Jeff’s Dad
For me, this journey to hospice and the hospice house became deeply personal for two reasons.
The first goes all the way back to 2013, when I first met my wife, Jennifer. I asked her what her dream was, and without hesitation she said, “That’s easy. Build a hospice house.” At the time, even as a hospice doctor, I honestly didn’t fully understand what that meant because we didn’t have one in our community. There was nothing here to emulate. No model to point to. No example nearby to show us what a hospice house could truly be.
Then in 2019, I experienced it firsthand.
My dad was dying in my hometown of Gainesville, Florida, and our family was facing the difficult question of where he would go and who could provide 24/7 care. My best friend since kindergarten said, “Well, we’ve got a hospice house in our town.” For five days, I walked through that experience with my dad at the hospice house in Gainesville, Florida. It was a beautiful place. Peaceful. Compassionate. Dignified. It changed me.
From there, I called my wife and said, “Why don’t we have this in our community?” We have all this amazing healthcare in Central Texas, but we don’t have a hospice house. We really need to make this a priority.
So in April of 2019, I started to brainstorm how to bring this vision to fruition.
