to live longer, which she said has led to “dying harder” and more need for alternatives to a hospital.
“Medical advancement can keep us alive longer and longer. It’s harder for people to accept they are going to die and for families” because they think there is another treatment, another machine that can save them right around the corner, Holly Miller said. “We’re phobic about death. We live in an anti-aging society. It’s like we’re in a state of not wanting to know.”
At the respite house, they take a different approach. There’s no schedule, and you can eat when you want and what you want.
“If you want to have bacon and eggs in the morning with a little shot of whiskey and a brownie, you can go right ahead,” Bobby Miller said.
In addition to the need for more rooms, the ones at the old site were cramped. Families had to leave when staff came in. There were few places to find privacy.
At the new site, the rooms are about twice as big, and each has a private bath and a pull-out double couch for families to stay. A walking path rings the building for families to stretch their legs and talk.
The new building will have about 24,000 square feet, compared with about 8,000 at the old site. An open house at the new site will be held Sept. 12 at 4:30 p.m. The closing ceremony for the old house will be Sept. 24 at 10 a.m.
Keegan is concerned yet hopeful of carrying the homey feeling from the old facility into the new one, despite its much larger size.
“What I think is the key factor is that ultimately what generates warmth and the feeling of being held are the people,” the patients, the staff and the volunteers, Keegan said.
She stopped again for a moment.
“I think the natural radiance of our own hearts is what will fill the space,” she said with a smile. “I have no doubt about that.”
The $8.6 million for the new facility is still being raised. Ann Irwin of the VNA said $5.5 million has been contributed so far. The Millers and Lois McClure each put up large initial gifts. The building will bear their names. Bobby Miller also donated the land. His company, REM Development, offered a discount rate for design and to oversee construction.
The Millers are huge fans of the VNA. It’s one of the primary beneficiaries of their philanthropy, which he said focuses on organizations that help children and the elderly.
“It makes you feel like a million” to jump-start and spearhead the fundraising campaign, Bobby Miller said. “There’s a lot of pleasure in it, and it just makes you wish you could do even more.”
“I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” said the 81-year-old real estate developer.
Holly Miller was a founding director when the Vermont Respite House in Williston opened 25 years ago. Her interest in end-of-life care grew out of the difficult death her father had, where she said he was not given enough pain medication to feel comfortable.
The VNA hospice program includes nursing and other services for the terminally ill while they are still living at home, long before they make the journey to the respite house.
Holly Miller said one of her favorite memories at the Williston location was of a patient in his pajamas and slippers waltzing in the hallway with a volunteer while big band music played in the background.
“He was able to find some joy at the end of his life,” she said. “That’s what we aspire to do here. To help people live as well as they can for as long as they can.”
