Exhibit helps raise awareness for Valley Hospice Resources

PALMER— The Colony Christmas weekend is a longstanding tradition for the city of Palmer. Amongst the otherwise cheery holiday market inside the Palmer Train Depot, longtime Valley Hospice Resources board member Mary Brothers sat at her booth to collect the names of local lives lost in 2018 in their annual Light Up A Life Hospice Tree in a bittersweet reminder of loved ones lost and the care involved during their final moments.

“It just happens,” Brothers said.

Brothers explained that the Valley Hospice Resources started more than 16 years ago with the original goal of establishing a permanent hospice care facility in the Valley. It was supposed to be the first of its kind, but she said that after a few key members of the non-profit organization left, the group had to re-focus its mission.

Brothers said that the Valley Hospice Resources allocated a sizable amount of funds for a would-be facility. Now, they use those funds to provide support to local residents in their last six months of life and also to support their families, whatever that means. That could be a few days in a hotel or plane ticket for relatives.

“The money will always be used for people at the last six months of their life,” Brothers said.

Brothers said now the Valley Hospice Resources group provides a variety of services to assist patients and their families from assistance with bathing to advice on the next steps in paperwork with local resources.

Brothers said she and her fellow volunteers were excited the Maple Springs Senior Living facility is coming to the Seward-Meridian health complex, which will fulfill their original goal. Aside from normal senior assisted living functions, she said Maple Springs will provide a number of hospice care rooms on site.

Brothers said she started volunteering in hospice care because of her family ties with the matter, and the inspiring help from hospice nurses that ensued during a very difficult time of her life.

“They gave me a lot of good advice,” Brothers said.

She said that during the same year her mother and husband died in hospice care. She said that the hospice nurses were very helpful in the day-to-day tasks and beyond. She said that fueled her decision to do what she could in the same field.

“I just felt like it’s something that I wanted to do. I thought, maybe I can help people in some small way, like the way I was helped,” Brothers said.

Brothers said that first year of loss was the hardest of her life. She said that attending grief support meetings made all the difference for her.

“They can come in and they can cry, they can scream…” Brothers said.

Brothers called one of the organization’s services, the Mat-Su Grief Support, her, “baby.”

The support group is a partnership with the Valley Hospice Resources and The Compassionate Friends and is held every Thursday from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Trinity Lutheran Church off the Palmer-Wasilla Highway.

“It helped me and I see it help people every day,” Brothers said.

For more information about Valley Hospice Resources, call 907-745-4711 or see nationalhospicelocator.com/hospices/alaska/palmer/valley-hospice-resources-volunteer.

For more information about the Maple Springs senior care facility, see maplespringsalaska.com