A Hospice Volunteer Story

This local Colorado newspaper article talks about the role one volunteer plays from Hospice and Palliative Care of Northern Colorado.

When a person is dying alone in one of the rooms of Hospice and Palliative Care of Northern Colorado, the staff calls Bedingfield to sit beside them, to talk, to hold their hand. To say it's all right to let go.

A quiet, self-effacing man, you can tell Bedingfield doesn't want to talk much about himself, about what he volunteers for, about the people he's helped.

How many hospice bedsides has he sat by in 29 years?

“Maybe 400,” he says.

How long does he stay with the patient?

“Two hours isn't unusual.”

But Bedingfield doesn't view the end of life as a loss. “It's sad, but it's a victory too,” he says. “It's the end of a person's valuable experience.”